In the early days of the pandemic, our Ohio governor closed down bars and restaurants and other “non-essential” businesses to prevent the spread. The shutdown put employees out of work without notice. Many of these people lived paycheck to paycheck, and restaurant workers didn’t get large paychecks to begin with. They relied on tips to make ends meet. They were devastated.
One local restaurant emptied out their refrigerators and freezers and gave the food to its spur-of-the-moment-unemployed workers. It kept them fed for perhaps a week, while they navigated an outdated and overwhelmed unemployment system and waited for a first check to arrive (if one arrived at all).
A Time of Overwhelming Need
In the midst of the mind-shattering loss caused by Covid-19 deaths, we also witnessed this crushing need. People were unable to feed their families. Thousands who had never expected to accept help from a foodbank waited in line for hours for a few boxes of groceries.
Even when bars and restaurants reopened, they opened with limited capacity, and employees struggled to make up for lost time.
People wanted to help, but few knew what to do. They donated to foodbanks, but they wanted to do more. Some of them left bigger tips. In Colorado, the “Covid Bandit” left tips of hundreds of dollars in several establishments.
Crosstown Tip-Off
My favorite story is a local one: the “crosstown tip-off.”
If you aren’t a Cincinnatian, you likely don’t know about the crosstown shootout, the local basketball game between rival universities. Fans of University of Cincinnati and Xavier University annually cheer on their favorite team, but this year they went that extra mile to help out workers at local eateries.
I’m not sure who started it, but fans of one of the contenders left a $1,000 tip at a café and dared the competition to match it. The competition upped it at a different restaurant with $1,001 tip. This went back and forth across the city, week after week, restaurant after restaurant. $1,002. $1,005. One team raised the stakes to $1,500. Then $2,000. The number kept rising, and servers were astounded—and grateful.
Recently, fans of another university (Mount St. Joseph) entered the fray and threw its hat (money) in the ring with a $7,000 tip. Now, that is my kind of sportsmanship!
Each restaurant on the receiving end reportedly split the tip money among all its servers working at the time, benefitting a large number of employees who have struggled since the pandemic began.
As a sport fan, I think this is a great way to show support for your local teams—and local employees. If you can’t afford a tip that large, how abut an extra $10 or $20? If we each did our part, we could make a difference.
