Server fired after receiving $10K tip, but owners say it has nothing to do with viral gesture: ‘Purely a business decision’
Wage wars.
The Michigan waitress who received an enormous $10,000 tip was fired from her job days later — but the restaurant claimed the dismissal was unrelated to the generous gratuity and was “purely a business decision.”
The Mason Jar Cafe in Benton Harbor, located in southern Michigan, canned server Linsey Boyd a week after an anonymous customer left the large boon on a $32.43 bill, according to the Detroit Free Press.
The man, who wished to remain anonymous, left the now-viral tip to honor a friend whose funeral he was in town for and had requested Boyd to split the gift amongst the entire wait staff, which came out to a little over $1,100 for each employee.
“I will say it had nothing to do with the tip. She did receive the entire tip, she did not pay taxes on it (the business did). Yes, she shared the tip at the request of the man that left it,” husband and wife owners Able Martinez and Jayme Cousins wrote on Facebook.
Days after receiving the sizeable payment, Boyd claimed drama had begun to unfold inside the restaurant and management had asked her to take that Sunday off as a mental health day, the outlet added, citing a now-deleted Facebook post.
Boyd then said management reached out to her Sunday night and told her to take the next day off as well.
The waitress messaged the restaurant on Monday to ask if she was being told “in a professional way to not come back.”
She was fired via phone call that Tuesday, WSBT-TV reported.
“One week I’m such an amazing, hardworking employee, awesome mother … couldn’t have happened to a better person,” Boyd’s post reportedly read. “Now, I’m without a job, for the first time since I was 15 years old.”
The restaurant’s management has since refuted Boyd’s claims, claiming the firing had nothing to do with the tip or the aftermath that followed but they also couldn’t go into details because of labor laws.
“We do truly care about our staff,” the couple added. “We’ve had the same crew for 5-6 years. We have college girls that come home every summer and have been for four years now, we take our staff up north at the end of every summer season, we give donations for college funds for them, we kept them employed through Covid, we do everything in our power not to lose staff.
“I know there is a lot going around that we let her go because of the tip and that’s just not logical,” Cousins told WOOD-TV. “(W)e have a staff that has continued to work for us for years and college kids that come back every summer and we give chances after chances to our staff, so we clearly would not let someone go for no reason at all.”
Cousins added they did not come to the decision lightly and firing an employee is something the restaurant tries to avoid.
“In this case, it was purely a business decision.”
The fired employee has since “drove out of town this morning to spend time with family and get away” following the rough week, according to WNDU.
