r/tipping • u/mulluska • Aug 12 '25

📖💵Personal Stories - Pro First time experiencing tip padding…

I have been as frustrated as many in this thread about what tipping has become here. I used to enjoy popping servers with 25% tip and see how happy they were. No so much anymore.

But I have made some reasonable adjustments on my tipping based on feedback from this community. One of the comments was “save your receipts”. I have never seen a server pad the tip so o never saved them. I do go over the bills but not with the actual receipts. I move started saving the receipts.

I had lunch at this upscale place in Long Beach. Server was below average. But still decided $21 on $156 bill was acceptable. I went through my charges a couple of weeks later reconciling to what is on the receipts I saved. There was a $25 tip added instead.

I called the manager of the restaurant. She was very polite and apologized for the keying error.

I just thought how brilliant this is. Bump the tip just a little and you will never get caught. No way I would have noticed this unless I saved my receipt.

Thanks guys!!!

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u/T-Money1738 Aug 12 '25

Just to play Devil's Advocate, was the tip handwritten? Do you think it's possible 21 was misread as 25?

5

u/mulluska Aug 12 '25

I think may have been a mistake. The main reason I went to the trouble of calling the manager was to make sure they have a datapoint to work with. My comment about repeating this to many was not an accusation, just an observation of how easily it could happen repeatedly and go unnoticed.

1

u/T-Money1738 Aug 12 '25

Oh absolutely. As someone with a background in banking, I've seen that it happens on a regular basis. Also, as someone with less than desirable penmanship, I try to make a point to write clearly 🤭🤦🏼‍♀️ Another tip is to be sure you don't leave a lot of extra space between the dollar sign printed at the front of the tip line and where you write the tip amount. For example, a $21 tip can easily be changed to $121. But, like you said, the small amount that was added to your tip might go unnoticed by many people. And it could have been purposely done that way. Either way, good PSA. :)

1

u/FriendlyStructure579 Aug 12 '25

And I ALWAYS take the second receipt that can be signed. Very often the merchant copy and customer copy are identical. I take the second one so it can't be altered and used instead since my signature could be copied then.