Diners Leave $4,400 Tip to Surprise Server, Then Restaurant Fires Her
A waitress who was surprised with a $4,400 tip was surprised a second time when the restaurant she worked for quickly fired her over the tip.
A group of diners calling themselves the “$100 Dinner Club” say they arranged to visit a particular restaurant in Bentonville, Arkansas. The point of the club is to gather a group to patronize a restaurant and then to have each diner give a $100 tip to their server.
The group says that it is a way to “pay it forward” and to help out waitstaff one person at a time. But the group also has a website where people can donate for the next tip.
The group decided to ply their club’s goal as the Oven and Tap in Bentonville. They also said they called ahead first to find out f there is a tipping policy. They say they were told there was no policy. Waitresses accepted their tips individually.
“We knew servers really hit hard through COVID and it was something that (a friend) had come up with to help give back,” Grant Wise, the organizer of the visit to Oven and Tap, told KFSM.
After the meal, the group presented their server, Ryan Brandt, with the huge tip. Naturally, she was in tears over the club’s gift.
But then it all went sideways when the restaurant’s management demanded that Brandt split the big tip among all the workers in the place — a policy the restaurant never had until that very moment.
When she refused the demand to split the tip, the restaurant abruptly fired her.
Fortunately, Brandt quickly found a new job, but Oven and Tap was so flooded with negative feedback that they shut down all their social media accounts.
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