It’s at least as creepy as showing up at his doorstep, and in some ways, even creepier. The fact that he’s employed in a job where he has to wait on you shouldn’t make him fair game for your stalking him in his personal life, for whatever convoluted reason you came up with to justify it to yourself. At this point, the only reason you should contact the manager would be to pass along your apology as well as your compliments.
I just asked my 17-year-old daughter, Facebook user extraordinaire. She said, “Yes, creepy, very creepy. Doesn’t he have any friends?”
He has to start somewhere. 
Creepy if it was his personal account. You don’t have a personal relationship; contacting him via his personal account implies that you think you do.
Non-creepy if it was some kind of professional page, through the restaurant’s page or something (I don’t know the more complex nuances of Facebook), but that sounds unlikely.
How did you know his last name?
I’m on another board that uses our real names as it is imperative to sign in through Facebook (side rant: I hate that!). Anyway, occasionally someone will get pissed off at some comment and then they’ll go and look up the profile of whoever said what they deemed as offensive. And announce that they did so, with inappropriate details usually, to all and sundry. One hundred percent of the time, these people are condemned as creepy stalker types who have crossed a line. Even if it’s easy to do so, you just don’t. So, I concur with the consensus. If he didn’t have reason to be nervous before, he probably feels like he does so now.
I don’t use Facebook, but I don’t think I’d be creeped out if I did and if a customer looked me up to give me a compliment. You already know where he works, so if you really want to stalk him, you wouldn’t need to have seen his FB page.
I’m just not getting this idea of putting your personal life out for everyone to see, and then being shocked when someone actually sees it.
I am VERY sorry that I did this now. But I didn’t post on his wall or try to friend him. I guess I acted very naively and won’t do it again.
I didn’t need to know his last name to find him.
No he hasn’t responded to my private message. Again it was not a wall post.
Well, a waiter going to work may fairly consider that work is not his personal life. It wouldn’t be creepy if you met someone briefly at a house party and messaged them on Facebook a day later. But work is not your personal life.
It’s creepy to look up anyone on Facebook unless you actually know them.
If it was a private message, there’s a decent chance he didn’t even see it. Facebook filters messages from people who aren’t connected to you into an “Other” mailbox that many Facebook users do not even know exists. This is a big reason why your Facebook inbox doesn’t get much spam, but I’ve read of it being a problem in situations where someone loses a wallet or something and a Good Samaritan attempts to contact them via Facebook to return it.
Well that’s a relief then. Hopefully he never sees it and I save myself some embarrassment. I vow to never look up someone on facebook again unless specifically invited to do so.
This is news to me. I’ve many times received PMs from (as well as sent a few to) people who weren’t connected to me in any way and they came to me in just the same way as any other message.
Agreed. It may be the way you’ve configured FB messages but I don’t think it’s the default.
PS - And agreed, super creepy.
Here’s a Slate piece from about a year ago on “Facebook’s other messages”, and the follow up from soon after that.
FWIW I checked my “other” mailbox after reading that article and didn’t find anything new, but a few old messages from people I knew IRL but who weren’t Facebook friends or friends-of-friends had been moved from my inbox to “other”.
I don’t know if Facebook has changed their settings since then, but I just looked and the “other” mailbox still exists.
Hope it doesn’t make me creepy to say that I don’t think paying a stranger a compliment is creepy. But maybe Facebook makes it creepy.
I tried to compliment a high school classmate in a friend request but was told that, even though we had multiple friends in common, no communication would be possible because I didn’t have my photo as my profile pic. Had no idea that was FB creepy.
Maybe they didn’t remember who you were without the photo.
And yes, paying a stranger a compliment is fine. Tracking them down via a social networking site to pay them a compliment via private message is creepy. Sending a postcard to their house would also be creepy. I know, I know - if you don’t want to receive mail from random strangers you met at a restaurant, why would you have a mailbox that anyone in the general public can send things to? And yet, here we are.
Just so you know what constituted all this “tracking down” and “stalking” all I did was type the name of the restaurant and he showed up as an employee there. I didn’t think that messaging him to say thank you and to apologize for doing anything that might have made him uncomfortable was out of line, but now I know the vast majority of people disagree. I personally wouldn’t be bothered if someone looked me up based on my employer, indeed that’s why I list it, so that people can. Now I know that I crossed a personal boundary.
FTR, my commentary was addressed more at the people in this thread like John Mace who don’t understand the difference between a public post meant for everyone to see and a personal social media profile that is typically for the purpose of conversing with friends only.
For what it’s worth, it sounds to me like you’re a genuinely nice person who was aiming to do a genuinely nice thing. And it’s possible that he took it exactly like that.