Parents Upset About “Kids Tax” at Restaurant

A diner in in New Jersey is adding an automatic gratuity, or “kids tax” onto checks when minors come into the restaurant without their parents and some people are not happy about. I am fucking living for it.

The story in bullet points:

  • Wayne Hills Diner says that a lot of kids hang out there in large groups after school, and the servers were consistently getting screwed.
  • The menu clearly states that an 18% gratuity can be added at their discretion.
  • A mom named Melissa Desch got all upset when her daughter Isabella was charged a gratuity for her milkshake and fries.
  • Mom calls the news to complain.
  • Restaurant is all, “deal with it.”

Yes! Yes! Yes!

Servers in New Jersey make $2.13 an hour so if a bunch of middle-schoolers like Isabella want to sit in a booth for three hours and share two orders of fries, a milkshake and four glasses of water as they Snapchat each other, that server needs to get some money. We all know kids that age don’t leave shit for tips. All they leave is a pile of sugar packets that have been ripped open, a bunch of salt and ketchup all over the place and the smell of puberty.

Mom doesn’t think it’s fair. “I’ve been going there since I was a child. But with them (the kids) they don’t understand and they just pay the bill. And you know, she doesn’t understand that she has a right to not pay a tip.” Ummm, Mom. You just proved the point of why they are adding the gratuity. If they don’t know how to tip and your cheap ass isn’t going to teach them, then it’s up to the restaurant owner to make sure his staff is being taken care of. The mother has also stated that her daughter won’t be going back to the diner, which I’m sure is going to make Isabella so very happy.

“But, Mom! All my friends go to Wayne Hills Diner after school!”

“So what? If you’re friends all jumped off a cliff would you do that too?”

“No, Mom, because I’m not a dumbass like you. I just want to be social with the people I like and if I have to pay ninety cents more to do so, I’m okay with it. Besides, don’t those servers deserve to get paid for the job they do?”

“That’s not the point, Isabella! You’ll go to McDonald’s where you don’t have to leave a tip. Or find another diner that doesn’t add the tip so you can stiff them.”

“But Mom! All of my friends go to this diner!”

“So you’ll make new friends, what’s the big deal?”

Yeah, Mom. Way to teach your daughter how to get through life: when something happens that you don’t think is fair, call the news to complain about it and then alienate your daughter from all of her friends just so you can keep on being stingy. That’s gonna work out great.

Way to go, Peter Logos and Wayne Hills Diner! I support you and so does every server in this country who has dealt with a group of rowdy pre-pubescent children who took up a whole section of a restaurant for far too long and didn’t leave near enough of a tip.

And to Mom Desch I say this: give your daughter an extra dollar in her allowance so she can go to the diner with her friends after school on Friday. Get the fuck over it.

Discussion

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