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There’s a difference between being unhappy with service and deciding a waiter deserves absolutely nothing because the kitchen messed up a meal. Reddit tends to have very strong opinions about where that line is.

Then came the bill.

Despite spending roughly $400, the family left no tip at all. According to OP, her mother even bragged about it afterward. Feeling awful for the waiter, she quietly returned to the restaurant and left him $100—using money she had originally been saving for her mom’s Mother’s Day gift.

AITA for tipping the waiter with the money I was planning to get a mother’s day gift with?

Hi, a little relevant but about me before I start is that I (20f) work at a high end department store where we get a lot of limited edition items.

I was planning on buying my mother a limited run of a perfume that would be coming in, since my manager allows us to sometimes reserve an item. my mother’s wanted that perfume for a while and I told her I would get it for her for mother’s day.

my family and I (about 7 people total) went out to dinner recently and it was extremely busy that night, and I could tell all the staff was worked to the bone.

Can see where this is going…

we sit down, order our food and my mother asks for some modifications to be made to a dish and the waiter says that it’s fine and the food will be out soon.

the food takes longer than it usually would, which makes sense to me because of how busy it is and when it comes it turns out the chef forgot to put the modifications to the dish my mother ordered and she starts talking badly about the waiter to his face.

He apologizes and tells her that he will take it back and have them remake it. she says that it should have been on him to look and verify that the food was made correctly and that he was terrible at his job.

Poor guy.

he brings it back and all seems to go well but when the bill comes, they leave no tip, and the bill was like 400 dollars, and my mother starts bragging about it after we leave in the parking lot.

I tell her I forgot something in the restaurant and I run back inside to find the waiter and tip him a hundred dollars.

The hundred dollars came from the money I was saving to buy my mother that perfume and I tell her after we get back home when she asks what I forgot in the restaurant.

Uh oh…

her and my siblings blow up at me for being selfish and valuing “a stranger over her own mother’s feelings” and that I was a selfish daughter, etc.

I feel sort of bad because I know she was looking forward to it for months and I gave that money to a stranger.

AITA?

Reddit overwhelmingly voted NTA, with many commenters arguing that the waiter appeared to be taking the blame for a kitchen mistake during an obviously busy shift. A lot of people felt the bigger issue wasn’t even the missing tip—it was the fact that OP’s mother seemed proud of leaving one.

Many commenters also pointed out that while OP technically spent money she had earmarked for a gift, it was still her money to spend. A gift isn’t an entitlement, and several people joked that the perfume budget became a “kindness budget” instead. Others noted that if someone chooses to publicly humiliate a waiter and then brag about withholding a tip, they probably shouldn’t be shocked when others disagree with that behavior.

The general consensus was that OP may have disappointed her mother, but she didn’t wrong her.

This person says clearly Mom never worked at a restaurant. NTA.

This person says it was mom’s choice, and she made a bad one.

And this person is grateful for OP’s kindness.

Turns out the limited-edition item that got purchased that night was karma.