Post about waitress left in tears by entitled family at restaurant evokes empathy on the internet

Amidst the debate around tipping culture, encounters between the staff and customers at eateries are often shared by both sides. But at the same time, there are several incidents where entitled people are seen misbehaving with servers, that have triggered outrage online. A woman known on Reddit as u/misquoted_unicorn04 shared a similar incident when she witnessed a family treating a server like "garbage." She started by writing, "This particular day was special. I don't remember exactly why, but we had gone out to a niceish steak house. It was a chain restaurant. Well, this chain restaurant was fairly empty, apart from a family that was across from us. There was a mom, dad, and 3 kids that were just abhorrent," and added that the incident happened more than a decade ago when she was a kid, around 6-8-year-old.

Talking about the family giving the server a hard time, she mentioned, "The dad was screaming, fighting with the mom, the mom was constantly fighting with the poor waitress, the toddler in the booster was screaming, and the 2 older kids were running around like they were headless. It was horrible to watch." She also talked about how the server asked the parents to collect their kids and after multiple refusals, the server went to get backup. "Now the manager was trying to talk to them and was getting frustrated. Eventually, it escalated and the father started threatening the server and the manager," she added. The user also mentioned how their family happened to get the same server who was constantly seen wiping her tears, and hence decided to be as sweet as possible with her while giving a "death stare" to the other family.

The situation escalated when the server decided to give the woman and her brother ice cream on the house for being so well-behaved. "She then turned to my brother and I and thanked us for being good kids and sitting still for the dinner," the post read. She described how her brother got the attention of the other kids, who soon started yelling about not getting ice cream. "They yell at the waitress and their parents for ice cream. Now, the other family is demanding to get ice cream because they did it for us. The manager basically tells them to f*** off and calls police to make sure they left the restaurant," the user added.

After the troublesome family left, the manager decided to give the narrator's family the entire meal for free as well as a gift card. "It was a very nice gesture. My family made sure to tip the server a very good amount of money and we all took turns apologizing for them and making sure the manager and server were both okay," the post concluded and many in the comment section expressed empathy for the server.

u/Zoreb1 asked, "Did the demon family pay their bill?" to which the woman replied, "No. The manager was so adamant about getting this family out because other customers were leaving that he didn't care. I cannot emphasize enough that everyone from this family was constantly yelling and screaming." u/Reasonable_Star_959 added, "Nice! I once got my meal comped at a restaurant my boyfriend and I at the time frequented a lot for similar reasons. After that, we always got the employee discount or a free dessert, etc. If anyone was working that had been there that night (so almost always). We tipped generously!"