Tip Misunderstanding at New Hampshire’s Tuckaway Tavern Proves We Have the Best Community
Tuckaway Tavern Tip Incident
Yesterday, we highlighted an open letter to a recent customer of Tuckaway Tavern in Raymond, New Hampshire, in response to what a lot of community members thought was one of the worst things done at a restaurant ever -- writing "get a real job" in the tip line of a tab.
An Inside Joke
Late yesterday afternoon, it was brought to light what actually happened with this whole incident. It was a legitimate thing written on a tab, but after this whole incident blew up to a much larger level, Tuckaway Tavern followed up with a post on Facebook explaining that this wasn't the original hateful incident once suspected.
Turns out, the author of the "tip" in question is a boyfriend of one of the bartenders at Tuckaway, and the whole "get a real job" thing is apparently an inside joke between them. The reason this whole issue carried on a couple of days? The bartender apparently was off for the rest of the weekend and doesn't have social media, so when she caught wind about it during her next shift, she set the record straight.
On the plus side? No bartender or staff member was actually ripped off for services provided over the weekend. The not so plus side? Not exactly a funny joke, considering situations like this legitimately happen.
A Community Steps Up
Multiple lessons were learned with this situation, though. The first of which, one could hope, would be the lesson learned by the couple in question, and that sometimes inside jokes should remain just that -- inside. A large, more positive lesson, was also learned from his whole misunderstanding.
Upon the original post on Saturday afternoon that highlighted the given "tip," our community stepped up in such a massive way. Random customers were going down to Tuckaway itself offering to leave tip money to make up for the nasty message written on that tab.
Other customers, friends, or even strangers apparently sent money via Venmo (a money transfer app) to make up for the lack of tip (and respect) that appeared on the tab when it was originally posted. And there was even a woman who created a GoFundMe page to raise money to offset the lack of tip left.
According to Tuckaway, all money given has been returned to the generous people who offered it up. But all of this was triggered within HOURS of the original post by Tuckaway Tavern. Which honestly goes to prove one thing.
We live in the best community in the country. Maybe the world. It doesn't matter where you're reading this from -- New Hampshire, Maine, Vermont, Southern New England -- hands down situations like this prove that nobody does it like we do in New England. We can be loud, we can forget the letter "r" exists in some areas, we may refer to strangers as "from away" and talk about going "down there yander" -- but no one has the heart that New Englanders do.
And clearly, no matter what divide exists in the world, when our community members are in need or even if they're unjustly treated, we'll step up when it counts. Inside jokes be damned.