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Credit card declines are awkward enough without a server deciding the customer must be trying to pull something.

One husband offers a second card after the first fails, but when the waitress questions whether he will still be there, would you shrug it off?

The payment eventually goes through, yet her earlier suspicion leaves one diner reconsidering exactly how generous the tip should be.

See why an 83-cent tip became the most memorable part of a $91 dinner.

AITAH for tipping 83¢?

I went out to dinner with my wife last night.

When the bill came I gave the waitress my card.

She came back shortly after looking upset.

She slapped the card down on the table and said “declined.”

I thought her tone and brevity was rude.

I took out a different card from my wallet and handed it to her.

A card getting declined isn’t that rare.

Maybe it’s out of funds, or maybe it’s frozen for any number of reasons, or maybe some server failure just didn’t confirm the transaction.

But her assumption was…

While I was putting the first card in my wallet she didn’t move.

I looked at her and said “You okay?”

She said “If I go back and try to run this are you still going to be sitting here when I get back?”

I asked her if she thought her tone was appropriate for speaking to customers.

She said “you’re only a customer if you pay.”

I asked to speak to her manager.

I’m already confused, because if their plan was to dine-and-dash, wouldn’t they have done that with the first non-working card?

She left with the card.

My wife said maybe the waitress had encountered scammers before and was anxious about it.

I said being rude and being cautious are two different things.

The waitress returned with my card and the slip to fill out.

She said “This one worked. I’m sorry.”

Then came the tip:

I thanked her and took the booklet.

Our bill was $91.17.

I wrote in 83¢ as the tip and $92 as the total.

I handed it back to her and started to get up to leave.

She said “you’re really not going to tip me?”

I said “no, you were rude to me.”

She said “I have to tip out the bartender and the busboy. I just paid money to serve you.”

I said “Well, in the future you shouldn’t be so rude.”

So now, he’s wondering aloud if he was in the right:

My wife thinks I was an AH to the waitress and should have given her ten bucks at least, because it was an honest misunderstanding.

I would have given her $28.83 if she wasn’t rude to me, but I don’t want to pay to be insulted.

Was I the [jerk]?

For the record I called my bank and the card was flagged for fraud because of a pending $1 change that is often associated with fraud attempts.

I resolved it.

People responded in the comments:

We kinda skipped over the manager part, didn’t we?

Outta control.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about an employee who decides to mute her boss’s number after he insists on calling her at home after hours.

Nobody felt much sympathy.

The first card had been flagged for possible fraud, but the second worked, and the bill was paid without any issue.

What stuck with him was the waitress questioning whether he would disappear, then insisting he was only a customer if he actually paid.

Instead of rewarding that treatment, he left 83 cents and let the tiny tip explain exactly how the service had landed.

She worried he might skip the bill, but the only thing that really disappeared was about $28 in gratuity.