My third winter in Park City: the contract that said one thing and paid another

I went back for a third winter in Park City, and this was the one where the money went wrong. I flew into New York first, the same as the first time: Central Park, Times Square, the cruise up the Hudson that stops in front of the Statue of Liberty, the Wall Street bull. I stayed with Couchsurfing again and it went well again. Then Utah.

I got the job before flying, and that was the good part

The owners of the flat we rented the previous winter had friends with a café in town, and they told me their basement flat would go to someone working there. So I interviewed from Croatia, months ahead, and landed the job before buying anything. That part I would do again: arriving with the job already signed takes an enormous weight off you, and it can even cost you less, because the programmes charge differently when you find your own employer.

The contract said one thing and the pay said another

My contract said 18.75 dollars an hour, and it also said the role included tips. It did not say 18.75 plus tips: it said 18.75, and separately, that the job was a tipped position. When I started talking to my colleagues, none of us ever took home more than 18.75 an hour, so nobody could tell me where the tips were going. The managers told us the tips were already inside the 18.75.

Then we compared contracts. My Peruvian colleagues had a contract that said 2.25 dollars an hour plus tips up to 18.75. That is the whole thing in one line: the company was putting in 2.25 an hour and the customers were paying the rest, up to a ceiling. When I complained, the answer was that my contract had a typo and that everyone else's was the real one.

I paid four different lawyers, one after another, because none of them gave me an answer I could use. What they all said was the same: the structure was built well enough that proving anything illegal would take a formal complaint and a demand for the company's sales and tip reports. And we could never see those reports. Other people I knew in town got a tip report at the end of every shift. We were not shown ours, ever.

What the law actually says, for the next person

I did not report it in the end, and I still think about that. So let me leave here what I could not find at the time, checked against the law itself:

• The federal minimum is 7.25 dollars an hour. Utah has no higher minimum of its own, and by law its state minimum cannot exceed the federal one (official DOL table).
• A tipped employee can be paid as little as 2.13 an hour in cash, but if the tips do not bring the total up to the minimum wage, the employer has to make up the difference, every week.
• The employer must tell you in advance, before using that system, how much cash wage you get and how much tip credit they are taking. If they never told you, they are not entitled to the tip credit at all.
• Nobody can put a ceiling on your tips and keep the rest. The rule (29 CFR 531.52) says an employer may only handle your tips to give them to you or to run a valid tip pool. There is no third option.
• Managers and supervisors can never keep tips — not a cent, not through a pool, whether or not the company uses the tip credit. If the company pays the full minimum wage and takes no tip credit, then the kitchen can be in the pool; the bosses still cannot.
• Reporting it is free and confidential. The Wage and Hour Division takes the complaint, it is free, your name is not disclosed, and retaliation for complaining is itself illegal. You have two years, three if the violation was wilful.

The season itself

Mili came back, Manu and Loren came for the first time, and having them there saved the winter, because the money side was miserable: not enough hours at the café and no second job. I did end up with banquet shifts at the resort, which came with a staff ID, and that ID was my ski pass.

And I skied properly for the first time. Loren taught me again and this time it worked: greens and then blues at Park City Mountain, greens at Deer Valley, which I found harder. On days off we went to Las Vegas, to the Bonneville Salt Flats, to Antelope Island to see the bison, to the East High of High School Musical, and to the replica of the house from Up in the south of Salt Lake City.

What I would take from this

• Read the contract, and then read your colleagues' contracts. Mine was the one that looked good and it was the one that meant nothing.
• Ask before signing: what is the cash wage per hour, how are tips distributed, who is in the pool, and will I get a tip report every shift.
• If they will not show you the tip reports, that is the answer.
• Getting the job before flying is worth a lot — just not at the cost of skipping these questions.

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