Waitress Flap

As a chef I subscribe to the belief that waitresses are in general an inferior species.  This belief came about after years of working with women who don't know whats on the menu, nor seem to care, but who expect the cooks to magically produce whatever its they wish without bothering to learn anything whatsoever about the job they are doing.   That said, I've also made my living waiting tables, and I have some thoughts on this:

An Applebee's waitress who posted a receipt with a note from a pastor complaining about the automatic gratuity added to the bill on the Internet was fired on Wednesday after the pastor complained to her manager.

Chelsea Welch, the waitress, wrote in an email to Yahoo News that the pastor (who has since been identified as Alois Bell) told Welch's manager at the St. Louis-area Applebee's that the ensuing firestorm had "ruined" her reputation.

"I give God 10%," Bell wrote on the receipt, scratching out the automatic tip and scribbling in an emphatic "0" where the additional tip would be. "Why do you get 18?" (There were more than eight people in Bell's party, triggering the auto-tip.)

Welch, who snapped a photo of the bill from a fellow server and uploaded to Reddit, defended her right to post the receipt. "I thought the note was insulting, but also comical," she told Consumerist.com. "And I thought other users would find it entertaining.”
 

The reason restaurants put an auto tip on large parties is because:

1. Your group takes up a lot of space, and typically more than one table.
2. Your group takes up a lot of time and typically more than one waitress.
3. Your group will tend to stay longer and visit requiring free refills that keep the waitress from serving other tables.
4. If its the end of her shift, the waitress can't leave until after you do.  The restaurant won't pay her to stand around during that time, but she can't leave unless she cleans up her portion of the dinning room.
5. Experience has taught us that large groups are notoriously cheap and that each person believes that someone else in the group will get the tip so they don't.  

Everybody in this story is lying.  The waitress is lying about her motives for making the bill public.  She claims, "I thought other users would find it entertaining.”  This is of course total BS.  She did it because the customer is a cheap ungrateful bitch who is too cheap to pay for her services and who thinks her position as "pastor" lets her stiff the staff.  The only way the waitress could get a little respect was to get a little revenge.  That's what she did.

The women "pastor" (a contradiction in terms) is lying big time.  First, I doubt she gives a full 10% to god, most don't.  What I know she is lying about is her reputation.  Her reputation wasn't hurt in the least.  She is a self admitted cheapskate who was trying to welch on the tip, because she thought someone else would cover her share (see #5 above).  The pastor alleges she left a $6.29 tip while other members of her party also left cash.  Right.  The "pastor" claims she wasn't trying to get the waitress in trouble either.  That's why she went back to the restaurant to read the manager the riot act.

Applebees is lying too.  They're trying to pretend that there is some sort of "right to privacy" that was violated.  Sure there is.  The waitress didn't post the customers credit card number, or home address, she posted a snarky note from a ill tempered cheapskate that tried to stiff her on the tip.  What really happened that got the waitress fired, was the "pastor" a fat bitchy black women, came back on another day and chewed out the manager, who then took out the ass chewing on the waitress.  Meanwhile cooperate Applebees is playing a game of CYA and is pissed that this whole thing came to light in the first place.

"Pastor" Bell you're a cheapskate and a poor excuse for a Christan, you lack any real sense of charity or forgiveness.  You were outed for using Jesus as an excuse for your lack of class and you got your revenge by costing some waitress her job.  Congratulations.  Your lack of personal character is now public knowledge and you've done harm to the cause of Christ because of your actions.