Hot tip

For sale on ebay:

A couple months ago, I waited on Andre 3000. Yes, the rapper. He and his wife came into the restaurant where I wait tables. They landed in my section, and I gave all my other tables away, thinking it would behoove me to give undivided service to such high profile customers (my fellow servers also wanted extra talbes for extra $). After complaining about some of the food (they are vegan and we are a totally non-vegan restaurant), my manager took a big chunk of money off the bill. The chef had tried to please them with original dishes and took time out of the busy dinner to customize a meal for them. Despite the spot-on service and super-catered food, they felt the need to leave me no money. I had nothing to do with the food, yet he stiffed me.

(via goldenfiddlr.)

Somehow, it doesn’t totally surprise me that Andre 3000 doesn’t tip, but it does disappoint me. When we ran a short-lived fake gossip magazine in Athens, we had a feature called the Monthly Stipend where people could report their Michael Stipe sightings. However, 75% of the Stipend submissions were about Stipe’s failure to tip at this bar or that restaurant, which wasn’t really the kind of thing we were going for. Stipe and R.E.M. have done a world of good things for Athens, but you can’t patronize drinking and dining establishments in a town whose social life IS the service industry and not tip – it makes the townies even angrier! Andre 3000, we know you’re a man of very specific and discerning tastes, but come on, don’t become the Michael Stipe of Atlanta – loved for keeping Atlanta sexy and cool but hated for cheating us out of $9! On the other hand, how legal is it for the waiter to sell the last four digits of his Visa card?

Anyway, I bet Big Boi is a generous tipper. He just seems that way.