The waitress who posted a receipt on the internet with a note from a pastor complaining about the automatic tip added to the bill was fired this week.
The Applebee’s waitress was fired after the pastor complained to her manager about the receipt posted online.
Chelsea Welch, the waitress, wrote in an email to Yahoo News that the pastor (who has since been identified as Alois Bell) told Welch’s manager that the social media outcry had “ruined” her reputation.
“I give God 10%,” Bell wrote on the receipt, scratching out the automatic tip and scribbling in a cheeky zero where the additional tip would be, “Why do you get 18?”.
The auto-tip was triggered as there were more than eight people at the dinner table.
Waitress Welch took a snap of the receipt and posted it to Reddit.
The receipt Welch posted a photo of to the internet.
She defended her right to post the receipt and said: “I thought the note was insulting, but also comical,” she told Consumerist.com, “And I thought other users would find it entertaining.”
But Bell, a pastor at a local church, was not amused. She called Welch’s manager to complain after her friend informed her, “You’re all over Yahoo, you went viral!”
“My heart is really broken,” Bell added. “I’ve brought embarrassment to my church and ministry.”
A spokesman for Applebee’s said it apologized to Bell for violating her “right to privacy” and confirmed that Welch “is no longer employed by the franchise.”
Welch said: “I had no intention of starting a witch hunt or hurting anyone. I just wanted to share a picture I found interesting. I come home exhausted, sore, burnt, dirty and blistered on a good day. And after all that, I can be fired for ‘embarrassing’ someone who directly insults their server on religious grounds.
“If this person wrote the note, obviously they wanted it seen by someone. I’ve been stiffed on tips before, but this is the first time I’ve seen the Big Man used as reasoning.”
