Waitress Gets $446 Tip on $6 Bill

Published on: May 17, 2013 at 8:32 AM

An Indianapolis waitress scored her biggest tip ever Wednesday morning.

CeCe Bruce, who has been working at Steak ‘n Shake at Keystone and 54th Street for two years, said she was unprepared for the generosity of one of her regular customers , a woman known as Miss Jo.

Bruce said, “I was having a hard time at another table, but kept smiling and going on.” When Bruce went to pick up the credit card receipt at Miss Jo’s table, she thought she had received a tip of nearly $50.

“At first I thought, ‘$46?” And I said, ‘Miss Jo, that’s really generous,’” Bruce said. But Miss Jo’s tip was almost 10 times what Bruce thought it was.

“When I looked again, I said ‘Oh my gosh Miss Jo, I’m not taking that!’ And she said, ‘Yes, you’re taking it’ and I said no and she said ‘You need to take it,’” Bruce said.

Miss Jo’s bill was $5.97. The tip she left Bruce was $446 — not $46.

“I didn’t think I was worth $400 but, you know, she feels I am,” Bruce said. The part-time Martin University said she plans to use the money to pay bills.

Bruce’s general manager Greer Gooley said she deserves the huge tip .

“She stays late, comes in early. Whenever we need her, she’s here. So she deserves it more than anyone,” Gooley said. “It just lets servers know that you work hard and it does pay off. There are people out there that [if] you do your job people reward you for it.”

CeCe Bruce isn’t the only person to have received a large tip from a patron. A waiter at Angus Barn steakhouse in North Carolina received a $200 tip from Peyton Manning last March, on top of an 18 percent gratuity that was already include.

Not everyone is as generous as Manning and Miss Jo, however. A single mother whose bill came up to almost $140 skipped the tip , writing, “Single mom sorry” in the tip line. Adding insult to injury, the woman went on to write, “Thank you, it was great.”

A picture of the receipt was posted to Reddit, and Redditors slammed the woman for her selfishness. There was some debate about the authenticity of the photo, but that didn’t prevent the outpouring of outrage.

What do you think of CeCe Bruce earning an almost $500 tip on a $6 bill?

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