Well that’s not good…
Broadway’s Downtown Sporting Club, the popular ax-throwing bar, is being sued for allegedly siphoning tip money away from servers and bartenders. According to a story in The Tennessean, former employees Hayden Smith and James D. Meadows brought the suit, seeking back pay for them, along with dozens of other servers and bartenders.
The lawsuit states that the company’s “tip-pooling scheme” pulls tip money from servers and bartenders and routes it to other employees “who had no interaction with customers.” Servers and bartenders were also required to spend more than 20% of their shifts doing other chores that would prevent them from earning tips. And since they’re making below minimum wage, they depend heavily on tips to make ends meet.
Yikes. I can only imagine what kind of insurance policy an ax-throwing bar has to have. You’re literally serving alcohol to people who are throwing very sharp objects at a wall. And with the number of videos that pop up on social media of some dude narrowly ducking an ax to the dome, it’s not hard to see why they’re probably saddled with some pretty hefty insurance fees.
But hey, we’re all in this together, right? If we have to dip our hands into the tip jar to keep this place out of the red, that’s what you gotta do, right? Who cares if half of your staff gets evicted, can’t pay their bills, and wind up living on the street? This is big business. It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there and and if you can’t hack it, maybe you shouldn’t have a part time job at all. I know you’re just trying to pay your tuition and make a little money on the side, but tough shit. If you can’t balance two part-time jobs, a full semester of classes and that music career you’re working on, all while getting paid below minimum wage, that’s on you.
If the defense would like to use the aforementioned in their opening statement, be my guest, but know that I did drop out of law school to blog about shit like this so there might be a few holes in it.
Anyways…
Is Downtown Sporting Club on the chopping block? Are they about to get axed? Stay tuned for more expert legal analysis on this riveting case.
