Purpose:

We, the undersigned employees of Athens, respectfully ask management to revert to the previous staffing and pay structure. The recent changes have significantly reduced earnings for servers, hosts, and to-go staff, increased server workloads, and lowered morale, without improving overall service quality enough to justify the change.

Key Concerns:

Servers now make substantially less per shift (30–50% reduction), despite similar or greater responsibilities.

Servers are taking on BOH closing duties that were previously handled primarily by Server Assistants (SAs). This has resulted in added responsibility on top of a significant pay cut.

Hosts and to-go staff earn less, even though their roles remain largely the same.

Tip-out percentages were reduced (from 6% → 4%), decreasing earnings for many positions.

While the new system may show slight improvements in service metrics short term, it risks driving away high-quality, experienced servers whose departure will ultimately lower the overall quality of service.

Our Proposal:

Restore the previous staffing structure and pay structure.

Fewer servers per shift with larger sections.

Adequate Server Assistants (1–3 per shift).

Balanced number of bussers, hosts, and to-go staff.

Allow servers and SAs to share closing responsibilities, rather than leaving all the closing side work to the servers.

We ask for a timely response, ideally within two weeks, so that we can work together toward a solution.