Unfortunately Madison Square Garden went out of its way to make working their difficult. They didn’t raise their wages to $15/hr for docents until they legally had to, and, while docents were allowed to receive tips, the company forbid docents from making customers aware that tips were accepted at the end of the tour (common practice in the industry). It seems inappropriate for a company to forbid tip speeches when it isn’t paying your guides enough to live in NY without tips.
Additionally, there were days when the auditorium was closed to the public, yet MSG still charged customers the same price for tours even though they weren’t allowed to see inside the auditorium, and would leave tour guides to deal with their anger.
MSG also implemented a dumb system where we had to swipe our cards in two different machines to clock in, and threatened any employee who failed to swipe in correctly three times with termination (including older, less tech-literate employees who had worked for decades at the theater, some of which WERE in fact let go for failing to swipe correctly).
What was more demoralizing is getting paid $13/hr while the owner of the company is a billionaire who spends more time playing with his band writing bad songs about Trayvon Martin than being involved in the company.
