Here’s a few good tips

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 23/04/2016 (3475 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

They make people laugh for a living, but they sure don’t kid around when it comes to tipping their servers.

For the record, we’re talking about Canadian-born superstar comedian Jim Carrey and Amy Schumer, who just might be the hottest comic on the planet right now.

These two famously funny people served up headlines in separate incidents recently when they left incredibly generous tips on relatively small bills.

For starters, Carrey’s largesse raised eyebrows when he dined with friends at the Chester in New York City’s Meatpacking District and left a $225 tip on a bill of $151, seven times the standard 20 per cent gratuity.

Also flexing her generosity muscle in public was Schumer, who apparently remembers what life was like before becoming a star. Schumer recently left a $1,000 tip on a $77 bill for the bartenders at the smash Broadway musical Hamilton.

“I was very touched, it was just something so generous and so kind that you don’t see every day,” bartender Madeleine DeJohn told the New York Daily News.

Seeing how you readers have been working extra hard lately, we’ve decided to reward you with our generous list of the Top Five Tipping Tales of All Time:

 

5) The tip: $10,000… or not!

The tipper: Donald Trump

The tale: According to a recent New York Times report, the bombastic billionaire and Republican presidential front-runner has been known to pass out $100 bills to appreciative groundskeepers on his property in Palm Beach. “And they love him, not for that, they just love him,” Trump’s longtime butler Anthony Senecal told the Times.

Speaking of love, on Dec. 6, 2007, FoxNews.com published a report that began with these words: “Donald Trump isn’t a cheapskate when it comes to good service.” The story noted that, according to the blog site Derober.com, the mogul had left a stunning $10,000 tip on an $82.27 bill at a restaurant in Santa Monica, Calif.

Derober.com reported Billy D., a waiter at the Buffalo Club, got the gargantuan tip after The Donald complimented him on his dinner service. “What’s the biggest tip you ever got?” Trump reportedly asked. Billy replied producer Jerry Bruckheimer tipped him $500 once on a $1,000 bill, which is when Trump said “You’re very good at your job” and supposedly handed him the huge tip.

Sound too good to be true? Well, apparently it was. The very next day, FoxNews.com ran a corrected story. Fox reported the blogger behind the receipt purportedly showing Trump left a $10,000 tip had acknowledged it was, in fact, a fake. “This was done by the stupid restaurant to get publicity,” Trump told the New York Post. “It’s not my signature.”

If Donald had left a tip, no doubt it would have been even YUGER!

 

4) The tip: $10,000

The tipper: Just call her “Becky”

The tale: You will be relieved to hear this towering tip was the furthest thing from a hoax. It’s the story of Jessica Osborne, a 20-year-old waitress at a Pizza Hut in Angola, Ind., and a regular customer named Becky who changed her life.

Every Friday, Becky and her family, who did not want the media to use their last name, stopped by the pizza joint and placed the same order: a meat-lover’s pizza, half pepperoni, half black olives and mushroom. Through these regular visits, Jessica and Becky formed a special bond.

In 2007, Becky learned Jessica had enrolled in a local college to study photography but was forced to withdraw because of a lack of financial aid. “She was sweet and bright and cheerful and never complained,” Becky told ABC.

What Jessica didn’t know is Becky and her family had suffered a great tragedy — Becky’s husband and eldest daughter were killed in a car crash. On hearing about the young waitress’s broken dreams, Becky decided to use some of the cash from the settlement to make them a reality, which is when they handed Jessica a gift that would change her life — a $10,000 tip that would allow her to return to school.

Grab a hanky, because here’s what the grateful waitress gushed when she appeared on Good Morning America: “When I opened it up, I just — I thought maybe I read too many zeros and I lost my breath. It was amazing. It’s unbelievable. It doesn’t happen to people every day. I mean, I work at Pizza Hut!”

Talk about a slice of life, with extra toppings.

 

3) The tip: $12,000

The tipper: A mystery woman

The tale: If you worked at a restaurant and a customer left you a big box of cash, what would you do? Well, if you were Stacy Knutson, a struggling Minnesota waitress and mother of five, you’d turn it over to the police.

On a cold night in November 2011, Knutson was working a shift at the Fryn’ Pan eatery in Moorhead, Minn., when a female customer left a “to-go” box on the table. The waitress followed the woman out to her car to return the box, but the mysterious customer just replied: “No, I’m good, you keep it.”

Back in the restaurant, a perplexed Knutson opened the box and discovered five bundles of cash wrapped in rubber bands. What might be considered the world’s most generous tip totalled $12,000. Worried the cash could be tied to crime, Knutson turned it over to police, who said if no one claimed it in 60 days, the loot was hers. The waiting period was later extended to 90 days.

When she tried to claim the cash after three months, the waitress was told it was being held as part of a drug investigation. Her lawyer, Craig Richie, told CBS News: “They said, ‘Oh, well, no we had the drug dogs sniff it and we think there’s drugs on it, and we are going to keep it.”

Alleging the money smelled of marijuana, the police offered her a $1,000 reward. Which is when Knutson filed a lawsuit in Clay County District Court. The county attorney’s office and the police department then agreed the mother of five could keep the entire $12,000. “We argued that most money you carry in your pocket has drug residue on it,” Richie explained. “She could’ve kept the money and nobody would’ve known, but she said, ‘No, I’m going to do the right thing.’”

Who says nice people finish last?

 

2) The tip(s): $500 over and over and…

The tipper: Aaron Collins (posthumously)

The tale: When Aaron Collins died July 7, 2012, in a Lexington, Ky., hospital, he left behind grieving family and friends. The famously generous young man also left behind a surprising last wish — for his family to leave “an awesome tip” for a waiter or waitress. He reportedly felt great sympathy for servers because he once worked in a pizzeria and watched his best friend put herself through school as a waitress.

“Leave an awesome tip,” Aaron said in his will. “I’m not talking about 25 per cent. I mean $500 for a… pizza.” Aaron didn’t leave any cash to fulfil his last wish, so his brother, Seth, created a website (aaroncollins.org) to collect donations. The first $500 tip went to a waitress, Sarah Ward, at Puccini’s Smiling Teeth, a pizzeria in Lexington. “Are you serious? Are you kidding me? I’m going to be telling this story for the rest of my life,” Ward said on a three-minute video chronicling the results of Aaron’s final wish.

What the family didn’t realize was the video would go viral and tens of thousands of dollars in donations would start pouring into the website, allowing them to turn a one-time wish into a lasting legacy of generosity. Aaron’s family now chooses restaurants at random and servers receive the $500 tip no matter how good the food or service was. The website features an interactive map and videos documenting all the different places tips have been left. “If we can keep doing it, I’d like to keep giving these tips, and keep filming them so other people can see the happiness it’s bringing to someone,” Seth Collins told CNN. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jP-TOI1mO0A

 

1) The tip: $3 million    

The tipper: Police Det. Robert Cunningham

The tale: If this one sounds like a Hollywood movie, that’s because it is. This true-life tale was the basis for the 1994 romantic comedy-drama It Could Happen To You starring Nicolas Cage and Bridget Fonda.

The real-life hero is Det. Robert Cunningham, 55, a 30-year police veteran who, for eight years, had been a regular customer at Sal’s Pizzeria in Yonkers, N.Y. The married detective became friends with waitress Phyllis Penzo, who had waited on tables at Sal’s six nights a week for 24 years.

On March 30, 1984, the detective made an off-the-cuff proposal to his pal — would she want to split the potential winnings of a $1 lottery ticket in lieu of a tip? Penzo agreed and helped pick three of the six numbers for the New York State Lotto. According to People magazine, on April Fool’s Day, at 9 a.m., Cunningham called Penzo and informed her the ticket was now worth $6 million, half of which was hers. “I was still asleep,” she told People. “I said, ‘Don’t bother me now.’”

It wasn’t a joke. Cunningham, who back then had a salary of $30,000, insisted he never considered keeping all the cash. “I’ve been a simple person all my life. If I say I’ll do something, I do it. I hope money never changes me.” In a departure from the movie, Cunningham and Penzo were never romantically involved and the detective’s wife, Gina, never complained about splitting the jackpot.

They kept their jobs, with Penzo working as a waitress until 1986, when she finally packed it in because she got fed up with customers offering her lottery tickets. 

 

Seeing as how you’ve slogged all the way through today’s column, we’d like to offer you this tip — if you find yourself researching an article like this and you Google the words “world’s biggest tips,” most of the results will not be suitable for a family newspaper.

You can take that to the bank.

 

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca