A restaurant that gained fame after being featured in the popular series The Office is suing a customer who left a $3,000 tip for a waitress who worked there.
Alfredo's Pizza Cafe in Scranton, Pennsylvania is pursuing legal action after a patron ordered a $13.25 Stromboli, then paid for the meal on his credit card alongside an eye-watering tip of $3,000 with the note "Tips For Jesus".
However, the customer disputed the payment a few weeks later, after the restaurant had already paid the money to their waitress, Mariana Lambert.
The customer, who has since been identified as Eric Smith, has claimed that his hugely generous tip was part of a social media movement called 'Tips For Jesus'. When the restaurant was notified that Smith was disputing the charge, they hoped it was simply a big misunderstanding. However, they soon learned that this was not the case.
Restaurant management reached out to Smith via Facebook hoping to resolve the issue, but many of their messages went unanswered, leading Alfredo's to get the Magistrate's Office involved and press charges.
Alfredo's manager Zachary Jacobson described the situation as "aggravating" in an interview with WNEP News.
"We're just out of money at this point and he told us to sue him so that is what we are going to end up doing, I guess. I hope that he owns up to his actions and comes forth and does pay this because you shouldn't have done this if this was the end result."
Waitress Lambert was said to be, understandably, "in shock" when she noticed how much she had been tipped on a $13 bill and that the gesture "really touched my heart" especially after how much restaurant workers had been through since COVID.
"It really meant a lot to me because everyone's going through stuff," Lambert told WNEP.
Lambert has been described as a "hard working" waitress by Jacobson, who said he was happy that "somebody was actually trying to do a good thing."
Manager Jacobson also described the incident as "a nice piece of PR for a small business."
Alfredo's was featured in season four of The Office during the episode 'The Launch Party' in which the question is asked, "Do you know which is best? Alfredo's Pizza Cafe or Pizza by Alfredo?"
And while Alfredo's Pizza Cafe is indeed a genuine Scranton restaurant, Pizza by Alfredo is not.
In the episode, Steve Carrell's Michael Scott character is aiming to throw a huge party in the Scranton office, with "pizza from Alfredo's" on his list of items that he wants to impress the New York branch of Dunder Mifflin.
When asked which Alfredo's he means, Michael simply says "same thing" only to be corrected passionately by the rest of the office. When informed that there is a very big difference between the two establishments, Michael reveals that he has ordered from Pizza By Alfredo, much to the chagrin of the office, who prefer the real deal from Alfredo's Pizza Cafe.
So, if nothing else, at least Alfredo's are immortalized as Scranton's finest pizza parlour in television history.
