Server Says He Left A Bad Review At A Customer’s Job After She Didn’t Tip On A $650 To-Go Order
Was revenge the best route to take here?
Ekkasit A Siam / Shutterstock Nothing stirs up a debate quite like the subject of tipping. One server believed he had a clear reason to be upset that he and his co-workers were not left a tip by a woman who placed a $650 order. However, commenters didn’t seem to agree.
A server got revenge after a customer refused to tip on a $650 to-go order.
TikTok creator Dean Redmond is a server from New York. At the restaurant where he works, a woman placed a to-go order worth $650, and, in his opinion, acted unreasonably about it.
“To the woman who didn’t tip us on a $650 takeout order and then had the nerve to write us a bad review, we hope your boss sees the ones we wrote about you,” he said.
Redmond explained that the woman, whom he referred to in the caption as a Karen, “placed a 50-item order at 9:00 in the morning.”
He called the customer to request an extra half hour to prepare the order due to its size, but she refused and hung up the phone before he could explain further. “At 9:30 she comes through the door, confronting one of my co-workers,” he said.
Redmond spoke to the woman and tried to explain that he mentioned on the phone that the order would take an additional 30 minutes. “She’s like, ‘No, you asked me if we could give you 30 more minutes, at which point I said no,’” he recounted.
“So, the food comes out exactly when I said it would,” Redmond stated. “She doesn’t tip on a $650 order. Not $5, not $2, nothing. No thank yous, leaves.”
But, the unfortunate encounter didn't end there.
“Forty minutes later I get a tap on my back. I turn around and almost jump when I see her,” Redmond recalled. The woman had come back to ask why the sandwiches she received were so dry. Redmond showed her to the self-serve sauce area.
A few hours later, Redmond’s manager approached him and his fellow servers. “‘We got a really bad review saying that you guys purposely gave this woman dry sandwiches because you were mad she came in early,’” his manager said.
Redmond and his co-workers were furious and insisted that they did no such thing.
“The only good thing was that we found out what her name was from her Yelp account,” Redmond said. “So, we went online, Googled her name, and found out that she works as a sales rep at a financial place right down the street from us.”
Redmond and his co-workers proceeded to take some revenge on the woman. “So, we went on to Google Reviews with our parents' accounts, and wrote her really nice reviews with her name in them,” he said sarcastically.
People online were confused about why Redmond would expect a tip on a to-go order.
The majority of TikTok users who commented on Redmond’s video were confused as to why he even expected a tip in the first place.
“Tipping is for dine-in or delivery,” one person said. “If you’re tipping for carry-out, [you] might as well tip for drive-thru too.”
“Unless I’m sitting down at a table and someone brings me food, I don’t tip,” another user wrote.
Should you tip on to-go orders?
Lots of people wonder whether you should tip on to-go orders. Restaurant owner Marina Charny says yes. She told Real Simple, “You should always tip a little something on takeout. There is still time being spent and effort put into preparing your takeout order, double checking that it is correct and nothing is missing, packaging it, and handing it off.”
Technically, it is appropriate to tip on a to-go order. The size of this particular order makes it seem like an even better idea. However, perhaps getting revenge by posting negative reviews was not the best way to handle the situation on either end.
Mary-Faith Martinez is a writer for YourTango who covers entertainment, news and human interest topics.