Food truck employee shames company on Twitter over tipping, gets fired

The public brouhaha that arose left some blaming the company that didn’t tip, while others think the employee was wrong to call out a customer. Others still are blaming the food truck.

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The group’s rather complex order came to a total of $170. Nobody left a tip. This made the employee who made the group’s food, Brendan O’Connor, rather upset. So he tweeted this:

“Shout out to the good people of Glass, Lewis & Co. for placing a $170 order and not leaving a tip.”

He also included the @glasslewis Twitter handle.

Glass Lewis, a shareholder advisory company specializing in corporate governance, didn’t respond to this tip-shaming too favorably. O’Connor, who is also an intern at the blog The Awl, wrote an account of the whole story for the website, including what happened next:

Two days later, I got a text from the owner asking if I was free to talk on the phone at some point. We spoke later that afternoon.

He told me that he’d gotten a call from the company, Glass, Lewis & Co… Apparently, those employees were mortified that their lunch truck had tip-shamed them—the home office in San Francisco even got involved.

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