A server in Michigan who got part of a $10,000 tip from a mourning customer says she was fired by the restaurant just days later
Feb 21, 2024, 19:05 IST
- A diner left a $10,000 tip on a $32.43 meal at a café in Michigan on February 5.
- Just eight days later, the employee who served the diner was fired, her lawyer told The Guardian.
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A server in Michigan who got part of a $10,000 tip left by a solo diner said that the restaurant fired her eight days later after the tip led to a dispute among staff about who got to pocket the money.
The Mason Jar Café in Benton Harbor, western Michigan, posted on Facebook on February 6 that a customer had left a $10,000 tip on a $32.43 late breakfast the day before. The post quickly went viral.Tim Sweeney, the café's general manager, told The Detroit Free Press that the customer had traveled from out of state to attend a friend's funeral. He left the hefty tip to honor his friend's memory and asked for it to be shared between the servers, Sweeney said.The splitting of the tip, however, led to conflict among the café's workers. Jennifer McManus, an attorney for server Linsey Huff, who was the member of staff the diner gave the tip to, told The Guardian that kitchen staff also wanted a share of the tip, and became upset. Huff also goes by the surname Boyd.McManus said that when Huff told the café's managers that the kitchen staff were annoyed with how the tip had been distributed, they asked her to name the workers. After Huff refused, the café fired her, McManus said.The Detroit Free Press reported that Huff wrote on Facebook that she was asked to take a mental health day off on Sunday, February 11 and was later told to take the next day off, too. On Tuesday 13, she was told that she was fired, she wrote in the post, per The Free Press.Mason Jar co-owner Jayme Cousins confirmed to local TV channel News 8 that the employee had been fired and that it was unrelated to the tip. Cousins added that the dismissal was "purely a business decision."Cousins and her husband Abel Martinez also posted a Facebook status about the termination, which was flooded with comments about the events, many of which were negative, The Free Press reported.Huff has since deleted her Facebook post about her dismissal, The Guardian reported. McManus said that a member of the café's management called Huff and told her that the Mason Jar would file a lawsuit against her if she didn't remove the post.The café has deactivated its Facebook page and set its Instagram account to private.Huff and the café could not be contacted for comment. Insider did not immediately receive a response to a message to McManus, Huff's attorney, sent outside regular US working hours.