An Arkansas restaurant has made news for all the wrong reasons after firing a server who refused to give up her very generous tip.
The Oven and Tap restaurant, located in Bentonville, Arkansas, served a Holiday party of over 40 patrons with only two servers to cover the group. Before coming to the restaurant, however, the group called in advance to ask about the restaurant's tipping policy to ensure that what they were planning to do after dinner would go smoothly.
Each patron in the group planned to tip $100 to the two servers, adding to a sum of $4,400 that was to be split between the two of them for a generous tip of $2,200 each.
Ryan Brandt, a server working at the Oven and Tap, had been there for over 3 years and was using the money she earned from serving to help her pay off her student loans.
Grant Wise, owner of a software company for real estate advertising, told Brandt that they would be giving her the large tip and she was so excited, she became emotional.
“It was an incredible thing to do and to see her reaction was awesome, to see what that meant to her the impact that it’s had on her life already,” Wise recalled of the situation.
But just 30 minutes later, Brandt was told that she would be giving the tip to her shift manager. The restaurant told her that she would only be keeping 20% of the tip, and the rest of the tip she received was to be split with the entire Oven and Tap staff. But in Brandt's three and a half years of working there, there has never been such a tipping policy at the restaurant, and when she refused, they fired her.
When Wise found out what the shift supervisor had told the server, he asked for the tip money back and gave the money directly to her separately. In addition, when Wise got wind of her firing, he decided to spread her story and created a GoFundMe in her name, which has already raised over $8,700 in the last week.
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