16-year-old waiter assumes couple is tipping $40 on a $60 bill, prompting an awkward confrontation and math problems as they struggle to straighten out the misunderstanding: ‘He just freezes, until he finally says “100 minus 61.99….” and trails off’ – FAIL Blog

An evening out turned into an awkward confrontation when their waiter assumed that they were giving him a $40 tip when they paid their $60 tab with a $100 bill.

“You won’t have a calculator with you all the time,” our teachers used to tell us in grade school as they desperately tried to get us to show our work on our homework and on tests. They’d also told us things like we’d be using cursive “all the time” when we were adults, so we needed to make sure that we knew how to use it.

Neither of those things ended up being true. You only ever use handwriting when you’re filling out official forms that specifically ask you to “print” in simple lettering instead of using cursive, and thanks to the invention of the “smart” phone, we quite literally have a calculator in our pocket everywhere we go.

This, of course, means that we should never be beaten by the most basic functions of mathematics. Subtracting a number less than 100 from 100 should be something that we can do without having to pull out our phones or reach for a pen and paper. Yet, even if you need to fall on the crutch of your pocket calculator or ask ChatGPT, there really is no excuse for not being able to figure out out whatsoever.

The whole socially performative sequence of getting the bill and tipping is already awkward enough without having to chase the waiter down for your change that they, for some reason, have assumed is a tip. Let alone having to chase the waiter down to get your change, convince them the amount was not intended to be a tip, and then proceed to teach them basic arithmetic on the spot. 

Still, as skeptical as this guy is of the waiter’s true intentions, “Hanlon’s razor” certainly applies here. This adage tells us to “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” Quite simply, it is far more likely that this confused 16-year-old made a bad assumption and is bad at math than it is likely that he was trying to get away with extra tip money. It seems way more unlikely.