When you’re having a great night at the bar and your social battery has run out, it can be easy to walk out of the joint without remembering to close your tab.
But according to this bartender in an X post uploaded to @NoCapFights‘ account, you may want to think twice about not closing yourself out—that’s because an automatic 20% tip is going to be added to your total.
The video is pulled from the TikTok of well-known bartender Michelle (@michellebellexo), who’s frequently viral for her bartender takes. Michelle’s original video has racked up more than 4.4 million views.
Fraud or company policy?
The reposted video sparked controversy on the social media platform, with some people accusing her of openly admitting to committing “fraud” with others defending her actions, stating that there are signs at bars that detail these charges will be appended to any still-open tabs at closing.
“It’s 2:30 in the morning we just closed out all the open tabs, the tabs that nobody closed out that we had a card saved for, y’all are not gonna believe this,” she says. She then grabs a receipt, which she then pulls out to reveal that it’s not a single receipt, but multiple tabs.
The entire collection of yet-to-be-closed tabs is so long it stretches past the bar and across the dance floor, shaming every CVS receipt to have ever existed.
She begins talking to her co-worker, Joey, and asks him to grab one end of the receipts and walk backwards. He can’t believe the number of “walkouts” asking her over and over again if she’s serious about the amount of patrons who left without closing their bar tabs.
“That’s how many people pay their tab but they walked out without closing their tab out. You guys!” she says.
Wait you can do this? pic.twitter.com/UB9KcJ5d7B
— Wild content (@NoCapFights) July 25, 2024
Do bars add a 20% tip to walked tabs?
So what’s the total number of non-walkout tabs she encountered during her shift? She gives the final count in the video. “Now for all 372 of those tabs I get to go in here and add 20% tip to every single one thank God I can do math really quickly.”
She then films herself going down the line of different credit cards as she begins tallying up the 20% gratuity for each and every one of them.
There were some folks who were confused by the bartender’s actions, like this one X user who couldn’t understand the policy. They asked, “If you don’t close the tab, there’s an automatic 20% tip added?”
Bartenders defend the practice
Someone else seemed to think that she was taking advantage of inebriated patrons in bad faith: “She’s going to jail,” they penned. That was a sentiment echoed by other folks on the app. Someone else wrote, “Yeah she just showed us how she’s committing fraud.”
There were some X users who came to her defense, however. One person replied that they were familiar with this practice, stating that it was quite common. “Bars in Austin have signs posted for 20% automatic tip,” they wrote.
Someone else wrote that they as a bartender they work at an establishment that engages in a similar practice and, purportedly, their patrons don’t really care. They wrote, “when I bartended, we put a sign up that read “all walked tabs get 20% gratuity added’. very rarely people would complain.”
It seems that the automatically added gratuity is only considered kosher if there’s a sign posted in the bar, however. “If her merchant processor see this they will cancel her account. It is fraud when select a business add tips without the customer approval, unless there is a sign posted,” they wrote.
The abandoned tab gratuity standard
According to a user who responded to this Quora post, 20% “abandoned tab gratuity” is considered standard.
The Credit Boards forum also seemed to confirm this practice as well. “Some bars have signs saying open tabs left behind will be charged an n% gratuity. usually, n = 15, 18, or 20…I know that restaurants can get away with auto-grat as long as its stated on the menu,” wrote one user.
One Reddit user started a discussion on the practice of abandoned bar tabs and how frustrating they are to deal with in a post uploaded to the r/bartenders sub. They asked about ways other booze-servers have found to curb customers from walking out without closing their tabs, stating that while they already attach an automatic 20% gratuity and were considering making it 25%.
A commenter replied that they’ve, instead, decided to keep people’s ID’s on hand in tandem with their cards. This has, they said, drastically reduced the number of still-open tabs at the end of the night.
@michellebellexo How many people walk out of the bar without closing their tab? This is pretty normal for a Sat night @UncleJessiesHonkyTonk #unclejessieshonkytonk #bartender #walkouts #closingthebar #lifeofabartender #preauthorization ♬ original sound – Michelle Raleigh Bartender
And if you’re wondering about whether or not automatic gratuity can be appended to purchases by an establishment, Web Restaurant Store states that businesses can freely engage in this practice, as long as customers are either notified by staff or there is mention of gratuity on the menu.
The Daily Dot has reached out to @NoCapFights via X direct message for further comment.
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