Have faith
I gave change to a woman a few weeks back. Her and some younger dude were my last table for lunch, they were nice enough, the bill was low and there was little memorable about the whole thing other than when they left.
After giving her three fives and five singles back for a twenty she had given me, I returned to the table after they’d left to find the five singles on the table—and the three fives under it.
Surely, she must have dropped this and there the two were, entering their car right by the window. I was looking right at them, waiting for her to notice she forgot the money because surely she couldn’t just leave without it. And if she did, it wouldn’t make it wrong for me to now make it mine, would it?
This thing I’ve developed recently is called a conscience, and so this things convinced me that I needed to go outside and needed to give this money to the woman. And when I did, I indeed assumed that maybe she’d tell me to keep one of the fins—or maybe promise to tell corporate about this.
But she didn’t. And nothing was said.
All I knew was that I could have used that $15.
Fast-forward to last Saturday night when during an incredibly rushed moment where three of my four tables were suddenly ready to pay, one couple flagged me back down after receiving their change to point out that I had given them an extra 10 bucks.
That was awfully nice of them. “I really appreciate that,” I said during one of the rare moments I would have been OK with no tip at all. (They still left 20 percent.)
And then there’s tonight where a fairly good but small family of six was my first table of the night and ran up a $75 bill. The receipt was long and extended outside the check presenter, so you can forgive the woman for leaving her credit card behind since it was covered up by the receipt she left behind after writing in a $15 tip.
I gave the card to the manager and thought she’d back in at some point to retrieve it. Sure enough, in the middle of another busy moment, the host told me there was a woman at the door who forgot something at one of my tables. The manager was nearby and I really had no involvement, but the woman came to thank me personally when I returned from my tables a little later, shaking my hand and enclosing some folded dollar.
I wanted to tell her it really wasn’t necessary but it happened so fast that I still couldn’t believe it until the end of the night that when I unfolded the bill it turned out to be a twenty.
With the 10 I got to keep after nearly giving away last week and the 20 for nothing tonight, that’s double what I supposedly lost by doing the right thing a few weeks ago.
