Cheap Pastor, Fired Waitress, Social Media and A Sense of Proportion

As always  in those cases where something stupid becomes a talker on line, we have more details on the case of the pastor who stiffed the waitstaff over an 18 percent gratuity.

You might recall that the pastor wrote on a restaurant bill, "I give God 10 percent, why do you get 18 percent?"

The receipt that set off the firestorm

First of all, my sexism was on display for the world to see when I first wrote about this. I kept referring to the unnamed pastor as "he" because I had no idea who it was. I just assumed it was a he, forgetting that obviously, a pastor can be she.  And it was she in this case, apparently,

Anyway, the waitresss that snapped a photo of the receipt and put it on Reddit got fired from her job, according to Consumerist.

She admits she made the initial mistake of showing the photo with the pastor's signature on it. Even though the signature was pretty much illegible, people figured out who it was. The waitress subsequently posted a new version of the pic on Reddit, minus the idea, and she pleaded with people not to identify the customer, but it was all for naught.

Here's what the waitress, Chelsea has to say, according to The Consumerist:

"Some time on Wednesday, Chelsea says the customer who had left the receipt contacted her Applebee's location, demanding that everyone be fired, from the servers involved to the managers
According to Chelsea, until the receipt story got out there, her time at Applebee's had been without incident.
"I had been well liked and respected," she explains. "My sales were high, my managers had no problems with me, and I was even hoping to move up to management sometimes this year."


The Smoking Gun has more details on the pastor's apology. 

Said the pastor, Alois Bell, according to The Smoking Gun:

"My heart is really broken," said the 37 year old Bell. "I've brought embarrassment to my church and ministry."


The Smoking Gun quoted Bell as saying the incident was a lapse in judgment that has been blown out of proportion."

I don't know if Chelsea's charge that Bell wanted everyone fired is true, but if it is, there's another example of blowing things out of proportion for ya.

Speaking of blown out of proportion, it seems like this whole thing is, and maybe I'm contributing a bit. What started out as a small local incident of rudeness became magnified a million times over via social media, and now it's a big nationwide scandal and everybody is chiming in.

This happens a lot nowadays.  Seems like everybody involved made some fairly minor mistakes, but the mix of  a cheapskate, relgion, money, social media and a general sense of unfairness was the alchemy that blew this into a Big Deal.

So we have a waitress that's been fired over a impulsive decision to post something on line, which seems out of proportion. The pastor is supposedly getting death threats, and that's really out of proportion. People really have GOT to learn to calm down.

I don't know about you, but since this type of thing happens so much, I worry every time I have the slightest lapse of judgment, like everybody does, it will turn into a national bruhaha that turns my life upside down.

I can see ruining somebody's life over a major crime, like murder.  But none of us should have to live in fear of having our lives ruined over minor sins.  Let's get real.