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If you’ve ever been a server, you understand the hard work you must put in to earn your tips each day. Dealing with poor treatment by customers, working long, demanding hours, and doing everything in your power to ensure your tables have the best experience possible. But what happens when those tips are basically taken from under your nose under the guise of helping a co-worker in need?

Tip pooling is a common practice in restaurants, where employees combine their tips into one pool that is shared evenly among the staff. This requires a level of trust that the employer will fairly distribute the tips, but one Reddit user was faced with their manager breaking this trust, and although it was for a good cause, this particular server was struggling too and needed the money they worked for.

A server on Reddit discovered that their manager gave the entire staff’s pooled tips to one employee.

The slighted server turned to Redditdescribing how their manager decided to take all of their pooled tips from the previous month and give them all to another employee named Janice.

Reddit

The screenshotted text message from manager Kelly read, “Sending this message to all employees. The pooled tips we’ve gotten from last month won’t be distributed. Janice’s mom just passed away and they could use it more than we do at the moment…”

The Redditor expressed that they weren’t sure what to think, and that they “…feel like a bad person for wanting to get the part of my tip rather than giving it to Janice.” They explained that they recently moved into a new place and were planning to use the money to purchase necessities like blankets, pillows, and dog food.

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The post incited a wide range of responses online, with many encouraging the server to take legal action.

Commenters showed support and empathy for the server and reassured them that their feelings are valid. One user wrote, “Not a bad person but your manager is for stealing and redistributing your tips.” While the manager’s intentions may have been compassionate, many agreed that allocating the tips without consent was unethical.

Most of the comments also emphasized that taking the tips is illegal, and that the server should report the employer to the state labor board. One more cynical commenter pointed out, “Wait until you find they decided to only give Janice a small portion of the money and kept the rest. Either way, illegal and report it to the labor board.”

Though it’s not mentioned which state the server is located in, the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) protects tipped employees on a federal level. It explicitly states that “…the FLSA prohibits employers from keeping any portion of employees’ tips for any purpose, whether directly or through a tip pool.”

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This story sparked a bigger discussion about the controversy surrounding tip pooling.

There can be benefits to participating in a tip pool as a server. If a restaurant is slow one day, a server could potentially make more money than they would have made on their own. Tip pooling also encourages teamwork, because every member of staff is affected by how many tips are made.

On the other hand, tip pooling isn’t always a positive experience for employees. Tip pools could mean that a server walks away with less money than what they earned individually. It can also cause problems among the staff. If one hardworking server has to pool the tips they earned with someone who doesn’t work as hard or takes frequent breaks, they could become resentful.

Even more concerning, however, is the possibility that management might not always be on the up and up when it comes to the distributions. As attorney Ryan Stygar on TikTok noted, it is illegal for a manager to abscond with any percentage of the tip pool for their own benefit. Unfortunately, those waters get murky because it’s virtually impossible for restaurant staff to have exact numbers when it comes to distributions.

Tip pooling is allowed in all U.S. states by federal law, however some states have passed their own laws that prohibit mandatory tip pooling. Instead, businesses can offer voluntary tip pooling, where employees have the option to choose to participate or not.

This situation raises questions about the ethics of tip pooling and boundaries in the workplace. Though this manager was seemingly trying to help an employee in need, wage theft is illegal, and this server has a right to receive their tips and make their own decisions about what to do with them.

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Kayla Asbach is a writer currently working on her bachelor’s degree at the University of Central Florida. She covers relationships, psychology, self-help, pop culture, and human interest topics.