BBC has revealed Banqueting Managers at Dorchester have been deducting money from their staff’s service charges and adding it to their own. [1] Read full story

This comes as no surprise to me if some people I used to work with in another famous place are still in there. One is Operations Director and the other one a head waiter. The Director used to do the same job in a place I worked and when he moved to Dorchester, he poached the head waiter to come to work with him. As if that wasn’t enough, he later asked if my (by then ex) boss who ws an Operations Manager, would come over and sort out the banqueting in Dorchester. Terms he was offered were very  good, even the six month trial wasn’t anything unusual.

I never liked nor trust the director and warned my ex boss (we baceme very good friends) from moving over but the offer he got was too good to resist. So there he went and worked 16 hour days  improving standards, cutting waste and reducing cost without cutting staff. Four months later most of the problems they had had in there were sorted and their costs were reduced almost 15%. Two weeks before the trial period was over, the director and my friend had a meeting in which he was told that the contract would not be confirmed for him. They had decided to hire someone else. In short, he was used by a man he thought was his friend and thrown away the moment he had achieved what they wanted to get done.

The head waiter was hated by all the staff we had and they did pretty much everything to get away from functions he was running. He was also cheating and abusive to his wife whom he pretty much married for the passport in the first place. At the end of the events, we normally asked the organiser to sign the final invoice and without the fault we got rather nice gratituites (usually around 10% of total bill) in cash. Of that, we shared half with the staff, and one third of the other half, with the back of house people, we kept 20% of total. None of us ever made difference between the permanent and casual staff. except this particuler head waiter who only gave something for few wine waiters and nothing to waiting staff.

Put these two to work together and it’s no wonder the staff in Dorchester suddenly started to lose their tips.