Pay for dine and Dash

I had worked in a restuarant in a 5 diamond hotel, they were one of the best employers I ever had, and they also had the same policy. Matter of fact all the places I had worked in NYC or Texas had the same policy.

It’s illegal for an owner to make servers pay for a dine and dash in Washington state. Check out the Labor and Industries website; it’s all there. Glad you found another job. If you have the time, you should report it to L&I so other people won’t be taken advantage of. I bet if you contacted their corporate offices, you would find out that they don’t condone that policy and would fire the gm (or whoever is collecting that money) pretty darn quickly.

L&I website says you may be required to pay for dine & dash tickets if the employer claims the customers left because the employee wasn’t doing their job, AND fires you for it. But it’s also clear that unless they’re firing you for it, they can’t deduct it from your pay–only allowable in the final pay period is the exact wording. Sounds like a good reason not to give notice before you quit, really, if you know people like to d&d there. And hey, it’s IHOP, that’s probably a given assumption around the world.

But still, not cool as a general practice. Good to know where to avoid.