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Scandal: Hillary Refused to Tip at Chipotle
Bloomberg News has stumbled across the scandal of the year, if not the millennium. Answering a question no one was asking, reporter David “Scoop” Knowles has blown the 2016 presidential race wide open and our political system will be lucky to survive the fallout.
On Hillary Clinton’s endlessly fascinating trip to Chipotel Chitople a fast-food restaurant, the candidate didn’t leave a tip.
Several news sources revealed surveillance footage of the cash transaction. Neither Hillary nor loyal aide Huma Abedin-Weiner motioned toward the tip jar, despite what I can only assume were the wan, pleading expressions of burrito slingers on the business end of the sneeze guard.
How callous. How contemptuous. How cruel.
“Her bill was $20 and some change, and they paid with $21 and left” without putting anything in a tip jar on the counter, Charles Wright, the manager at the Maumee, Ohio, Chipotle restaurant told Bloomberg.
Wearing large sunglasses, Clinton wasn’t recognized by any of the workers at the fast-food Mexican chain when she and Huma Abedin, the vice chairwoman of her presidential campaign, ordered a chicken burrito bowl, a chicken salad, a blackberry Izzy, and a soda.
“The other lady paid the bill,” Wright said of one of Clinton’s dark-haired companions. “Clinton didn’t pay.”
The change from the meal totaled less than a dollar, but it was pocketed rather than deposited in the tip jar as many customers at the restaurant do, Wright said.
“We get a bunch of tips,” said Wright, who is a Republican and says he isn’t planning on voting for Clinton. “If we’re doing our job right, people tip.”
Well, well. Where is Ms. Champion of the Middle Class now? I bet if she chose to dine in, she’d leave her tray on the table — or throw it away along with the garbage. The whole scene is so sickeningly Clintonesque.
However. Despite the low-rent behavior of this elderly multimillionaire and her live-in nurse, it’s time we had a national conversation on gratuities. Though I’m an impoverished soul who lives off bulk ramen and stolen ketchup packets, had I más dinero en el banco, I still wouldn’t tip at Chipotle or other fast-food restaurants.
When I’m at a restaurant with tableside service I leave 20%, varying by about five percent for exceptionally good or bad service. But when I have to slog up to a counter, give my order, correct my order, pay the creatively pierced mouthbreather, then pick up my own food — whom exactly am I tipping?
I’ll usually tip the help at my local hipster coffeehouse, but part of that is an investment for preferential treatment on my next visit. At sketchier joints I might showily toss in a buck so the help doesn’t add any special ingredients. (Always be kind to the ex-con preparing your food, kids.) But why should I pay above and beyond for service when I’m the guy providing the service?
So when it comes to Chipotle, Pho Shizzle, or the Grillenium Falcon consider me on Team Hillary. If that makes me Lebaneser Scrooge, let me know in the comments.
Published in General
I tip at over-the-counter places entirely out of social pressure and insecurity. I expect this behavior (of which I’m not proud) will continue until Great Depression II.
Oh, I think we can do both. The Democrats are stuck with a truly lousy candidate and I for one would be happy to see every gaffe, mis-step and faux pas analyzed, ridiculed, scrutinized, and ridiculed again.
Let us show Hillary the same magnanimity and maturity and fairness that the left has shown to Sarah Palin, George W. Bush, Dan Quayle, Clarence Thomas, and on and on and on.
With Hillary, let’s start to balance the ridicule scale.
Nope. I never tip mouth breathers handing me food over a counter. Tip for what, using a cash register?
You’ve got a point there. I had never before heard of Chipotle. Now I not only know that it exists, but have a clue as to what one does there.
I do not dine at this establishment, but assuming it is like other fast food places, I wouldn’t tip either.
In fact this whole thing is why I’m anti-tipping. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not Mr. Pink. I tip. But I hate that I have to. It seems like a poor excuse to not pay the waitress (usually) what she’s worth. I’d rather just pay a higher bill. So many studies show tips are influenced by extraneous events like the weather, it hardly seems a fair way to compensate a waitress. On the flip side, when we tip 20% – well, who probably served you more – a waitress who refilled your 99 cent coffee cup five times, or the one who brought you one glass of Johnny Walker blue? But who gets the bigger tip?
Then you can add in every other person who seems to have their hand out for tips – pizza delivery, take out counters, hotel service, and on and on. I never know what services I am supposed to tip for, and if so, how much. So please, just put it all on my bill and sort it out with the payroll department.
No, I would never tip at a chipotle. Ridiculous.
What’s the deal? Seems like an ethnically smart place to be seen eating?
Can one even tip at Chipotle? I go there periodically and haven’t seen a jar.
What a bizarre behavior for HRC to go there, in effect, incognito. I can’t imagine any of the GOP candidates, and certainly not Mitt Romney doing such a thing. Like, why? Either wait in the Scooby van or don’t hide. What an unforced error; it’s bizarre.
I imagine it was 100% calculated. That way, you can say “no, I actually was eating at chipotle, and it wasn’t a PR stunt. I just wanted a burrito.” In that sense, I don’t think it is a bad move at all. It is a very “real person” thing to do, which is how we know with absolute certainty that it was staged.
At least you didn’t give a link to the Snuke.
Ryan M, with sunglasses on?
“Tip? You want a tip? Find an ambitious man and ride his coattails as far as they will take you.”
What do you guys tip for a carry out order at a sit down restaurant? I often order carry out for the family at Chili’s or On the Border or Longhorn, etc. I never know how much to tip the guy/gal assembling and double checking my order. But they don’t do as much as a waiter/-ess. But it’s more than the counter-folk at a fast food restaurant. What should I tip?
I do not tip at counter service restaurants. Those employees make minimum wage or better, not the $2/hr table service servers make, in which case I tend to be on the generous side. Having said that, I am not running for President on a proposed platform of being a champion of the common man in matters such as income disparity. If I was running for President I would have discreetly (knowing it would come out later) dropped a twenty in that tip jar.
It is a big deal only in that it is indicative of the hypocrisy and insincerity of the candidates and those she keeps close to her. How can she be believable about wanting low skill workers to be paid more and caring about the gap between haves and have-nots if she wouldn’t even drop the leftover change in the jar. Heck, I do that (on the rare occasions I even pay in cash) just to keep from having too much loose change weighing down my purse.
And I agree with Ryan M.; that was totally staged. If she wanted a quick bite to eat without being recognized she would have sent Huma in alone. Now all the people who love Chipotle can gush about how Hillary also loves Chipotle so much she stops incognito to eat there and how they never tip at those places either, and isn’t it awesome, she’s just like us, Guys! without ever noticing the inconsistencies between her public statements and private behavior on display.
Clinton also does not tip cows.
However, if you have a tip on the cows she’d be happy to invest.
Of course she tipped them. Quite generously, too: she didn’t charge them 200-300 stacks for speaking to them.
Eric Hines
aka… Hospice?
Indeed. Heard a story on the radio yesterday. Manny Pacquiao, boxer, multi-millionaire was at a Warriors practice playing a little b-ball. When it was over he was working the gym, peeling off 100’s and handing them to the ball dudes, the towel guy, folks working the locker room, really everyone that provided him with any kind of service while he was there.
As Cliff Clavin would say, “A little known fact about that beans and rice fast food joint there, Normie. It’s about 5 minutes from where Obama met Joe The Plumber!”
This time Cliffie wouldn’t be stretchin’ the truth.
I detect a whiff of sarcasm.
My son was a waiter at Ruby Tuesday’s. He told me that occasionally the wait staff, who don’t make minimum wage, would often be taken off tables and ordered to work the take-out counter. The tips were usually meager, and so they were working for just a couple of bucks an hour. I learned that it was important to tip such people.
Chipotle is different.
I would think most people don’t tip at places like Chipotle, unless they don’t want to put loose change in their pockets. But, if she hands us a cudgel, we have to whack her with it, metaphorically speaking.
From the book, Campaigning for Idiots:
“Candidates should always have $20 bills at the ready for tips. When the time comes for your ‘people’ to pay, you pull one or more bills out of your pocket, fold the money in your palm, smile, and discreetly hand it to the person serving you (or into the tip jar) while making respectful, warm, but not too friendly, eye contact. When someone reports on your slightly outsized tip, you tell a story about respecting the service industry because you once worked as a waiter/waitress, and it’s one of the hardest, but most dignified jobs you ever had, and it is a privilege to tip a bit extra. Bam! With friendly press coverage you just nailed a coalition.”
Look at the check. If there is a server’s name on the bill, the IRS assumes you left at least 10%.
See my first point over here.