Every so often, an anonymous customer with deep pockets makes headlines by leaving an insanely generous tip at a restaurant.
The latest example of this happened in Londonderry, New Hampshire. A customer racked up a tab of $37.93, and decided to leave a $16,000 tip.
Yes. Sixteen thousand dollars. Needless to say, the whole event has sparked some spirited debate.
Google Reviews show that the Stumble Inn Bar and Grill in Londonderry is a good spot for locals to stop by. But no one had seen something like this before.
You can see that the customer had a fairly modest order, then decided to handsomely reward the bartender with sixteen grand. Before he left, he reportedly told the bartender, "Don't spend it all in one place."
As you can see in the tweet above, owner Mike Zarella decided to split the $16,000 evenly between the twelve staffers who worked that day. That will leave each one with $1,333.
While there could be an argument to be made that the bartender should have kept the whole tip, dividing it evenly between those on staff seems rather fair.
Technically, under New Hampshire law, employees are not required to contribute their personal tips to a larger tip pool.
In the restaurant's defense, splitting tips between working employees is apparently the normal way they handle things.
For whatever reason, the story has taken off on Twitter, and plenty of people across all social media platforms are calling on the owner to give the bartender the entire tip.
According to CNN, the decision to evenly split up the tip was not Zarella's alone, and was a group decision.
Most crucially, Zarella did not keep any of the tip for himself.
$16,000 is a big windfall for one person, but $1,333 is also a pretty nice payday for each of the employees.
Let us know how you would have handled this situation in the comments below!
Many of us have worked as servers, bartenders or chefs before. How would your places of employmend have handled something big like this? Be sure to let us know in the comments below!
