JANUARY 31—The St. Louis pastor responsible for the credit card receipt heard ‘round the Internet termed her snide scribblings a “lapse in my character and judgment,” adding that the Applebee’s employee who posted the receipt online was fired yesterday after she lodged a complaint with restaurant managers. In a TSG interview, Alois Bell said that the online firestorm created by the receipt has left her stunned. “My heart is really broken,” said the 37-year-old Bell. “I’ve brought embarrassment to my church and ministry.”…. The Applebee’s receipt, which was posted earlier this week to Reddit, includes Bell’s handwritten notations referring to an 18 percent tip added to the bill (for groups larger than six). “I give God 10% why do you get 18,” wrote Bell, who scratched out the tip and added a zero in its place. She also wrote the word “Pastor” above her signature.
I put myself through my last year of college by waiting tables, so it doesn’t take much for me to leap to the defense of servers, who frankly have one of the crappiest jobs known to mankind. They’re dependent for a large part of their income on people who neither know nor care how much of an impact their boorishness and penury can have. A server, perhaps more than any other occupation, is dependent for their living upon the whims, prejudices, and general state of mind of those they serve. Anyone who’s waited on tables for a living, myself included, has a catalog of stories about people who believe they were to the manor born and therefore have license to treat a server like pond scum. Or worse.
Pastor Bell’s callous faux pas, which has bounced from one end of the Internet to the other, is one of the more thoughtless examples of jackassery (and I do believe I just invented a word) I’ve seen in quite some time. Her missive on her meal receipt: “I give God 10% why do you get 18?” is so breathtakingly thoughtless that I’m not certain I can do it justice. Strike one….
Hmm…does God have to pay rent or child care or keep the lights on or put food on the table or make the car payment? I think I just answered the penurious pastor’s question, no?
Bell’s attempted to rationalize her appalling and uncouth behavior as a “lapse in judgment that has been blown out of proportion.” If she had left it at that, it might be easier to accept her explanation. Not being willing to leave well enough alone and admit to the error of her ways, she complained to the manager of the Applebee’s, which resulted in the termination of the employee who photographed the receipt and put it online. Strike two….
Instead of merely admitting to her oafishness and accepting the consequences of her behavior, Pastor Bell succeeded in getting an Applebee’s employee fired. Perhaps that employee shouldn’t have uploaded the photo of the receipt, but did she deserve to be fired for exposing Pastor Bell’s tactless self-superiority and churlishness?
Strike three can’t be too far off….
Stay classy, eh??
