The waitress's own accounting of the incident is exceptionally self serving and false. The signature as originally posted was quite legible. Her original accounting of the incident was completely fabricated because she didn't actually serve the table, though she represented herself as if she did.
For example, the customer's name, Alois, is a man's name, but the customer was actually a female with a male's first name. The waitress asserted that the customer was a man. When she later found out she was wrong she backpeddled and claimed she knew that but that she was protecting the customer's identity. However she publicly posted the customer's name and location, enabling people to track down the customer and begin threatening her.
Another detail she got wrong was claiming the customer left no tip. The customer left the tip as cash on the table, as most people in the US do, and something that most servers prefer, rather than pay it as part of the bill. The restaurant also though double charged the customer for the tip, meaning the customer ended up paying 36% rather than 18% on the bill as tip. Because the waitress had not served the table she assumed that the strike out of the tip line meant the customer left no tip at all.
In short, the waitress violated a customer's privacy, lied about the customer publicly defaming her, publicly ridiculed her religious beliefs, and instigated an internet mob riot against the customer which continues to this day in the form of threats and harassment and has caused the customer severe mental anguish. If I was an attorney in the area I would be preparing a large lawsuit against the restaurant at this time, and I would certainly prevail in court.
Her firing was completely justified and her complaining about being fired in the media and claiming herself as victim when she was the bully is absolutely outrageous.
You're forgetting the smoking gun: The customer actually wrote "I give god 10%, why do you get 18" on the receipt.
There's no way around the physical evidence. Internet judgement has convicted the customer of class-A asshattery and sentenced her/him to public ridicule. The waitress is going to come across as a hero in this story no matter what bureaucratic rule she broke.
Any sane business owned and run by humans would have had a good laugh and ignored the whiny customer. Instead we have an example of what happens when you try to formalize every decision from how the steaks are cooked to how to respond to customer complaints. Protip: If your company responds to crises like this, it's long past time to get the hell out.
I ate at an Applebees recently. It was exactly the kind of soulless microwaved food I would expect from a nationwide, lowest-common-denominator corporate chain. This story does not surprise me one bit.
I don't think the waitress is a hero. She violated a person's privacy. The waitress already received the automatic 18% tip. What is her beef? She didn't like one comment on a receipt? How many tables did she wait on that night? 6-10?
This story is not about the waitress. This story is about a pastor caught red-handed being an self-absorbed asshat, followed by the inept flailing of an incompetent bureaucracy.
Against this kind of backdrop, the waitress would have to kick puppies in order to look unsympathetic.
Are you sure? If she paid with a credit card and there is the automatic 18%, what processes deducts the automatic tip? It wouldn't have mattered that she crossed out that printed 6.29.
I personally don't get whole this tip tradition - just give me the check stating the exact amount I have to pay. And give the appropriate salary to the wait{er|ress}.
I find the power imbalance in these situations to be very uncomfortable -- half the time in the back of my mind I'm thinking to myself this waitress has a big smile on her face because ultimately all she wants is a nice tip; the smiley front is unauthentic. Just please give the servers and waiters a proper salary and let me go on with my day.
The very idea of tipping to me is absurd and silly. What constitutes that a service be tipped anyway? Doesn't the guy who spends 30 minutes explaining to me how I should install my bathroom tiles at Home Depot deserve a tip? Or the cooks in the backhouse -- who, arguably, have much difficult work to do than servers/waiters? The immigrant dishwashers who never even get a chance to have their common dignity affirmed at any step of the way -- because they're not palatable enough in their looks and appearances to be seen by a customer? Or the Sears cashier clerk who does me the favour of looking in the back warehouse to see if the shoes I'm looking for are really not in stock -- and then calls other stores to see if they have them, when he didn't have to do any of that?
Just give them a nice salary. Don't try to guilt-trip me by bringing up how they're paid "below minimum wage".
And, to put a startup spin on my post: there should be a site that rates the ethical practices of stores/restaurants. Does the restaurant pay its dishwashers a respectable salary? If yes, I will be okay and willing to pay a little extra. If they don't: I'll happily never do business there again.
Even crazier is I've eaten at a number of places where the tips all get evenly distributed among the staff at the end of the night - so what the hell was the point of the tip? As someone who is new to North American culture the whole tipping thing is a nightmare.
As an outsider this is my theory:
The reason is to quote as low as a number as possible to make people feel this is cheap. And one place can't start "doing the right thing" and paying a decent salary because they would be perceived more expensive and they would also upset people who are used to the status quo.
I also find it ridiculous that the sales tax is not included in the price written on the sticker in the stores in the US.
But again, I guess quoting a lower price and charging more when the customer has already made up their mind is better for the business.
Tips exist because they are a way for the customer to give a good server some money directly.
Unless there was a cast-iron legal guarantee that the money from the "automatic" tip goes direct to all low-paid staff (servers and chefs), then I want to be able to give my money to the server direct.
> Tips exist because they are a way for the customer to give a good server some money directly.
That is silly. Why is waiter work so unique that it's one of the very few that requires this kind of payment? If you want to pay money directly, you can do that for cashier clerks at gas stations, clothing stores, auto service men, middlemen of all sorts in business offices, etc. etc. Why not pay them directly too then?
What I'm arguing is that the tradition of tipping is something that should not be. I would be okay with tipping in the most extraordinary of circumstances, where the worker clearly goes out of his way to provide unexpectedly superb service, but it should not be seen as necessary in other normal situations; I don't see a really good reason why it has to be any different from other jobs.
As another commenter in this thread from Sweden pointed out: it works for them. The norm is that waiters are not tipped. It seems to be working okay for them, let it work in America too.
Maybe you've never been able to compare a society where tipping is normal with one where it isn't?
I grew up in the USA (tipping) but have lived in Australia for the past four years (no tipping). Restaurant service is horrendous in Australia except at the most expensive restaurants. Food is often brought out at different times for different people in your party. It's not uncommon to go out for office lunch and 1 or 2 people will be waiting for their food after everyone else has finished.
You also can't get your server to do much except take your order and bring you your food. He/she forgot something? You tell them, 10 minutes later you still don't have what they forgot. Need a refill of water, same story. There is just so much more friction to the experience of dining out.
Counter point:
Japan and Korea as I remember did not having a tipping system and yet services are great.
If you have an issue with your server you complain to the restaurant so the bad waiters get fired.
I don't understand why as a culture Australia would tolerate such behavior in servers who's job is serving. (Would you tolerate translators who couldn't translate? programmers who couldn't program?)
A counter point: in Sweden, where I live, tipping is optional. Many people tip 5-10% if they are satisfied, but service staff are not dependent on tips.
While service can be impersonal, it is usually without the kind of faults you point out. You can generally count on correct service.
> I personally don't get whole this tip tradition ...
It's a holdover from a class-conscious society in which waiters and waitresses belonged to a different, less privileged class, deserving of gratuities from a more privileged class.
All that has changed is the gratuities aren't gratuitous any more.
> ... just give me the check stating the exact amount I have to pay.
That would require restaurants to pay the staff a living wage, and raise published menu prices to agree with reality (i.e. including tips).
I've had terrible service & I've had great service. While I've never completely stiffed a waiter, I have left a tip on the low-end (10-15%). And I've left killer tips (>50%) on some really killer service.
By and large, the system seems to work pretty well. And once you know to accodate it, it's not really that hard to do the math & account for it.
I guess you could think of it as implicitly outsourcing the performance evaluations and bonus assignment to the customer, who, after all, in the best position to make that decision. That's the theory, I guess. In reality though people aren't particularly objective, and also the social norm is to apply some percentage to the bill; so effectively, the waitrons get paid partly based on how expensive the food is that they served (which just highlights part of the absurdity).
Look at it from the other side, Applebee's has to
protect their brand. They can't have waitresses posting information about customers online. That is why she was fired.
I was immediately shocked by the waitresses' behavior. That one comment set you off that you had to violate your customer's privacy?
Also, I wonder if some media outlets are rightly masking the customer's personal information but I saw some posts with the fullname in the image.
How did you get all of these details? I would assume that some are in dispute -- e.g. the tip left on the table (how would we know unless both sides confirmed?).
It doesn't even matter what the original thing was about. The way it was handled by the restaurant's PR team is what turned this small sub-reddit topic to a social media nightmare.
In one single night, that PR person, probably drove away tends of thousands (if not more) of customers. It doesn't matter who is right or wrong at that point, them not catching which side the public was on, and just arguing back and forth, is what turned this into a train wreck.
My point was it doesn't matter at this stage. It already happened. Time to deal with it. This kind of stuff happens all the time probably and it shows up in local paper at most, or in some /r/wtf sub-reddit.
Regardless of what side you are on, you can't deny that the restaurant lost a considerable amount of business in just a couple of days. That should be a fire-able offense.
"In one single night, that PR person, probably drove away tends of thousands (if not more) of customers"
How did you get to that conclusion?
Based on anecdotal evidence from the past, I tend to think very few people (outside of the HN/Reddit crowd) follow this type of news, and of those who do, almost no one cares enough to actually change their behavior.
For example, the customer's name, Alois, is a man's name, but the customer was actually a female with a male's first name. The waitress asserted that the customer was a man. When she later found out she was wrong she backpeddled and claimed she knew that but that she was protecting the customer's identity. However she publicly posted the customer's name and location, enabling people to track down the customer and begin threatening her.
Another detail she got wrong was claiming the customer left no tip. The customer left the tip as cash on the table, as most people in the US do, and something that most servers prefer, rather than pay it as part of the bill. The restaurant also though double charged the customer for the tip, meaning the customer ended up paying 36% rather than 18% on the bill as tip. Because the waitress had not served the table she assumed that the strike out of the tip line meant the customer left no tip at all.
In short, the waitress violated a customer's privacy, lied about the customer publicly defaming her, publicly ridiculed her religious beliefs, and instigated an internet mob riot against the customer which continues to this day in the form of threats and harassment and has caused the customer severe mental anguish. If I was an attorney in the area I would be preparing a large lawsuit against the restaurant at this time, and I would certainly prevail in court.
Her firing was completely justified and her complaining about being fired in the media and claiming herself as victim when she was the bully is absolutely outrageous.