Employees at Sophia’s House of Pancakes in Benton Harbor are telling their story. Christina Perkins has been a server at the restaurant for nearly 18 years. She explained the $2-per hour fee that she and other servers agreed to six years ago to WSJM News, saying the restaurant’s owner didn’t take any money from them.
“We tipped out daily, like we’re supposed to, for the bussers to have a bus-out fee,” Perkins said, adding customers who don’t tip hurt servers more financially than the $2 fee. She talked about the former employees who filed complaints with the U.S. Department of Labor, saying the restaurant owners Peter and John Philis always stood by them when they were in trouble, and bailed some out of jail.
“These guys stood by these girls who are bashing them,” Perkins said. She said some were drug addicts, others were alcoholics, adding “Some of them do what they want to do. They come and go.”
She said while some business practices ran afoul of the law and she wouldn’t defend those, there’s more to the story than the U.S. Labor Department’s findings of labor law violations.
“It’s not exactly what everybody’s claiming it to be. Granted, the bussers made a certain hourly wage. I don’t know all the details, but I know that’s what us girls agreed upon was $2 an hour, and then they all made a big stink out of it because they thought they were going to get a big check from the labor board.”
Customers Wednesday at Sophia’s said they were there to support the local business, adding they feel the media has blown the situation out of proportion given the changes that have been made and that the investigation looked into issues from 2010 to 2012, not now. Combined, the two restaurants were fined nearly $250,000 by a federal judge this week.
