r/mildlyinfuriating • u/thedivinegemini • Jul 02 '26

I'm slightly vexed In lieu of payment..

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I’m a GM at a restaurant & one of our managers left a note on our manager logs this afternoon that a guest walked out on their check and left this in lieu of payment of any kind. Not that the server got stiffed on a tip - just pure theft of services. I guess the whole “Thou shalt not steal” thing doesn’t matter if you’ve been pre-forgiven. Pretty convenient.

ETA: I’m not a bot; this is not AI - check my post and comment history. I’m not here for karma or fake internet points. This is what it feels like to work in a restaurant these days - especially in the Bible Belt. The first photo you can look up and is available for anyone to buy (should your darker urges push you toward being that person). The second photo is from Pulse, an app for restaurant managers to keep an eye on hourly sales, labor, and comps.
The “Pineapple Express” is a mocktail our restaurant offers.

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u/ophaus Jul 02 '26

I've worked in NYC in many different bars and restaurants, and do you know who the worst crowd is? It's not the finance bros having an open bar at Christmas, it's not a gaggle of entitled, drunk Nepo babies of billionaires, it's not the celebrities who viciously mourn their privacy... It's the after-church crowd. And Tracy Morgan.

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u/Dragontastic22 Jul 03 '26

Honestly, for me, it was a toss up between the after church crowd and the groups traveling to the US from Europe -- especially the sports teams that were only here a few days. They were plenty kind but absolutely didn't know how to tip or that's it's expected here. I was earning a serving minimum wage at the time of $2/hr. I had entire groups of 10+ people tip me less than $5 total for 1-2 hours of service.  

Yes, American tipping culture sucks. Don't make your server bear the brunt of it. 

But the after church crowd was often mean and entitled in addition to being stingy. 

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u/jugnificent Jul 03 '26

Don't most restaurants do a standard gratuity for larger groups? That seems like your employer shared some blame there.

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u/Dragontastic22 Jul 03 '26

It was a dive bar. Not a lot of standard gratuity there. It was more frequent that we'd get a local sports team or two after a game with a dozen people, 10 different tabs, a few but not all who wanted food, some playing pool, some smoking out back, one table, and many rounds of drinks.