Friends chip in to give waitress a $1,000 tip

(Image credit: iStock)

published 22 December 2017

A group of seven friends wanted to make someone's Christmas a little more merry this year, and they gave an unsuspecting waitress a gift she'll never forget.

Mike "Tonto" Alexander heard about people pooling their money to leave a big tip for their waitress and asked six of his friends if they wanted to join together to do something similar. "None of us are going to miss that $100, but whoever gets that $1,000, it'll have a nice impact on them," Alexander told WWMT. They decided to give their mega tip to a waitress at Theo & Stacy's Restaurant in Kalamazoo, Michigan, because the restaurant is known for giving back to the community and providing free meals during the holidays.

On Monday, the friends went to the restaurant and sat in Mary Lively's section. Lively has worked at Theo & Stacy's since 1994, and after Alexander and his friends paid their $70 check, they handed her an envelope. When she opened it and found 10 $100 bills inside a card, she became "breathless," she said, and asked if it was real money. Lively said she'll use the generous tip to make her car payment and pay some other bills, with the rest going to presents for her family. "All these years being a waitress, I finally got a bonus," she said. "A good one, too!'

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

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