Customer’s $16,000 Tip Is Bringing Up Complaints About Tip Pooling

A customer’s insanely generous tip has people online arguing over tip pools yet again.

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A receipt from The Stumble Inn Bar & Grill in New Hampshire went viral over the weekend after an anonymous customer left a $16,000 tip —yes you read that right—on a $37.93 bill. 

“Don’t spend it all in one place,” he reportedly joked several times before the bartender finally took a look at the number.

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The restaurant’s owner, Mike Zarella, said that they were all so surprised at the tip that when the customer came back another time, he double-checked with him to make sure he didn’t want the money back.

“But he said, ‘No, I want them to have that money,’” Zarella recalled.

The Stumble Inn Bar & Grill is one of many restaurants in the country that engages in pool tipping—servers and bartenders all combine their tips at the end of the shift and split them equally among themselves. It’s a highly controversial practice, particularly when it loops in back-of-house staff who don’t engage with customers on a face-to-face basis.

However, Zarella said the eight bartenders working that shift made the choice to include the kitchen staff in splitting this particular tip, with each getting around $1300 out of it.

WOW! A customer at The Stumble Inn, a restaurant in Londonderry, NH, left a $16,000 tip on a $37.93 tab earlier this month.

The owner, Mike Zarella, says he plans to split the tip between all 12 staffers that worked that day= $1333 a piece! @Stumbleinnnh #7news pic.twitter.com/UWHE7thh0P

— Amaka Ubaka (@AmakaUbakaTV) June 23, 2021

•everything operated as normal outside of the staff also deciding to include cooks on the tip
•the owner received none of the $16,000 amount #7news

— Amaka Ubaka (@AmakaUbakaTV) June 25, 2021

Still, people online took this as an opportunity to argue against the policy of tip pooling both in general and specifically in this case, believing the bartender who did the work should have taken home the entire $16,000.

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If their policy is that tips are shared, then there is no argument. Even if they didn’t have that policy it is the proper thing to do.

— Tiberius Gracchus (@Bajageoff) June 23, 2021

. Most restaurants have a policy where the tips are shared with all the staff.

— heather (@boredof_bs) June 23, 2021

Me writing down 12 cause that manager going too tf

— bridizzle (@briannasdiary) June 25, 2021

Some irate onlookers even went so far as to review bomb the restaurant for deciding to split the tip, turning what started out as a feel good story into something else.

Hell yeah I’m leavin a bad review to LmaoooOoo they better unsplit n give that waiter or waitress that whole tip foh tht b!tch a$s owner

— MyLifeBeLike (@SaintTaz_) June 24, 2021

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Regardless of the backlash, Zarella says he and his staff are grateful for the customer’s generosity.

“It’s just been a really rough year for all of us,” bartender Michelle McCudden said. “For someone to do something like that really restored my faith in humanity. He just said that we work really hard and he wanted to do something nice and he just really wanted us to have it.”

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*First Published: June 28, 2021, 7:53 am