As I read your post, I wondered where your daughter worked that was so enlightened. 
Side work is the salt in the wound for servers, especially on those days when you didn't even ring 100 dollars in sales, but had to scrub the gunk out of the cooler, under the wait station or whatever.
The other server issue I would like to see challenged is tip share. I have no problem kicking in a bit for the bussers, runners and other support staff, but the problem is that there should be a cap. I think the rule is that restaurants can charge servers 3% of their sales to share amongst support staff, which doesn't sound like much but it can translate to 25-40% of what you actually make in tips. I had many shifts that I would "make" 250-350 in tips, but "walked" with 125-225. That isn't right, the restaurant should be paying those people via wages. I tried to research it when I was still waiting tables, but never found more than a forum post that said there is a part b to the tip share rule saying that 3% of sales but no more than 15% of tips. I never could confirm that.
Edit history
= new reply since forum marked as read
