Waitress Fired From Applebee's After Posting Receipt Where Pastor Complained About Auto-Tip
By Chuck Sudo in Food on Jan 31, 2013 11:25PM
A waitress at a St. Louis-area Applebee's who shared a photo of a receipt that showed an auto-tip scratched out in favor of no tip at all was fired Wednesday by the restaurant chain after the pastor who signed the receipt complained to her manager.
Chelsea Welch hadn't even served the Alois Bell and her party of eight, but when a workmate showed her the receipt which Bell scratched out the $6 auto-tip in favor of no tip and the note "I only give God 10 percent. Why do you get 18?" she snapped a photo of it and posted it to Reddit's Atheist page. Reddit users were able to determine Bell's identity from her signature and good old-fashioned Google stalking.
Here's some YouTube video of Welch giving God her 10 percent.
Welch said she posted the receipt as "a lighthearted joke."
“I thought the note was insulting, but it was also comical. I posted it to Reddit because I thought other users would find it entertaining.”
One person who didn't find it entertaining was Bell, who called the Applebee's after discovering her receipt was posted online to complain. Bell told The Smoking Gun she left a $6 tip on the table, that the bill was divided among the eight people in her party and she was still charged the tip anyway. Bell called the incident "a lapse in judgment that was blown out of proportion." Applebee's fired Welch for violating Welch's "right to privacy," although Welch maintains she did nothing to cast a negative light on the restaurant.
What would Jesus have done in this situation. Taking a wild guess here, but he wouldn't have stiffed a waitress on an auto-tip if he walked into an Applebee's with his disciples, then called the manager of the restaurant to have a waitress fired. After all, Proverbs 14:31 states, "He who oppresses the poor shows contempt for their Maker, but whoever is kind to the needy honors God."