Kung Fu Lola said, "No one can prove what was meant. "
No, but the person who HAD the intent is the only person who can make any sort of call on what the intent was.
Yes, he made a mistake. Yes, he was hurried and not paying attention. And he was BEYOND rude to ask for it back. So what? We don’t know his situation. It may have been cab fare home. He may have owed that $20 to someone who really needed it right then. There could be a million reasons why he chose to be rude rather than eat the mistake. If he said it wasn’t his intent, it wasn’t his intent. If everyone said “tough shit” every time a mistake was made, this would be a pretty difficult world to live in.
I’m with CnoteChris. The money was never intended to be given, it was a mistake and very clearly it morally and legally belongs to the customer. Whether he was a lousy tipper makes no difference as to whether the money is his or not.
The $20 bill belongs to the customer just as if it had been an umbrella or overcoat which he left behind by mistake. The fact that the waiter might have sincerely believed it was his makes no difference.
If I see a microwave on the sidewalk and believe it has been abandoned I might take it but that does not give me any rights against the rightful owner if he comes to claim it.
This thread shows why juries so often make lousy legal decisions: they do not judge what is strictly legal but they just rule for the little guy who has their sympathy against who they perceive to be the big guy. That is a lousy system of ruling.
Please explain to me how someone still has a moral or legal claim on anything they’ve specifically handed to another person and said (essentially) “Keep this, it’s yours.”
What? Point me to a section of U.S. law that says a person is legally entitled to property they’ve given away.
See, the difference here is that no customer has ever said, “Oh, keep it” in relation to personal effects like a coat or umbrella. By saying “Keep the change,” this man, in every legal and moral sense, transferred ownership of everything in the payment book to the waiter. He has no more moral claim on anything he left. (Credit cards,of course, are non-transferrable and don’t count.)
It’s just like me buying two sets of earrings at an art fair and the seller putting them in one box. I intend one pair as a gift, and wrap up the box without taking the extra pair out. The moment I hand that wrapped box over and say “Here, this is for you,” I lose all claim to that second pair of earrings. Regardless of my intentions, I transferred all legal and moral rights to that box and its contents to someone else. If those contents are something I didn’t intend to give, tough shit. It was my own damn carelessness and I’m the one who has to pay the price, not someone to whom I gave a gift.
That is, after all, what a tip is: a gift we give at our own discretion. This guy gave someone a gift, and now he’s demanding it back. He doesn’t have a moral or legal leg to stand on.
Exactly. Leave a man a tip, even a large one, hardly compares to leaving behind a jacket. People don’t usually give their jackets to waiters, but people often give waiters money.
How about if I paid with a credit card, left tip in cash, said “here’s your tip” with envelope containing both the cash and my forgotten credit card. Do I lose rights to my credit card?
CCL, you lose moral rights to the earrings that were mistakenly in the gift box? Nonsense, any person who is worth giving a gift to would practically shove the gift back into your hands once finding out it was a mistake.
God forbid anyone make a mistake around you vultures, you’ll pick a guy clean for falling down.
Also, I have to look at this from a practical standpoint. If nobody’s bothered to give Jeff a head’s up about this, he may very well arrive at work to find Choad-monkey Customer (is that better than referring to him as Lousy Tipper?) waiting for him, and not have $20 to give the guy, even if he wanted to. God knows I never brought more than a couple of dollars to work with me when I was waiting tables, just enough to cover my lunch in case I hadn’t had any tables by the time they sent me for my break. I couldn’t have given my own mother $20 to save her life at the beginning of my shift, much less somebody who’s trying to browbeat me out of something they freely gave me.
We don’t NEED to know his intent. We don’t NEED to know his situation. All we need to know is that he gave some money to his waiter and said, “Keep the change.” The change=the amount of money - the cost of his meal. He explicitly gave the rest to the waiter. His intent, his situation, are irrelevant, except inasmuch as he wants to use them as a means to beg the waiter for a gift himself.
And it wouldn’t prove that the waiter were honest if he gave the money back – honesty and integrity have nothing to do with it. It would prove that the waiter has a much bigger sense of charity than I have. The waiter could be perfectly honest and maintain perfect integrity by choosing to keep what was given to him.
Sailor, I’d like to hear your legal theory suggesting that the money is legally the customer’s. Explain, please, the general operating principle.
And folks, let’s leave the fallacious analogies out of it, m’kay? No microwaves on streets, no jackets, no air conditioners in garages. Deal with what actually happened, not irrelevant hypotheticals.
It depends. Does a waiter have a good-faith expectation that a physical credit card will be left as a tip?
If you weren’t committed to absurd irrelevant hypotheticals, you could answer this question easily.
I’ll answer this one straight: no, I don’t dive onto dropped change. And then I’ll ask you an equally obnoxious question: do you fucking preach your shrilly self-important holier-than thou bullshit at strangers walking down the street? Don’t call me a vulture, asshole.
Boy, somebody’s not much on the reading comprehension. What part of “credit cards are, of course, non-transferrable and don’t count” did you not understand? You can’t transfer ownership of a credit card, and you bloody well know it. Stop being a jackass.
And yes, I DO lose moral rights to those earrings when I give them to someone else. They’re HERS, not mine. I gave them to her. It would be really nice if she was to give me back the extra pair, but she’d be under no obligation to do so, nor would I think any the less of her for keeping a gift.
[quote] Daniel: And it wouldn’t prove that the waiter were honest if he gave the money back – honesty and integrity have nothing to do with it. It would prove that the waiter has a much bigger sense of charity than I have. The waiter could be perfectly honest and maintain perfect integrity by choosing to keep what was given to him.**
I agree with you about “honesty.” That’s not exactly the right word. I’m talking about personal integrity. How could a strong code of values allow you to take advantage of another human being’s mistake?
How about if the waiter in question is actually an undercover anti-terrorist agent who is hot on the trail of a shipment of anthrax-contaminated $20 bills being smuggled into this country, and this whole thing was part of an elaborate scheme to finally nail the guy who was responsible for bringing the bills through Customs? What if the entire case fell apart because that one $20 bill was the single piece of evidence they need against the guy? Should the waiter give it back?
I mean, if we’re inventing convoluted hypotheticals and all.
Right. Why, just yesterday I shoved a nun, because I wanted her wimple and didn’t want to wait around for her to give it to me.
Do you even read all the responses in these threads before you start spouting off?
My personal integrity contains another clause: don’t screw the other person over first. Remember that this dude was trying to stiff the waiter; the customer had already attempted (and failed) to take advantage of the waiter’s inability to do anything about being stiffed. How does karma enter into it, except inasmuch as the waiter gets to be the gleeful agent of the customer’s karma?
If the waiter wants to go above and beyond the call of ethics, he could donate the twenty bucks to a charity. Is there a charity that teaches people proper money management or proper tipping habits?
At any rate, the other human being’s mistake is not the waiter’s concern, any more than it’s my concern.
Daniel, you would take someone’s money for no reason other than them making a mistake, then claim moral superiority with respect to giving it back, and I’m the jerk? Does any waiter other than a complete idiot think that he’s going to get a $22 tip for an $18 meal? I suppose if I were reallllly stupid I could think that the credit card was a good faith tip, would that make it ok?
BTW, the air conditioner thing actually happened, and the guys somehow knew nothing about any sort of AC unit in the garage when questioned on it… Guess they were just taking the moral high ground.
Upon reviewing this thread again I find myself hoping that “the lousy tipper” is really an eccentric multi-millionaire who has laid out a test for our intrepid young waiter. Should Jeff keep the $20, he will walk away with $20. Should he return it, he will be rewarded with wealth, adulation and round-the-clock blow jobs on demand from the nubile young things of his choice.
I just got two brand new 20s fresh from the bank and they don’t seem to want to stick to each other at all. What did this fucktrumpet use, chewing gum?
