The Hazelwood Gap: How laanie restaurants in affluent areas illegally underpay their staff

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I have worked as a waitress at a few restaurants in the Pretoria and larger Tshwane area, just for a little summin’ extra on the side of my studies. I really enjoy it and have worked with some really good people, but these people do not have the same relationship with the job as me. This is their livelihood, and I always knew that we weren’t being paid enough to make a living but I did not understand what exactly was up until I did some Labour Law (to the great detriment of my general enjoyment of the job and respect for my management team).

It’s abhorrent and I it gave me a 4D experience of how the wealth gap forms. You’re serving food with at least a 100% markup (soft drinks almost 250% and extra markup if you order through Uber) to customers who park their Porsches only to drop R600 on a casual lunch. And you get paid what exactly? Only tips.

No minimum wage, breakage deductions and a 2% commission while the restaurant rakes in about R100 000 in sales in a day. You pay for your own uniform. The same people who are serving your food could never dream of living even 15 minutes from these places, nevermind come here daily (like some of the regulars). If you have any concept of the spatial Apartheid in Cape Town, you will k ow what I’m talking about. But us Gauteng inhabitants like to think that has nothing to do with us but fail to see the very same thing happening in the bustling crossing that is Hazelwood Village.

I got out, because I can afford to, but what do you do if you’ve been working at the same place for 8 years? They don’t care about you. You are not part of a trade union (because it’s genuinely a hassle to join, I tried), you have no idea how much you should be getting paid and you have developed a sort of toxic dependency like a woman and her abusive husband.

And this isn’t “competitive salary” stuff, like in corporate. Not getting a base salary is illegal and not paying your workers has been criminalized. If you’re working part time at a restaurant (let’s say three 8 hour shifts a week, one on Sunday) you should be getting about R2000 a month, tips excluded. Full time, should be around R7000 (depending on what days you’re working, night shifts etc.)

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Thanks for sharing, this is really interesting, and very sad to hear. I am sharing with our team in Gauteng.

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I tried waitressing as a student once in Camps Bay and quit after a week’s training. I found it to be an incredibly unfair, unjust and on top of that misogynist environment. The wealth on display and money being thrown around by patrons made my stomach turn.

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South Africans should be aware that it is now law in the UK that the ‘discretionary’ service charge levied in many restaurants must be distributed to the staff and cannot be used for restaurants to defray restaurant costs, which is the case in some SA restaurants.The ideal is France with its ‘servis compris’ but apparently there is a move in New York of all places to charge more for meals but pay restaurant staff an appropriate wage.

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Misogyny and racism! I had white managers but none of my colleagues were white and the difference in how we were treated was appalling.

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