Boisterous teens refused to tip server. When she read the note they left, she was left even more confused

Tipping culture is huge in the US, as most restaurants pay a minimum wage to their workers, so tips are what servers rely on to cover their basic expenses. In fact, a 2018 analysis by the National Employment Law Project (NELP) found that wait staff and bartenders rely on tips for more than half of their base wages. While a lot of customers leave a fair tip after their meal, not every guest is generous. In one recent case, a group of teenagers went even further and left a note instead of a tip, leaving the server confused after a busy shift. She later realized that it was a message that she needed to hear. The server, a 22-year-old server working at a chain restaurant in the southern Midwest, posted her story on Reddit under the username u/Wrong_Confection331.

On a busy Tuesday night, she managed four tables: a five-top, a four-top, and two smaller groups. Despite the workload, she felt she was keeping up well, with management stepping in only once to assist with drinks at her request. "All of my other tables tipped at or over 20 percent," she noted, with one table leaving a $50 tip on a $170 bill. However, when she collected the check from a group of 18-19 year olds, she found a note instead of a tip: "Wear a life jacket."​ She posted a photo of the receipt along with her post.

She wrote, "I thought it was a funny joke at first because we had gotten historic flooding in our area recently. And the manager thought so too. They were bewildered for me, and so was all the other staff." But a short while later, the bartender pulled her aside with more context. The teens had apparently approached the bar to ask if they could leave their tip with the manager instead. They said the note was a reference to the server "drowning in work." While it was a message she probably needed to hear, many felt it would have felt more earnest if they had actually left a tip for the server. She further wrote, "If all my other tables were upset with me, or if management had said something, I could totally look at myself and say, 'Yeah, I deserved no tip or a bad tip.' But everyone else thought I was doing great, so I don’t know what they were thinking."

Janet, as she prefers to be called, told Newsweek that she relies almost entirely on tips, with her weekly paycheck amounting to about $100 after taxes. "Tips are how I make a living," she said. And like many servers, she has to tip out a percentage of her credit sales at the end of each shift, between 2.5% on weekdays and 5% on weekends, regardless of whether a table leaves anything behind. She said, "On average, it’s about a table’s worth of tips that I lose each night." She explained how she tries to approach every table with a clean slate. "I never know what someone is going through before they come in. I just wish they would’ve been more understanding of what was going on," she said.

The post hit a nerve with many people expressing their rage at the teenagers' mean and disrespectful behavior. u/Marlowe_N_Me commented, "If you were 'drowning in work,' why tip the manager who was allowing one of their staff to drown? Poor excuse for shitty behavior." u/avatarstate added, "Bartender should’ve said yes to 'tip the manager' and then given it to you." u/CharlieCattttt wrote, "If my server was drowning in work, I would tip them more, not less." u/lilexist said, "I would actually rage if some teenager told me I wasn’t doing my job well. Like, go do your homework."