|
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/1 ... 61770.html
Yankee Stadium Tips Taken By Owners, Servers Allege
In the more desirable seats at Yankee Stadium, an already pricey $10.50 draft beer will run you an eye-popping $12.60 thanks to an involuntary 20 percent "service fee" tacked on to the original price. If the sticker shock doesn’t make that brew bitter enough, consider this: Despite what you might expect, that extra $2 and change isn't going to the hustling server who sold it to you, according to a new lawsuit.
Legends Hospitality, the concessionaire co-owned by the New York Yankees, the Dallas Cowboys, and Goldman Sachs, allegedly pockets the 20 percent service fee attached to food and drink in violation of New York law, according to a class-action lawsuit filed against the company by three Yankee Stadium servers this week. If certified as class action, the suit could involve more than a hundred servers and hundreds of thousands of dollars in claims.
At the center of the dispute is how hot dogs, sodas and other ballpark fare are served in the stadium's field-level seats, which typically cost between $100 and $350 a game. At field level, fans don't have to fetch their food and drink; they instead can place orders with servers carrying credit-card machines and get the orders ferried to their seats by food-and-drink runners.
Under this arrangement, the servers act a lot like salespeople. "They schmooze the customers, and they're trained to upsell, just like any other waitress," says the plaintiffs' lawyer, Brian Schaffer. "If somebody says, 'I want a hot dog,' they say, 'But wouldn’t you like a cold beer with that?'"
According to the suit, the menus field-level spectators find in their cupholders include this disclaimer: "A 20% service charge will be added to the listed prices. Additional gratuity is at your discretion." That phrase "additional gratuity" would seem to imply that the 20 percent is, in fact, a gratuity, but Schaffer says his clients don’t get that money. Instead, they receive a far more modest commission, between four and six percent, of their total sales for the game.
Schaffer believes the system cheats both vendors and fans -- the vendors by withholding their tips, the fans by artificially inflating prices. "It's pretty unbelievable if you think about what's going on," Schaffer said. "Honestly, I couldn't fathom the profits."
What's worse, Schaffer alleges, is the fact that the servers aren't allowed to explain to fans how the actual arrangement works. "If my clients are specifically asked, 'Where does this 20 percent go?' they can't tell them the truth. They can only tell the customer, 'Additional gratuity is at your discretion.' They can't say, 'It's not going to me.' They can be fired for saying that." |
|
