Customer Leaves Server A Sweet Note & A Generous Tip After He Lied To Them About A Personal Tragedy So They Wouldn't Blame Him For Messing Up Their Order
This isn't the first time he lied to customers and received a massive tip!
TikTok Working as a server at a restaurant is a difficult job. Besides remembering everything on the menu, which can often change, you’re serving multiple people who all have their own orders. So, it’s not uncommon for you to make mistakes and for customers to receive the wrong food.
How each server handles their gaffes is up to them. Though, one waiter decided to lie to escape the embarrassment.
After lying to them about a personal tragedy, the customer left a sweet note and generous tip.
Dean Redmond is a waiter who posts his experiences working at a bustling restaurant in New York to the video-sharing app TikTok. During one service, he was waiting on a 17-person table when he realized he didn’t put in everyone’s order. He clarified that customers ordered “dupes,” which he defined as duplicate orders. So, he only put one of each item into the system, leaving some customers without a meal.
Unfortunately, he only noticed his error as the food arrived. Instead of apologizing for his mistake, he thought of a clever but relatively sinister lie to escape the embarrassment. He told the kitchen to make the rest of the orders and returned to the table to spin his lie.
“I’m so sorry to tell you this, but I just got a call that my mom died,” he said. He added further details that a state trooper was the one who notified him and that his mother had died in a car accident. “I’m just telling you guys this because I forgot to put in your food order because he called right as I was about to,” he added.
As most people would react after hearing someone losing a loved one, the customers told him to stop apologizing. And when he returned with the rest of their food, they clapped for him. They even left a $200 tip and a generous note on a napkin.
“Your mother is beyond proud,” they wrote. “Hope your day gets better.”
People are questioning why he told such a severe lie in the first place.
Many servers in the comments say they just blame mistakes like his on the kitchen. Others offered other lies to tell them.
“I would’ve just said sorry I dropped the tray with the food they were missing,” one person wrote. “We used to just say we dropped it in the kitchen,” another added.
It's actually not the first time Dean has used the lie, either. He spun a similar story back in January and managed to secure a $400 tip after forgetting to send an hour into the kitchen. And he also used the same trick a month prior too.
In December, he went viral for lying and getting a $500 tip.
A large family showed up for dinner, and the stairs leading down to their sitting area were “icy.” He made a similar mistake where he forgot to put in four of their meals and only realized it after the food was ready. So, he claimed that another server was carrying their food and slipped on the stairs, spilling their meals. For some reason, he elaborated on the lie and told them further that she had hit her head and was being rushed to the hospital.
They gave a massive tip, assumedly to go to the injured waitress, but since she didn’t exist, he kept it all.
For all the servers out there, telling serious lies can spare you embarrassment and may even prompt a larger tip, but it’s probably best to be truthful. Because one day, you may slip up, and it could cost you your job. Customers who are kind enough to give a large tip after hearing about a tragedy are most likely the same ones who will be understanding if you just admit that you forgot to put in their order.
Ethan Cotler is a writer living in Boston. He writes on entertainment and news.