Server Can’t Believe What Gen Z Diners Leave on Check Instead of Tip

A restaurant server was left stunned by what a group of teenagers she seated left her in lieu of a tip.

Janet, 22, who chose not to share her real name or location, other than to say she works “at a chain restaurant in the southern Midwestern area,” is no stranger to being “stiffed” on a tip by customers.

“It comes with the territory of being a server,” Janet told Newsweek. “People have their reasons for not tipping, if they felt service wasn’t good or if they just have a moral or ethical stance against it.”

There was something different about what played out when she served a group of around a dozen “18- or 19-year-olds” one Tuesday night recently.

Things seemed to go relatively smoothly. “I thought I was doing well keeping up with everything,” Janet said. “The only time management stepped in was to run drinks because I asked them to.”

That was reflected in the tips Janet received from the other tables served that night. “All of my other tables tipped at or over 20 percent,” she said. “Like, one table tipped $50 on $170. I was running my butt off trying to stack as many tasks as possible.”

Tips are of huge importance to service workers. A 2024 survey of nearly 1,200 Americans by CouponBirds found around 6 in 10 service workers rely on tips for more than 30 percent of their income.

Janet is one of those workers. “Tips are how I make almost all of my income,” she said. “My weekly paycheck is only $100 after taxes.” Failure to get a good tip on a table can be significant.

“Something that a lot of people don’t realize is that a lot of restaurants in the U.S. share tips,” she said. “For me, I have to tip out 2.5 percent (weekdays) to 5 percent (weekends) of my credit sales to support staff. That’s regardless of if a table tips or not. It normally averages out to about a table’s-worth of tips that I have to pay out each night.”

That’s what made what happened next so bizarre and frustrating.

When Janet went to collect the bill from the group of teens, she noticed that, in place of a tip, whoever settled the bill had left her a three-word message: “Wear a life jacket.”

Janet was initially confused by the comment. “I thought it was a funny joke at first because we had gotten historic flooding in our area recently,” she said. “The manager thought so, too. They were bewildered for me, and so was all the other staff.”

It was only afterwards that she discovered the upsetting truth behind what the message meant. Janet said: “Bartender pulled me aside and told me that the table came up to see if they could tip the manager instead. She said that they told her they left the note because ‘I was drowning in work.'”

This was baffling to Janet. “If all my other tables were upset with me, or if management sided with them, I could totally look at myself and say, ‘Yeah, I deserved no tip or a bad tip,'” she said. ” But if everyone else thought I was doing great, so I don’t know what they were thinking.”

The whole experience has left her disappointed since she felt she had done as well as she could with the group. “I try to keep an open mind with every table. I never know what someone is going through before they come in,” Janet said.

However, the response she got was a disappointing one, so much so, in fact, she ended up sharing the message scrawled on the receipt to Reddit under the handle u/Wrong_Confection331. She said she hopes it might encourage others to do better by their servers.

“I just wish they would have been more understanding of what was going on,” Janet added.