While griping about tipping for seemingly everything nowadays isn’t something new, one Instagram user has gone viral after he caught some fuzzy math on the touchpad of one restaurant’s “suggested tip” menu.
“10% of $27 is not $6,” Mark O’Brien noted in the video, showing that another potential choice, 18%, should not be $7.20 on his $27 tab.
The post attracted thousands of likes, with the peeved patron imploring others to “CHECK YOUR MATH!”
He explains, “15% should be $4.05 [but] it autogenerated $6.22! At 18% it should be $4.86 it autogenerated $7.47!”
He continued, “At 20% it should be $5.40 it autogenerated $8.30! And at 25% it should be $6.75 and it autogenerated $10.37!
For those not mathematically inclined, the tip marked by the eatery as “15%” actually works out to be nearly 23%; “18%” was around 27.6%. The suggested 20% tip was closer to 30.7%, and the “25%” choice O’Brien was offered was in reality a potential 38.4% tip.
O’Brien’s post was so popular, it prompted a response from the restaurant, which insisted to ABC News that Mark wasn’t being “scammed.” A rep insisted he had received a discount and noted of its touchpad options, “We have a disclaimer that alerts guests that the tip is calculated before discounts.”
Undoubtedly, not as many people who tap those buttons would read that kind of fine print.
One commenter suggested, “I don’t tip if I order standing up.”
Many of the replies to O’Brien’s post had the same simple suggestion: “That’s why you use the custom for 0%.”