A San Antonio waitress says she was given a generous tip from a customer but she hasn’t been able to get any of it from them, and now the restaurant owner has stepped in.
KENS in San Antonio reported Tuesday that Emily Bauer was working at Red Hook Seafood and Bar for two weeks when she had a particularly busy shift Saturday. She said one man in her section was understanding. She said the customer said he owned restaurants and knew what it was like being a server.
“He actually didn’t want the rest of his order,” Bauer told KENS on Tuesday. “He was like, ‘Just cancel everything. Cancel everything and give me the ticket.’ So I said, ‘OK.’ I gave him the ticket.”
Bauer said the customer left once she got back to the table. When she picked up the ticket and took a look, she was shocked at the $2,000 tip on the $69.01 bill.
The ticket was also signed, “Merry Christmas! Keep working hard!”
“I was like, ‘Wait.’ I just opened it and started crying. I was like, ‘Oh, my God! My kids! I’m going to spend it all on my kids,’” Bauer said of her sons, who are 2 years old and 5 months old. “I was like, ‘Oh, my God.’ I’ve never had a Christmas where I’ve been able to like splurge on them.”
But Bauer hadn’t gotten any of her tip money because the restaurant’s system, her manager said, won’t process anything over $500.
Bauer said other servers suggested she get her tip in installments of $500, but Bauer said the restaurant declined.
“I don’t think it’s our responsibility as a server to say, ‘Oh, you can’t tip me that much, I’m sorry. Oh, no, there’s a limit, I’m sorry,’” Bauer said. “If that’s the case, there should be signs posted on the restaurants or the receipt to say there’s a limit of $500.”
“Everybody I’ve talked to has been like, ‘I’ve never heard of that before,’” she said. “If it’s left to you and signed by that person, then you should be able to get it.”
Bauer said her manager told her the customer who left the tip called Red Hook and was disappointed to hear she couldn’t take it. Bauer said the manager didn’t get the customer’s information, so she can’t contact him.
She posted about the tip and included a photo of the message in hopes of getting in contact with the customer. At the encouragement of her employer, she said, she also contacted local news.
A local server received a $2,000 tip as an early Christmas gift, but she can’t get a single cent. Her employer said they can’t process a tip bigger than $500.
Posted by KENS 5 & Kens5.com on Tuesday, December 1, 2020
According to the restaurant, however, the news station didn’t tell the full story and the server didn’t, either.
“The tip was tried multiple times by management, by Emily, by the owner and would not post.. it was INVALID,” Red Hook said in a Facebook comment early Wednesday on the news station’s post of the story.
“The gentleman called and was told the tip would not take we asked him to come back to the restaurant to pay Emily in cash or check he said ‘ok’ and hung up but he did mention he had a lot of money & owned 3 restaurants in San Antonio. Unfortunately he has not come by the restaurant. We told Emily to contact the news but she left out details. We encouraged her to drawn out the man who tipped her to come & pay her. By now the gentleman has seen his bank statement from red hook without a $2000 tip applied. So where is this Gentleman?”
The restaurant also asked to stop being harassed, as there has been an influx of negative reviews of the restaurant since the story ran on the local station.
“And NO kens5 never questioned us instead [they] ran a FALSE news report about our business,” the comment continued. “Please stop harassing us. We don’t have the $2000 tip nor was it ever posted because it was INVALID!”
Bauer replied to the restaurant’s comment, saying she was telling the truth, that the news station edited the interview, and emphasized that she was trying to draw the attention of the man who left the tip. She clarified that she mentioned the card came up as “invalid,” and that the restaurant never reached out to the news station about the report before it ran.
She said she didn’t contact the news for people to harass her workplace.
By Thursday, there were more updates. KENS reported Red Hook’s general manager, who did not want to provide her name to the local station, said the bank told them it would not process the tip because it’s seen as fraud.
“It’s like the bank telling you like, ‘Oh, it’s fraud. We’re not going to do it,’” the general manager said. “If I put a $2,000 dollar tip on mine? My bank is going to deny it. They’re going to deny it. They’re going to deny it because I do not normally do that; I do not normally tip that way.”
She said she didn’t have time to take down the customer’s contact information, and that the customer called from a private number when he asked if Bauer had gotten her tip.
“I told him to come back to the store because we were unable to process the payment. He said, ‘OK,’ and immediately hung up before I could say anything,” she said.
But John Cheng, the owner of Red Hook, wants to make it right. He wrote Bauer a check for the total cost of the meal and the tip: $2,069.61.
“It’s Christmastime, and everybody is struggling,” Cheng told KENS. “I’m ready to give it to her as a Christmas gift.”
“The fact that the owner of my job is willing to give it to me, even though it wasn’t his mess-up, I can’t thank him enough for that,” Bauer told KENS as she teared up.
