MY black work trousers had a secret pocket. It was my first job, and I was helping in the kitchen and waiting tables at an ex-servicemen’s club. The shifts were long and the work was tiring, but I got cash in my hand at the end of the evening, which was magical.

I was 14, still at school, and trying to take the pressure off my mother, who was raising three girls alone, so I could do the things my friends were doing without being a burden.

The tips were pooled, clinking into a jar in the kitchen as servers arrived with bill plates. Weeks later, I learned they weren’t given back. The pot was used as a kitty to pay for staff nights out. Nights out I wasn’t invited to given my age. That’s when my mum got to work with an old sock and a needle, and I started taking a modest share.

As an adult, it doesn’t fill me with pride. It was dishonest, and it never felt right skimming the odd pound or 50p, however Robin Hood the intention. I needed the extra few pounds more than vodka and coke I’d need to wait years to collect on. From early evening until the club shut, I’d bus plates from the kitchen to tables and back again, secreting small change into the hidden sock and adding to the majority to the tip jar. I was convinced everyone knew, that they would hear the tell-tale clinking of the looting bag pressed against my hip and that I’d have to empty my sad little sock out before leaving in disgrace.

It took several more years of tired feet and trying (and failing) to pay my way through university to realise how tip pooling isn’t as fair as it seems. Kitchen staff, except for the porters, earned more and had greater security than the servers. Front of house contracts didn’t exist, shifts weren’t guaranteed, and wages were always scant, however fancy the restaurant. What I took home in tips could make the difference between eating fruit and veg, or living off 14p noodles and own-brand cornflakes for weeks at a time.

All these years later, it seems things have changed little for service staff – people who do long, tiring, often invisible work, people who rely on the generosity of customers to augment their measly earnings. TGI Fridays staff are striking over a new policy on tip redistribution, called a tronc scheme, that sees 40% of card tips shared out between the back-of-house staff. These schemes allow companies to use tips to top up earnings. On the surface, it seems fair but, in practice, it’s to get out of paying kitchen staff a decent wage. The changes will mean servers lose out on hundreds of pounds a month, while restaurants address wage disparity by dipping into staff earnings instead of their own pockets.

There’s little job security in hospitality as is, and taking a substantial bite out of tips contributes to the “working poor” epidemic, pushing people below the breadline even though they’re earning. In my time in restaurants staff were, for the most part, in the margins: single parents, immigrants, or others who had to find some way of living on limited means. Tips weren’t “fun money”: they covered travel expenses, or babysitters, course materials or comfortable shoes that wore out quickly. Without tips, you couldn’t do the work. It’s ludicrous that service staff are still paid so poorly for their work. Excellent service can make an evening, or save it all together. I’ve been fortunate enough that my job has given me the chance to eat in some incredible places. The ones that stick in my memory are the ones where the staff are passionate about where they work, and it shows in their service.

Take the other night, for example, when my fiance and I turned up at a swish restaurant out of town, only to realise we were a day earlier than I’d booked. We were left in our finery, red-faced and hungry when our names weren’t on the list. I was mortified.

A whisper into an ear, a bit of quick manoeuvring, and they made space for us in their busy dining room – and made us feel at ease about the imposition. There was always wine in our glasses and brioche on our side plates. It was a pleasure to tip them at the end of the evening. Without the waiting staff, we’d have been the best-dressed people in the chip shop on an early bus home. When you tip, you tip for the staff who make the evening. It’s a way of saying: “Thank you for looking after me.”

I’ve been dismayed on more than one occasion to learn from waiting staff that gratuities put on a card never make their way back to them. It’s either redistributed, or it’s pocketed by their employer.

It’s infuriating when you’ve had great service and can’t offer more than the symbolic gesture of inflating your card payment, knowing they’ll never get it. It’s especially maddening when you have the first-hand experience of the difference that small monetary thank you can mean to a person who isn’t paid properly for what they do.

Until the hospitality industry starts paying workers fairly, it’s fanciful to think changing the model will do immediate good. Restaurants are already stiffing staff. Taking tips too is a step too far.