SERVER FIRED AFTER COMPLAINING AN NFL RUNNING BACK DIDN’T TIP ENOUGH
BY MIKE POMRANZ |
Outside of someone like Bill Gates walking in the door, having a professional athlete sat in your section is about as much excitement as a server can expect on most days. Beyond being able to coast at parties for at least the next month with the “guess who I served” story, you’re also probably in line for a pretty nice tip – assuming we’re talking about some real pro athlete and not some poor sap trying to earn a living playing Major League Lacrosse. (Go Rochester Rattlers!)
However, a tip is still a tip – meaning if you want to get your hands on that sweet professional athlete money, it would behoove you to provide decent service. Otherwise, you might end up with what we can now call a “DeAngelo Williams situation.”
Over the weekend, the current starting running back for the Pittsburgh Steelers (because it’s against NFL policy to let Le’Veon Bell start the season without a suspension), reportedly left a 74 cent tip on a $128.26 food tab at Ledo Restaurant in College Park, Maryland. The bartender who served Williams was apparently pretty upset at the situation and, according to TMZ, she turned to Facebook to vent. “Just now at work I had Deangelo Williams come in and I waited on while tending bar,” she was quoted as writing. “His check was $128.25. He left me $129 with no tip but .75 cents. So there you go Stealers fans, your running back is cheap as s**t!!! Smh.”
Incensed with the “cheap” allegation, Williams took to Twitter to thoroughly defend himself, claiming he wanted to leave an even smaller tip. “I tried to leave nothing at all I couldn’t find change,” he tweeted – supporting my theory that NFL players rarely carry pennies on them. Among his many complaints about the service were accusations that the restaurant got his order wrong before hastily fixing it, with the whole fiasco taking “1.5 hour.s” “Oh it was awful,” he stressed. The running back even went so far as to point out that he “use to wait tables and use to be a bag boy so I know what I’m doing here,” and equally importantly, reminded people “it’s my money I do what I want with it.”
The restaurant apparently agreed with the NFLer because when TMZ followed up with Ledo, co-owner Jimmy Marcos said the bartender had been fired for the way she handled the situation. “We were in the wrong,” Marcos says. “I want to offer anything I can do. I’ll be sure to apologize in person next time he visits and pick up his next meal.”
Okay, sure, but here’s the question we all want the answer to: How will this effect DeAngelo Williams fantasy performance this coming Sunday?
