According to a poster on Reddit, a woman allegedly left the message above on her receipt after eating a pricey meal at a restaurant. “Single mom, sorry,” she wrote, in the space left for a tip. “Thank you—it was great!” The furious waiter’s colleague scanned and posted the receipt, with appropriate invective that has been matched and exceeded by others on the site.
As usual, there are denials that the story is genuine, and claims that some single mother-hating trouble-maker created this miserable ethics smoking gun. “I think this bill is a fraud because I’ve met very few single mothers who expected to get special treatment for their status. They’re just hoping no one holds their situation against them,” wrote one skeptic. This is the “No True Scotsman” fallacy in Technicolor. The fact, if it is a fact, that few single mothers expect special treatment doesn’t prove that this one didn’t or doesn’t.
If the receipt is genuine, it certainly is evidence of a warped sense of fairness, a willful abdication of social obligations and a callous disregard of others. A woman who spends $138.35 on a single meal–exorbitant by any standards, in any American city or restaurant—is estopped from arguing that she is too beset by life’s burdens to properly reward her server. Indeed, in a restaurant that charges that much, she was probably obligated to tip others as well. Presumably she also stiffed the maitre d’, the parking valet and the bathroom attendant. ‘Single Mom’ is too financially strapped to meet her obligations, but just had to gorge herself on imported oysters, Beef Wellington, and a cinnamon soufflé, with a fitting imported wine for each course, naturally.
I have no difficulty believing that a Female Fick pulled this stunt. Increasingly, members of American society are being sent cultural messages that their unfortunate or self-inflicted status in the world should excuse them from meeting their societal obligations. This has become an increasingly popular definition of “fair.” She even failed her duties under this Bizarro World theory, however: she was supposed to let the rich people dining in the restaurant know that she expected them to pay their fair share of the tip she wasn’t leaving, ideally by screaming at them and calling them thieves and pigs. As it was, she just inflicted her sense of special leave to be uncaring, irresponsible and miserly on her innocent server, who, she must know, depends on tips to pay his own bills. If this was a fine restaurant (I sure hope it was—if she ran up a tab like that at Denny’s, it’s amazing she could waddle out the door), and her experience really was “great,” then she owed him about $28. Her conduct was hardly different from grabbing two sirloin at the supermarket and telling the checkout clerk, “Sorry! Can’t pay for these–I’m a single mom!” I’d say it’s worse. At least the loss of the steak money will be spread out: the poor waiter who served this creep ended up taking the whole loss himself.
I read about individuals doing stunningly unethical things every day—a woman faking cancer to trick a kind friend into being her lover; partisan fanatics burning the campaign signs of the other party’s candidate on someone’s front lawn, a daughter using her senile mother’s absentee ballot to cast an extra vote for he own favored candidate, and an advice columnist telling the granddaughter to ignore the abuse and voter fraud. All it proves is that our culture, including our communities, elected leaders, schools, celebrities, media and families, failed to imbue such individuals with basic ethical values, and as a result, they do appalling things. It is also a reasonable assumption that the unethical acts that finally draw attention to these unethical people are not exceptional, but typical of their approach to life and social interactions every day of their selfish, dishonest, irresponsible lives.
We have to build a more ethical culture. That’s what this means, and that’s the real lesson of the single mother’s offensive receipt.
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Facts and Graphic: Daily Mail
Ethics Alarms 
As a single mother at one time, I am appalled at this woman’s actions. Definitely a Fick. I don’t know how these people sleep at night.
I’m always looking to find the angle in these things. I try to assume 2 things: 1) that it is accurate as reported OR 2) in this case, perhaps the woman signed the bill, leaving everything else blank and cash for a tip and then the server made it look like she got stiffed so she could pocket the cash tip, avoid income taxes, and get wage compensation from the restaurant.
Always a possibility.
I’d use Occam’s Razor on that scenario, though.
Feel free to get super-analytic. The “single mom sorry” handwriting does not look similar at all to the “thank you it was great” handwriting.
And I’m no expert on comparing signature handwriting to print, but feel free.
There is no question whatever in my mind that the “single mom …” and the “Thank you…” were written by two different people. I know a thing or two about handwriting analysis, and to me, that much is obvious. The “g”, the “r”, the “y” and the cursive vs. printing is irreconcilable to one individual, not to mention the clear difference in the darkness of the respective texts.
What that means, I am less sure. The “Thank you…” was almost certainly written by the signatory, so whoever it was, whatever his/her marital status, they didn’t leave a tip on the bill. Perhaps they left one in cash. If I were to make an assumption, that would seem to be the high probability. I have done that before to ensure the waiter got the full measure of the tip, and didn’t have to share it.
But there is little doubt that there is something amiss here, and I don’t buy the story the waiter is telling. With that said, if I were to assume his story is correct, I think Jack is spot on.
It is interesting–one message is small and printed, the other is large and cursive, and the two messages, by dumb chance, have almost no letters in common. I know my printing and cursive have little similarity. I noted that the ‘i’s” in both messages were dotted, which isn’t that common.
I yield to Glenn’s expertise, but I didn’t find the writing suspicious. Then again, when I was a bank teller, I got fooled all the time.
Most people tend to favor cursive or print, hardly writing one message in one, then another in the other.
What could potentially still be in the realm of the behavior of the mother is that, when confronted with no tip, the waiter/waitress may have called the patron out on it (not right of them), and given a verbal excuse of “sorry, single mother”. Then a vindictive waiter/waitress may have scribbled the excuse on the tip line. This seems like it could be a situation where both parties are wrong.
If this is true, I don’t think anyone could seriously excuse this woman’s actions. While I hate the idea of mandatory tipping (why not just work into the price of the meal instead of pretending we have some say over it?), at this point it is the firmly entrenched custom of the land, and this lady committed a manners breach by not paying her fair share.
Thinking similarly to you – in this case, would it be ethical heroism for the restaurant to honor an appeal from the server’s manager to not let the server’s service be entirely for naught, by deducting from the cost of the meal that WAS paid by the tip-stiffer, and adding to the server’s pay an amount equal to the deduction? (say, in this case, $12?)
Women already have a bad reputation as tippers.
Sent from my iPad
I think gratuities — at whatever percentage — should be built into the total bill, and the patron should know this in advance. In hotels outside the US they do this all the time, so one is not left to decide how much to leave for the housekeepers, etc. I learned this first in the Bahamas, when we had the same housekeeper for a week and thought long and hard about what to leave her… We did leave her a nice cash gratuity and note (we tended to sleep in and knew it screwed up her schedule), then when we checked out our bill contained a 15% built-in gratuity for housekeeping. Oh well, she probably deserved and needed the extra cash.
In the US, we all know that waiters/waitresses depend on tips for much of their income; we leave 20% (my mother-in-law was appalled). But it is clearly unfair in several ways. First, being a waiter/waitress is a horrible, stressful, tiring job, and restauranteurs don’t pay them fairly — they are on the front lines and have much to do with the success of the restaurant (unless, of course, it’s Durgin Park in Boston, known and patronized both because of the food and its multi-generational reputation for having the surliest and ugliest waitresses on the planet and people get a kick out of it). “Servers” should be paid fairly for the important work they do, but aren’t, because they can presumably depend on tips to augment their wages. But (second), this system puts the server at the mercy of the patron: I simply can’t stand the fact that they feel the need to bow and scrape and check on you five times to make sure all is well, so you’ll “feel good” about them and leave them a generous tip. Third, it is incumbent upon the waiter/waitress to declare tips as income and pay taxes on it. If I had that kind of job, I would be sorely tempted to fudge on this when cash tips are left, especially as it adds income over and above what is withheld from official wages for tax purposes. (Embarrassing, but honest.)
In the “single mother” case, if this one isn’t real I’m sure there are other examples that are, and I agree that this person was unethical and irresponsible. Even supposing that ten people ate dinner for that tab, what could have been bought at the grocery store, and how many meals could be made, for that amount of money? Sorry, too poor to tip, then too poor to eat out. It’s like food stamps: you can’t use food stamps to buy luxury foods, liquor, etc. It may sound nasty, but if you have to be on food stamps, you shouldn’t (and legally, you just can’t) use them to fill up on filet mignon. That, however, is out of the hands of the food stamp user. In the “single mother” case, it was her choice, a gross rationalization, a cheat on the restaurant system, and she knew it. Shame on her.