This paper tells the story of how full-service restaurant work is organized in such a way that sexualized interactions between customers and women working as servers, bartenders, and hostesses become enmeshed in the labour process. Key to this organization is how law contributes to making restaurant work precarious. With the unique gendered wage-tip relation, a relation legitimized and reinforced through lower minimum wage regulations for alcohol servers, workers rely on customers for tips. This fuels a relationship of unequal power that leaves workers vulnerable to sexual harassment and sexualized interactions with customers as the price to be paid for a tip—a form of institutionalized quid pro quo. Moreover, power relations become intensified in a work environment where employee schedules, duration of shifts, the regulation of tips, and overall income are insecure and unpredictable—all of these characteristics are attributable, in large part, to shortcomings of employment standards legislation in British Columbia.
