Moonlight...Feels wrong...

Am I the only person who, whenever Starbucks (the coffee shop) is mentioned, they think of Starbuck (the band)? Or is it just '70s enthusiasts like me? (The band, incidentally, has nothing to do with the coffee shop.)

Maybe moonlight feels right (as the band's biggest hit song declared), but what the coffee shop has been doing to its counter servers sure doesn't. The coffee chain has been taking baristas' tips away and redistributing the money to the managers. In other words, Starbucks has been stealing from the baristas and giving the money to their bosses.

I can understand managers needing to be paid just like the counter servers. But Starbucks should be paying managers from its own deep pockets instead of looting the servers to pay them (especially since servers are paid less anyway).

Now a judge in California has ordered the coffee chain to pay baristas throughout the state $106,000,000 in tips that were stolen from them - citing a state law that prohibits supervisors from being paid from employees' tips.

Weird. I thought that was a federal law, not just a state law. I remember in the '80s how there was a restaurant in my area that was stealing servers' tips, and I was told that was illegal everywhere in America. Or is this yet another law the Bush regime decided to abandon?

What does Starbucks say about the judge's order? A company spokeswoman says having to pay back the baristas is "fundamentally unfair and beyond all common sense and reason." Seriously, she said that. (Someone pining for a Conservative Fool Of The Day entry?)

Starbucks is planning to appeal - despite the fact that California law clearly states that they can't take employees' tips.

I guarantee you that if I worked at the counter at a coffee shop and my tips were being taken away, there would have been a lawsuit against the shop long ago.

(Source: http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080320/starbucks_tipping_suit.html)