HEAR YE HEAR YE!
Sorry I didn’t update yesterday…I went out and got just a lil’ bit toasty after work. 
But for those of you who are still tuning in, the guy DID come back Thursday nite, as he said he would.
And he “nobly” gave Jeff two bucks out of the $20, for “being so honest.”
So he went to all that trouble for $18 freakin’ dollars.
I’m sorry, but I think that’s jacked.
Opinions?
It IS a bit whacked, of course, WE have a 4 page thread about this guy’s $18, so I don’t think we can talk. Hey at least Jeff got something back, considering the opinion most of us had of the customer, I didn’t expect it.
But we don’t have LIVES, Cheesesteak! And he should!
I dunno. I just think that a puny gesture of “generosity” that equals $2 kind of loses its luster when it’s given in return for an $18 dollar hijack of a 2 day old tip.
I really can’t wrap my mind around it.
My opinion?
Mr customer is either:
I vote for option 2, based on the way you described his behavior.
So, bottom line:
I feel your pain…
I think it isn’t so much the amount of time that has passed but whether or not Jeff has had a chance to make any sort of finacial commitment based on his (totally legitiamate) assumption that he had gotten a little windfall. If the guy came back during Jeff’s shift–be that an hour or eight hours–it seems to me that Jeff should give the money back because he hasn’t actually done anything with it. But if he’s made decisions based on the idea that he has an extra $20 bucks–decisions that can’t be undone–he shouldn’t have to put himself in an awkward financial bind because of someone else’s mistake.
If i were Jeff, i’d have told him to shove his two bucks up his arse.
Chris and CheepAssCustomer are the two chumps here. Jeff is noble for giving it back. I guess that $4 on an $18 is better than $2, but Chris and CAC are still the real losers in this.
Thanks for the update Audrey.
I’m thinking Jeff is sort of a pussy. He’s not noble, he’s a doormat!
Yeah. Instead of doing the right thing, both legally and ethically, he shoulda been an asshole and screwed the guy out of $20 bucks for making a mistake!!! Of course, not being an asshole makes you a doormat, why didn’t I see it before. Thanks for opening my eyes, Snooopyfan.
Hamlet the asshole in this situation is the customer who comes back TWO DAYS LATER demanding his money back.
Would you be on his side if he came back a week later?
How about a month?
Six months?
Where is the line?
I had a similar experience happen while driving cab once
I dropped a lady off who had run up a $8 fare and she gave me three bills with a five on the top so since we were busy right then I just shoved them in my pocket and moved on to the next fare but an hour later I get a call from my dispatcher that she was on the line and wanted to know if she had given me too much for the ride
I checked and instead of a five and three ones it was two fives and two ones…I gave her the money back not because I am such a nice guy but because I had picked her up in a bad part of town and dropped her off in another bad part of town and she had a kid with her…I KNEW this was a mistake she couldn’t afford
I even went back to where I had dropped her off to give her the money(this alone cost me more than the five bucks I was now out)
I will admit before all of you though if this had been someone who I thought could of afforded it I would of just told the dispatcher to tell the person I would leave the five dollars at the office after my shift and if they REALLY wanted it to go THERE to get it…otherwise tough darts
That said if the Jeff in the OP had decided to keep the $20 I would think no less of him given the situation as described…it was not his responsibility to know what was in the customers’ mind when he gave the tip in the first place…as has been noted earlier people sometimes DO give seemingly outrageous tips once in awhile
He came back two HOURS later to get his money. He came back after he realized it was a MISTAKE.
The guy who made the mistake sounds like a jackass, but that doesn’t change the fact that Jeff did the right thing. And instead of applauding Jeff, you call him a doormat and a “pussy.” You must be one helluva classy guy.
For the 900billionth time, I am a female.
And you still didn’t answer my question. How long did the customer have to wait until Jeff would have been justified in telling him tough noogies?
FWIW, management itself was split on the issue of whether or not Jeff should give the guy his money back.
Chris said he “probably should.”
The other manager said hell no, the guy was a jackass and should learn a lesson.
The Head Cheese intimated to Jeff that he thought it would “positively influence his karma” if he were to give it back. Which, IMO, knowing our head cheese as I do, is gentle manager-speak for “give the guy his money back. Did I forget to say please? No, I didn’t. Give it back.”
None of them, however, thought that the guy would have any legal claim to the money…since there wasn’t even any proof, other than Jeff’s big mouth, that the $20 existed.
If I were a manager (thank God I’m not!) I’d have either offered the guy something free, like a lunch the next day, in lieu of the money…or given Jeff a steak dinner for giving it back.
But Jeff wanders through most of his life in a dim and pleasant fog, so he didn’t think to ransom the money for a nice T-bone.
Here’s what’s getting to me.
Customer’s from out of town on business, if I remember right. So how much of the $18 did he eat up in cab fares to and from the restaurant? In the end, I’m guessing the guy wound up getting a net of $6 back, and eating up who knows how much of his time.
Course, may this is his entertainment when he’s out of town.
And a point I think is being missed here.
Two **NEW twentys stuck together? And your first thought is not that it might be a mistake? Uhhhhhhh huh…
*My ability to Intellectualize allowed me to Rationalize which got me Institutionalized! *
Yeah,
He said
He did
He was
I’m poor
He’s an ass
*If the world was fair, they would have hung me a long time ago. *
He is not my job. I am my job and two new 20’s stuck together and I keep it means TO ME that I stole it . <-- that is a period dot!
YMMV
Wow, Gus. If you expect me to wade through that to try to find your point, you’re sadly mistaken.
And you might wanna lay off on the bolding. It’s for emphasis. It’s not a stylish new font option.
It appears to be a coding mistake, Audrey.
You know, a MISTAKE?
But if I were you, I’d hold him to how it came out.
Just for you Audrey Levins,
You can’t understand? Well DUH BRT !!! ( who woulda thunk? )
This? ::: " *My ability to Intellectualize allowed me to Rationalize which got me Institutionalized! * "
Seems obvious to me it is in reference to mankind’s ability to make it seem how he wants it to be, ( it really isn’t stealing it I say it like this or blame the other guy. ).
This part? :::
“Yeah,
He said
He did
He was
I’m poor
He’s an ass”
Those are some of the lies we tell ourselves to cover the fact that we are stealing…
This part? ::: “*If the world was fair, they would have hung me a long time ago. *”
Which shows that I can not cast the first stone, I’m not perfect, I have done wrong before, etc… :: sheesh ::: What was hard about that part?
This part here? ::::
“He is not my job. I am my job and two new 20’s stuck together and I keep it means TO ME that I stole it . <-- that is a period dot!”
Which clearly shows what I think about the whole thread, idea, about what these circumstances would mean to me , about myself, etc…
:smack:
GusNSpot
You are assuming too much…the only way we “know” those were two NEW(sticky) twenties is because the guy came back later and SAID they were…was he telling the truth or was he making it up because…for example… his buddy told him later that tips are not reimbursed by his company like his meal was?
We don’t know the answer to this and it DOES make a difference
If he had handed the waiter two twenties and the waiter said “Hey there are two here!” there would be no reason for this thread…we’d know one way or the other the customers’ intentions but he did not…he handed the money over in the book and left…it is not the waiters responsibility to GUESS what was in the customers’ mind(people do leave very big tips once in a while)
If the customer was a regular and he never gave big tips before then the waiter would have cause to wonder if it was a mistake but that wasn’t the case either
The situation as presented in the OP is such that while the waiter was a good guy for returning the money he had NO real obligation to do so…not legally…not morally…not ethically
Simply because we don’t KNOW it was a mistake in the first place
BTW Something just occurred to me…if he had a bunch of so-called “sticky” twenties…how did the customer know he lost one at THAT restaurant? Unless he knew he had given the two twenties in the first place and something happened later that made him change his mind and want one back