Waitress Left Zero Tip on Church's $735 Bill. Fired by Restaurant Next Day
Sometimes, customers underpay their servers while other times they don’t pay them at all. Sadly, when an Outback Steakhouse waitress in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, experienced the latter, it cost her her job.
Tamlynn Yoder, 25, said she received a large order Wednesday, Feb. 7 for local church Christ Fellowship. The phone order included “25 steaks, 25 chickens and 25 potatoes.”
According to the server, ringing up food and preparing it for pickup is just as hard. “We take the order over the phone, we put the order together, take payment and then take order to the car,” she said.
For this particular order, Yoder spent most of her shift preparing it and only made $18 on other orders. But, what made matters even worse is when the person came to pick it up.
After helping to take the food to their car, they didn’t compensate her for her service. Yoder was left a zero tip on the church’s $735 bill.
She was so livid about the situation that she wrote a post about it on Facebook. She never mentioned where she worked, but she did call out Christ Fellowship on the issue.
A male friend advised her to take down the post, and said that he would contact the church. He then relayed the message that the church was going to call Outback and rectify the situation.
Upon arriving to work the next day, Yoder realized things took a turn for the worse. Not only was the church refunded for their order, but her job was terminated.
Yet, it wasn’t what the church intended to happen.
“We did not call the restaurant to have her fired, we wanted to get the situation resolved,” said Executive Director of Business David Lonsberry.
The organization expressed their apologies on Facebook, adding that they were trying to find a way to tip Yoder. They claimed they always leave a generous tip, but the volunteer chosen on that night was unaware of their normal “gratuity practices.”
However, Yoder may have actually caused herself to be fired. The restaurant’s spokeswoman said it’s against company policy to post about customers on social media and leads to immediate termination.
Apparently, Yoder had no knowledge about the policy. But, at the end of the day, the entire situation was a complete misunderstanding between both parties.
Since then, Christ Fellowship has at least made things right. Yoder said they gave her a compensation that totaled more than the tip she deserved.
Though her job with Outback has come to an end, Yoder plans on looking for another restaurant job and even owning her own establishment someday.
With no hard feelings, she said, “I love this business.”
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