On Tuesday, Megan King (@alienpostarr) shared two special photos with her Twitter followers in a now-viral tweet with more than 600,000 likes. The first is a picture of a handwritten note she’d received with her tip. The second is a picture of her reaction to the note, which shows King smiling and in tears.
The note reads: “Thank you very much for your kind service. This was my first time eating out alone since my husband passed. I was hoping I could get through it.”
King’s tweet reads simply: “in pain.”
Though she didn’t post about the exchange until Tuesday, King told Newsweek that she’d received the note Sunday.
“She [the customer who left the note] came in about halfway through my 17-hour shift, and it was on Sunday, which is always pretty busy,” said King. “About halfway through her meal, it started to slow down so we chatted for a few minutes. Small talk, nothing too deep. She told me she was almost 70 and has been slowing down a bit.
“She said she just wanted to stop by an old favorite for a bite,” King continued.
King recalled that the woman looked “a bit sad” as she ate, and looked to King frequently throughout her meal.
“In retrospect, I wish I would’ve taken her quiet as an invitation. I think that’s what she wanted, looking back,” said King. “She kept looking up at me so I assumed something wasn’t right with her meal or that she needed something.
“I guess she did, in a way. [She needed] an ear.”
Though King wishes she had spent more time with the woman, the note serves as proof that her attentiveness made a big impact. And in turn, the customer made an impact on her as well.
“I was very surprised,” shared King. “As soon as I read that she’d lost her husband, I lost it.
“I had to use the restroom to get myself together enough to tend to my other tables even though I really didn’t have time to take a rest,” she continued.
Others online were also touched by the note.
“[T]hat’s super sad, but also sweet at the same time,” replied one commenter. “i just wanna give whoever wrote this note a hug.”
But sadly, others used the tweet as an excuse to start an argument. Many were quick to jump to conclusions about the size of the tip, which, in the picture, appears to be rather small.
“Are you crying because of that 1 dollar tip or the note because I would be crying because of the first one,” said a commenter.
King was quick to defend the customer and set the record straight. She shared in a response tweet that the woman’s meal cost $11 and she left a $3 tip. However, she added: “Not everyone can afford to tip well.”
When someone took issue with that statement, King again defended the woman.
“[O]ld people who live on fixed income deserve to get out for a nice meal. big tippers make up for it anyway. im serving them. you arent. im standing by that, thanks.”
“A lot of our customers are older and living on fixed incomes, so they tip what they can,” King told Newsweek. “They are always welcome, no matter how much or little they tip.”
And when it comes to the widow who left the kind note, King stated that her tip was “more than enough,” but she wouldn’t have cared if it had been smaller.
“She was sweet and easy to take care of.”
