A customer at an Ohio restaurant is definitely taking the lead at Santa Claus – leaving a special surprise for the staff this holiday season. The guest left a tip of $ 5,600 for the workers, which the owner called “an amazing gesture of kindness. “
“This really happened,” Moussa Salloukh wrote on December 13 on the Facebook page of his Toledo restaurant, Souk Mediterranean Kitchen & Bar, which has been open since October 2019. “One of our guests left a tip last night. $ 5,600 to be given to all our employees, whether they were working on this change or not. “
The chef and the owner said that each person received $ 200 with the division of gratuity between his 28 employees.
Salloukh also posted a photo of the check that totaled just $ 0.01 before the tip was added. The recipient is only identified as “Billy” in the post.
“The words ‘Thank you’ seem inappropriate for this gift … but Thank you Billy, for your generous spirit and for making a difference in the lives of the people I care so much about this holiday season,” Salloukh added.
Salloukh explained that generosity has been particularly “deeply needed and much appreciated” this year, thanks to coronavirus pandemic.
“This is not an ordinary December,” he wrote in the post. “Normally, this is a month in which our employees work overtime and guests tip generously. December is a month for them to earn money to buy family gifts, to save a little and to take care of. of the bills or repairs that persisted. and the guidelines, this was not going to happen to them this year. “
There were restaurants, bars and their staff all over the country especially hit hard Besides pandemic, facing several rounds of restrictions, as well as costly crisis-related starts and stops.
The National Association of Restaurants estimated that, since December 1, over 110,000 units have closed permanently or temporarily, according to survey data published earlier this month.