Tip Pooling

I'm new to the restaurant scene here and would like to know how prevalent (or not) this system is here. Personally, after my first dismay, I really liked it at my last job. It seems to encourage a less grabby, more helpful staff. Any comments?

i've waited tables at 3 restaurants here in louisville. at the first, tipping out bussers and batenders was encouraged but we were not really pressured to do it. my guess is the bartenders kept a mental log of who took care of them and when things got busy, those were the servers who got their drinks first. another employer never mentioned tipping out the bartender (we didn't use bussers or host staff). at this point, i was accustomed to doing so and the first time i did it, the bartender stared at me with a shocked look on his face. my current employer pretty much tells us we have to tip out 3% of our nightly sales. if we don't, the manager sort of screws us on our sections and schedules. our bussers and hostesses only make 3 something an hour so some of this goes to them. the rest to the bartenders. however, i'm not always happy about this because for the most part, our hosts are incompetent 16-year-old girls more focused on texting and gossiping than seating our floor correctly. if i felt i had a choice, i would just tip out my bussers and bartenders. keep in mind that state law says that an employer cannot require you to share your tips with anyone.

Actually, while tipping out is ( I think ) pretty much a given with bussers, especially in a fine dining atmosphere where they also do bread and water service, and the bartender one depends ( I think ) on how much service bar traffic there is, I was referring to servers splitting the total tips among themselves at the end of the night, based on the number of servers. Cash tips get divvied up accordingly and credit tips are divided equally depending, again, on the number of servers, then distributed weekly or bi-weekly, which gives you a nice big check. While it seems like you're losing out if you had a good night, it keeps you from having a total dog of a night if you just don't have as much business, and people cut early are exempt. In the right situation ( five or less people, smallish restaurant, bosses that you trust and are on the ball, co-workers who all work hard ) it's great.

When I was a club manager in Tucson, we had a lobby bar, two club bars, and a "dive" bar, so upwards of ten bartenders. They'd all pool their tips and split 'em equally. I had the joy of adding it all up. I think the guy before me skimmed quite a bit.

Yeah, there are definitely some parameters that need to be in place for it to work successfully. We never let one person be in charge of the cash, we'd just divide our own tips by the number of servers after tipping out bussers, etc. So it did involve some trading denominations back and forth at the end of the night, something that would get ridiculous with more people. As far as credit tips, they were only accessible by the owner, and he had no problem showing us the financial paperwork ( nightly computer printouts of total sales and tips ) so that was not an issue. So far it seems like this is not a common practice here.