People in the service industry can all agree on at least one universal truth: non-tippers are the absolute worst. The industry, as it exists in the U.S., relies on tipping in order for employees to make a livable wage, but since when has Donald Trump cared about the little guy?
The pugnacious former president is presently in court facing down harsh criminal charges that could see the 77-year-old labeled a felon. During breaks from the proceedings, he’s keeping to the same diet that earned him the nickname “Diaper Don” and proving himself to be among the lowest possible class of customer.
Anyone who’s ever worked in the service industry will tell you that it sucks, but a food service worker’s day — or week, or even month — can be made by a single customer. And no, not because they got to meet the soiled remains of the once-great office of president, but because one single customer — say one with an overstuffed bank account — can be kind enough to provide a tip that pushes a service worker’s earnings out of “abysmal” territory and into “livable.”
Is that what Donald Trump, self-declared billionaire, multi-property owner, and champion of “all Americans” did during his visit to a nearby Manhattan McDonalds’? Of course not. This is the stingy man who rarely pays his bills, shorts out his own legal team, and constantly pleads for his fees to be reduced. He’s too busy paying sky-high court fees to do something as inconsequential as tip, even when he’s ordering an utterly criminal amount of food.
Let’s keep in mind here that Trump’s McDonald’s purchase, which leveled out to more than $500 in total, was easily catering-sized. It also didn’t make the poor, overworked employees who desperately scrounged it up a cent more cash than a typical order. All that cash Trump poured into the business goes straight to the higher-ups, who don’t end up with a lick of extra work on their hands. Trump left that McDonald’s with a truly massive amount of food in tow, leaving behind exhausted employees who inarguably had to scramble to fill such a massive order in a short amount of time. What he didn’t leave behind was a tip for all their hard work, essentially meaning that their labor was for naught. With or without his massive order, they’re making the same measley hourly wage — they’re just far more tired for it.
Trump’s unbeatable parsimoniousness was revealed by NBCUniversal Senior Executive Mike Sington, who shared a snapshot of Trump’s team, overladen with fast food, headed out of the McDonald’s. He noted, in the tweet, that an employee from the McDonald’s said, “Trump’s people came back in today for lunch and told us not to tell anyone about their order this time. They ordered different items and spent less this time, around $500. But again they left no tip, nothing.”
No tip on a $500 order is a good counter-argument for murder, so the fact that those employees are quietly seething instead of putting the disgraced politician on blast puts them in saint-adjacent territory. That is a truly massive amount of work to do for no proper compensation, and doing it for one of the wealthiest people in the country is nothing short of a slap in the face.
In case you were curious, Donald Trump’s net worth is still estimated at more than $4 billion. That is an impossibly high number that $500 doesn’t come close to touching. Another $500 on top as a tip — something those poor bedraggled employees absolutely deserve, if only for sharing air with Donald Trump’s team — is literal pennies to someone in his tax bracket. Yet he can’t even toss a measly penny their way.
We all know Trump is a dried-up trash bag of a human being, but this rankles me more than many of the utterly inhumane things he’s done recently. This man champions himself as caring about every American, as the only voice of regular Americans, as “small town” America’s true representative ⏤ a Bible-toting Christian, for the love of god ⏤ yet here he is spitting in the face of “regular Americans.” It’s par for the course for this despicably selfish succubus, but that doesn’t make it any less enraging.
