‘Sometimes you gotta teach people empathy’: Waiter’s morbid lie stuns a screaming Karen into silence and earns him a big, fat tip

Sometimes you have to tell a little lie to teach a big lesson (and get an even bigger tip). This viral TikTok certainly proves that to be true. Restaurant server Dean Redmond shared a story about a nightmare customer who chewed him out about the service they received for their 20-person table.

Apparently, she told him that he hadn’t automatically added the tip that they had to pay for being a table over 10. She wasn’t shy about her laundry list of complaints, that is until he apologized and told her his mom just died and he hadn’t been himself.

The morbid but untrue revelation led the rude customer to backtrack immediately, apologize, and say she’d just had too much to drink. Dean even noted that when he walked away he heard the other women at the table getting mad at the customer for being so rude. They even left him an extra 20 dollars on his tip.

Commenters seemed to be in support of the lie, saying that despite the fact that he wasn’t telling the truth, it was a good reminder to his customers that they really don’t know what someone is going through. Others even took inspiration from Dean, saying that they were going to start telling lies like this one to rude customers.

Some even said they’d done something similar in order to get back at customers who left small tips or no tips at all which seems to be a growing issue. According to a survey conducted by Bankrate, 66% of Americans have a negative view of tipping and believe that establishments should pay their employees a livable wage in lieu of tips. Commenters on Dean’s video chimed in with the same sentiments, “Not tipping is bad, but I think it’s worse than restaurants make customers pay the waitstaff instead of giving them a better wage.” Bankrate even reports that 16% of people would rather pay higher prices and do away with tipping altogether.

Until that happens, Dean has a pretty fool-proof method of dealing with it. He often posts videos about customers from his service job. He even has a playlist titled “LIES,” where he tells stories about times he used his mom — who passed away in 2020 — as a way to get back at customers.

This may not be the most moral way to get through the day on a serving job, but sometimes you just have to do what you have to do.