What? Really? By that reasoning, any money you see laying around anywhere is automatically yours for the taking. I was taught differently when I was about 6 years old…
My two cents: the customer sounds like an ass, but Jeff should return the extra $20.
Granted, there is no way to prove that there was an extra $20, nor, probably, does the customer have a legal leg to stand on in demanding it back… but so what? When proof and legality are the only basis for your ethics, you’re a sad case.
I’ve never been a waiter, but I’ve been a customer lots of times. I’ve also left special tips on frequent occasions. Chris should shut up. Jeff should keep the money. And the customer should learn how to take responsibility for his decisions (as in his decision not to count out the new bills very carefully).
I don’t think that’s rude at all. I do the same thing when giving a waitperson an extra tip. I used to BE a waitress, I don’t want their reward for a job well done parcelled out to some grouchy chef!!!
Disclaimer before some nice chef has a fit…I’m sure there are exceptions.
Thanks, Astroboy, for assuming that I said I’D take the damn money in the safe. Did you read in my former post that I’m a bartender? Who doesn’t even, obviously, know the combination to the safe? Did I say anywhere that I would help myself?
What I’m saying is that restaurant managers are not above helping themselves to the lost and found. And that, therefore, if Jeff had been nice enough to turn his “gravy tip” in as “lost money,” for whatever reason, chances still aren’t good that either the customer, or Jeff himself, would’ve gotten it back.
But I do appreciate your lovely slam on my ethics. It’s obvious that your reading comprehension skills are still 6 years old, too. :rolleyes:
Sorry, Audrey, the ethics slam was not meant personally… the “you” I referred to was meant as a generic you (as in anyone). No offense intended!
Hmm… So a 10% tip is $0.70 light, and a 110% tip is somehow likely? I don’t buy this at all. Still less the idea that the manager should collude in making it harder for the customer to get back his inadvertently-handed-over double sawbuck. A tip’s meant to be discretionary. Ditto a reward for honesty.
The guy handed over too much money by mistake and there should be no question about his getting it back. If this leaves Jeff short then a kind-hearted boss would cut him some slack and let him pay back a buck a week, having reimbursed the customer. And the idea of having a different set of ethics for a casual customer or likely repeat business is kinda dubious, too.
Beating a bit of a lone drum here, but what the heck.
I don’t think it’s about how much Jeff was owed; it’s just that the tip was given and shouldn’t be taken back. Suppose the guy meant to leave the money, then later realized he was going to be a bit short on cash and changed his mind? Once he handed over the cash and said “Keep the change”, he ceased to have any claim to those bills. If you’re going to do things like that, well, you need to be careful, because people are going to take you at your word.
So if I follow you, the bad tipper made a mistake, and it’s the WAITER who should be inconvenienced by it?
If the bad tipper made a mistake, why shouldn’t HE be the one inconvenienced by it?
The amount of your tip isn’t determined by a psychic process wherein you communicate your intent to the waiter. The amount of your tip is determined by what you give your waiter.
Bad tipper left a tip of $22. End of story. At that point, it’s no longer his money. He can come back later and ask the waiter for a gift of $20, and if he’s really sweet and grovelling, the waiter might make the gift. But for him to come back and demand that money is ridiculous. It’s no longer his money to demand.
Daniel
Well…if the waiter noticed right away (which he didn’t), he should have brought it to the customer’s attention. Otherwise, keep it and feel lucky all day.
But since the customer is going out of his way to re-claim the $20, Jeff should cough it up. The man stated that a $22 tip was not his intention, so there’s really no question at this point.
Not at all Malacandra. I agree with you completely.
I mean, come on Audrey…
Well that’s nice. Since the guys from out of town, fuck him. He doesn’t deserve the consideration a person from the neighborhood would get.
Tough titties for him!
That’s… kind of screwed up. Really.
I mean, it shouldn’t matter where the guy was from, where he was going, what he was up to, how much he had in his pocket, if he tipped appropriately or not… it doesn’t fucking matter. The money should be returned because it’s the right thing to do. All these excuses and weasel reasons why the money should be kept, or eaten by the restaurant itself, are bullshit. You’re trying to bend around the idea that it’s common courtesy and ethically the right thing to do so that the guy can keep the cash.
And the bending seems to know no bounds…
Huh? What?
‘Sir, I was going to return this money to you because I assumed it was yours. But I learned that it isn’t, and in fact is your businesses, so I’m going to keep it instead. I mean, it’s not like it’s going to cost you or anything.’
That’s an even more screwed up reasoning than the earlier weaseling stuff.
And you almost had me with the earlier stuff. I was beginning to waver and think that maybe there really is a way the guy could, and should, keep that mistake. But whenever I worked it all out in my head, thinking it through, I always came back to, ‘Well yeah… but still. It’s not the right thing to do. The guy should give it back.’
All the if’s, and’s, maybe’s, or but’s, don’t matter. It shouldn’t matter. The right thing to do is return the money.
You’re right that there’s no question. The amount of a tip is determined by what you leave, not by what you intend to leave. Once you give someone the money for the tip, it’s their money, not yours. If you’ve made a mistake, you better hope you can persuade them to give you enough money to cover your mistake: they’re under no obligation to do so, however, no obligation at all.
And CNote Chris,
No. The right thing to do is to chalk it up to a mistake and not demand the money back. The lousy tipper is behaving unethically by demanding the waiter give up some of the waiter’s own money (again, the tip is now the waiter’s property, not the lousy tipper’s property). The waiter, by not considering the lousy tipper a charity case, is acting perfectly ethically.
Daniel
Your definition of ethical is pretty strange. A counter example, my parents hired a person to clean out a garage. The person could take whatever ‘junk’ they wanted when they cleaned it out. Scrap metal, old tools, whatever. Unbeknownst to my parents, a person working on the house left a brand new air conditioner in the garage. The clean out people show up and…
As an ethical person, do you take the air conditioner in the first place? When questioned about it, do you play dumb and act like there was no air conditioner?
People make mistakes. Ethical people don’t fuck others over when those mistakes happen.
That’s right. By coming back to the restaurant two days later and telling the waiter to give him $20 that the waiter may have already spent, the lousy tipper is trying to fuck over the waiter.
I’m not saying the waiter shouldn’t have checked with the tipper, had he gotten the chance, to make sure it was a legit tip. I’m also not saying that the waiter should act like the tip didn’t occur. So, per your analogy, the garage cleaners should also check with the house-owners to see if the air-conditioner is really up for grabs, if they get a chance, and they should also not act like it doesn’t exist.
But if:
The house-owners may, of course, grovel, and ask the cleaners to give the AC back to them. But if they’ve made that verbal contract and ended up giving away more than they intended, and the cleaners operated in good faith, it’s not the cleaners’ responsibility to suffer for the owner’s mistake.
Daniel
Saying “lousy tipper” over and over again isn’t going to make me change my opinion of the situation, or what should be done, so that’s kinda moot.
But it does bring up an interesting question-- if the guy tipped what you thought was appropriate, would he then have any more ‘right’ in asking for mistakenly left money back?
And what do you mean by the money is “now the waiter’s property, not the lousy tipper’s”? Did the statute of limitations expire on this guys mistake? Or are you thinking that as soon as the money is collected, regardless of how much it is, it immediately becomes the “property” of the waiter/restaurant?
What if, as others have mentioned earlier, the amounts were different and instead of twenties, we were talking about fifties? Still the same deal, ‘the second he collects it, it’s his’?
I don’t know about anyone else, but profiting off of someone’s mistake seems wrong to me… regardless of the if’s, and’s, or but’s. How you justify it, I haven’t quite figured out yet.
Daniel said, “If you’ve made a mistake, you better hope you can persuade them to give you enough money to cover your mistake: they’re under no obligation to do so, however, no obligation at all.”
That’s right. No OBLIGATION. I wasn’t talking about obligation. I was talking about right and wrong. Just because the law is on his side doesn’t make him morally right. I ordered my regular breakfast yesterday and the check-out girl rang it up wrong, to my benefit. I could have walked with the lousy 57 cents, but that would have made her drawer wrong. I brought it to her attention because my intent was to pay for my fucking breakfast…not rip off the cafeteria.
Slight slip of the tongue there, Audrey, or is Steve part of Jeff’s split personalities? 
CnoteChris, just as tipping is discretionary, so is charity. I agree with you that the ethical thing to do would be for Jeff to give the money back. However, the ethical thing for the USA to do would be to pay waiters minimum wage so they don’t have to rely on their tips to live, and that’s never going to happen. If Jeff has honestly already treated himself with his gravy tip and can no longer afford to pay it back, then it is unfair to inconvenience him for a mistake that was not his. Ethics and good karma suggest that he should give it back, but as he is a waiter, and by all accounts not a very good one, he is probably in no position to be able to do that, unfortunately.
Should he choose to give the money back, he should be applauded for his honesty. However, should he choose not to, I don’t think he should be derided for it.
CNoteChris, if he were Mr. Good Tipper instead of Mr. Lousy Tipper, it wouldn’t change things. If he’d handed the waiter a fifty instead of a twenty, it wouldn’t change things. He paid a discretionary amount for a service. What he intended to pay is irrelevant: the amount he paid is determined by the amount he paid.
How do I justify this attitude? Simple: it removes ambiguity. If he made a mistake, that’s his problem, no matter the size of the mistake. If it’s a truly huge mistake, he can appeal to the waiter’s sense of charity, and maybe the waiter will take pity on him – but the waiter is under no obligation to do so. And if the guy doesn’t appeal to the waiter’s sense of charity, but instead demands the money back, then he’s unlikely to get any pity from the waiter.
I reiterate: it’d be awful nice of the waiter to help the guy out with his mistake, but he’s not obligated to do so. If the guy’s an asshole about it, the waiter would be a saint to help the guy out.
Were I in this situation, I wouldn’t stress the twenty, even though it’s probably more significant to me than to the waiter or to Mr. Business traveller (whom, I’m guessing, pulls in at least triple my income). If it were a fifty, I’d grovel to the manager, leave my name and phone number and ask if the waiter could see his way to sending me, say, forty back, and I’d call later to follow up with it. I’d be pissed if the waiter didn’t send me some money back, but I wouldn’t think he had an obligation to do so.
Daniel
And Kalhoun, when I say “obligation,” I’m referring to an ethical obligation.
Daniel
No.
The money became the waiter’s when the customer left it in the payment booklet thingy and said “Keep the change.” By definition, whatever is in there after the bill is settled is the “change.” So the customer told the waiter to keep the money.
The amount does not matter. The second the customer says, in effect, “Keep this money I’m giving you,” then yes, by any legal, moral, or ethical definition, the money belongs to the waiter. I’m at a loss to explain how you (and others) cannot understand this.
If the customer actually shows up and asks for the money back, I (and many others in this thread) have said that the ethical thing would be for the waiter to give it back. However, he should never have been put in that position in the first place.
Three hours is entirely too long a time to wait to demand money back that was freely given. The instant it is given, the giver loses any right to determine how the receiver uses it.
Damn. I find myself in agreement with Daniel and in disagreement with CNote — two firsts in one shot, as far as I can recall. If human’s could read minds, I think the “mistake” thing would apply. But they can’t, so it doesn’t. I believe the waiter thought he got a great tip, and rightly so. Maybe he assumed the customer had a crush on him or something. Stranger things happen.