A restaurant in Michigan fired a waitress after she received a $10,000 tip from a customer, according to the Detroit Free Press.
The waitress, identified by the New York Post as Linsey Boyd, lost her job one week after the tipping incident. The man, who ate lunch at the Mason Jar Café in Benton Harbor after attending a funeral Feb. 5, added the lofty tip to his $32.43 bill, the Detroit Free Press reported.
Server fired after receiving $10K tip, but owners say it has nothing to do with viral gesture: ‘Purely a business decision’ https://t.co/0n6MHCJAfX pic.twitter.com/kY5ISyz1yh
— New York Post (@nypost) February 17, 2024
The middle-aged customer, who reportedly wore a dark suit and used an American Express card, allegedly intended for the money to be divided among the wait staff to honor the restaurant’s deceased manager, Tim Sweeney, according to the outlet. The employees posed with the receipt blurring out the generous man’s name in a photo posted on social media, reportedly per the request of the tipper.
The fired server, who posted the photo online, explained in a now-deleted Facebook post that “drama ensued” after the money was divided, the outlet reported. “In an attempt to diffuse the situation and resolve any rumors, things became even worse,” she added.
The restaurant’s managers told the waitress to take a “mental health day” off both Sunday and Monday, according to the outlet. The employee claimed she was told “that [she was] fired” Tuesday over the phone after texting management the day prior whether she was being urged “in a professional way to not come back,” according to the outlet.
“One week I’m such an amazing, hardworking employee, awesome mother … couldn’t have happened to a better person. Now, I’m without a job, for the first time since I was 15-years-old,” the fired waitress allegedly wrote on Facebook before deleting her post, according to the outlet.
Owners of the Mason Jar Café took to Facebook to clarify the “claim” made by the employee about her firing, stating that the waitress‘ termination was “not a decision made lightly or hastily,” according to the outlet. (RELATED: Woman Allegedly Takes Up Restaurant Booth For Hours, So Waitress Gives Her A Surprise)
“We do truly care about our staff,” the restaurant’s owners wrote. “We’ve had the same crew for 5-6 years. We have college girls that come home every summer and have been for four years now, we take our staff up north at the end of every summer season, we give donations for college funds for them, we kept them employed through Covid, we do everything in our power not to lose staff.”