$10 Tip

Wednesday night’s Mike and I usually grab an inexpensive meal out because Brooklyn is with her dad. So this past Wednesday night we decided to head over to Cracker Barrel so we could have some veggies.

It wasn’t very crowded so we got right in and sat down. Our waitress didn’t show for about 8 or 9 minutes, but no worries. We ordered our drinks and food at the same time. She brought our drinks and I noticed on her apron it said rising star which I thought meant she was probably new. She asked if we needed anything else and Mike made a sarcastic comment about our salads under his breath, but she didn’t hear it.

I played the triangle country game until I finally got it down to one peg. We talked. We laughed. And then here comes our food. Salad & food at the same time. I asked her salads & food at the same time and she said, “yeap.” She obviously didn’t know what to do. She’s about 16, maybe. Very young. So she leaves. She came back a few minutes later and asked if we needed anything else. Well, I had been choking my salad down so I could eat my food hot and decided enough was enough. I asked for the manager.

He came to our tables and didn’t even give me time to politely ask him to help us out. He said he heard there was a timing issue, could he put our food back under the warmer. I said, that will be fine. Mike asked him just to cook him a couple of more pieces of fish because they would be horrible after being under the warmer (which was probably true). So he whisked our food away.
The girl promptly comes behind the manager and asks if we need anything else. I said no, she lays down the check and walks off.

Now, usually this would have made me mad. But I thought about Brooklyn in about six years and realized this girl had no idea how to handle conflict, no idea how to deal with this situation, we are probably about her parent’s age and she probably thought we were being mean.
Two young guys sit down at the table behind us. She obviously knew them. They start giving her a hard time about not knowing the menu. They said something about her tip going down and she whispered (but I could hear it) that her tip was going down because of our table.

She brought me another diet coke, she filled Mike’s water, and she did a great job of taking care of us the rest of the meal. I ordered a piece of caramel apple pie to go and she asked me if I wanted the ice cream in a separate container so it wouldn’t ruin the pie.

I was thinking about something Perry Noble preached on during Christmas about tipping your servers more during the season and especially on Sunday. I started digging in my purse. I had $10 in cash (I never carry cash) and I decided I would tip her that $10 and write her a note to hang in there.

Mike was worried that I would lecture her. I figure they hadn’t trained her; she was just learning and obviously needed some encouragement. Leaving her an atta girl without a tip would not have accomplished anything.

I don’t know if I did the right thing or not. I have no idea. I wrote "hang in there" on the coaster, put the $10 under it and we left. I hope she learned from the situation. I hope I learned from the situation.