In December 1993 Elaine Gonzales, Brian Gibson, and another server at Tucci Milan waited on a large private party. At the end of the evening, Gonzales overheard a woman complimenting the wait staff. The woman said she was leaving a big tip–$900–about 26 percent of the bill. Gibson and Gonzales say the restaurant’s floor manager took responsibility for doling out the money to servers, food runners, bus people, and bartenders–an unusual move because servers usually handle that task. The next day, when the servers showed up to collect their portion of the tip, they each received only $100 for their trouble. According to the servers, they were given another $45 each after complaining to a manager, who told them that the restaurant had used some of the money for bread, flowers, and cookies.
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“When we questioned it, the general manager of the restaurant pulled us into his office and told us that we were greedy and that if we didn’t like the way that this was done we should find another job,” says Gonzales, who had been waiting tables at the restaurant for four years. Instead, Gibson followed the “open door” policy for registering job grievances at Lettuce Entertain You restaurants. Over a period of eight months, he took his complaints all the way up the corporate ladder to Lettuce president Rich Melman–but Gibson says he never got a satisfactory explanation for the missing money. “That happened in the past,” explains Lettuce spokesperson Sue Salzman. “I have no comment.”
“We want to tap into the creativity that exists in the restaurant workforce,” says Gibson, who has also worked in film. The group plans to produce a documentary about the Tucci Milan ordeal and to publish a regular newsletter called Anita’s Cot Party (named after the woman who left the generous tip). Their current project, “A Head of Lettuce,” is a mixed-media installation about the union drive and the case before the NLRB.
