The COVID-19 pandemic has meant that simple pleasures we once enjoyed like eating out with friends or family at a restaurant, now comes with certain safety protocols in place for the protection of everyone. It’s a small price to pay to help keep others in our community healthy.
Safety is why we’ll see things like hand sanitizing stations in restaurant entrances, why we wear masks when moving around the place, why menus are either reduced or listed online, and why there is usually a maximum seating time that we’re allowed to stay before having to leave. It’s not ideal, but it’s what is needed to allow restaurants to safely operated at a reduced capacity.
In the state of New Jersey, their current COVID-19 guidelines allow for a 50% seating capacity in restaurants. For the Glenbrook Brewery in Morristown, New Jersey, their policy was a 90-minute seating limit. However, this rule did not sit well with one customer who became very upset.
In fact, the customer was so angry, that they ended up taking out their frustrations on their server. Rather than leaving her a tip, they chose to leave the restaurant a rather nasty note on the receipt which said, “I’m sorry the server gets screwed on this. Don’t kick paying customers out after 90 minutes.” A photo of the receipt was shared to Facebook by Jamie Lauren, who wanted to remind the public that the 90-minute limit is not something the businesses are implementing for fun – but for the health and safety of everyone.
The Glenbrook Brewery has been open since December 2020, and they have been following guidelines in order to keep their customers safe. This means that they’ve taken precautions such as having QR-code digital menus and limiting the seating time to 90 minutes or less. Like many other businesses, this restaurant uses the 90-minute limit in order to keep a steady revenue stream despite its limited seating capacity.
According to a comment by one of the restaurant founders, Darren Cregan, the server who was stiffed her tip was a woman named Beth. She had been waiting on a group of four. All she did was nicely remind them at their 80-minute point that they would soon have to give back their table after 90 minutes.
Beth, who is a nurse, has been working part-time at the brewery in order to raise money so she can get herself through a doctoral program. She’s been described as “outstanding” by her fellow servers, so it was pretty surprising that someone would be so mean towards her just based off a simple health and safety policy.
Following the incident, there was a post about it made to a local Facebook group called Morristown Stimulus Plan. Shocked, the local community in Morristown decided to do something nice for Beth. That resulted in around $1,700 being raised in donations for Beth.
According to TODAY, the server, who was struck by the kindness of her community, chose to only keep a portion of the money for herself. As it turned out, she distributed the result amongst her fellow coworkers at Glenbrook. How incredibly sweet!
What do you think of her actions? Let us know!