A waitress obtained a Christmas morning shock when a patron tipped her $1,000 on a $17 invoice.
Callie Blue, who has been working at Gus’s Diner in Solar Prairie, Wisconsin, for six years, had simply began her early-morning shift when Michael Johnson, president and CEO of the native Boys and Women Membership, got here in for breakfast at round 6:00 a.m. He was Blue’s second buyer of the day, she mentioned, and the pair talked for about 45 minutes.
What Blue did not know was that Johnson was on a mission to present again. He had grown up not a fan of Christmas as a result of his household could not afford to rejoice the vacation, and he had determined that as an grownup, he would do all the pieces he may to make a distinction within the lives of others in comparable positions. 13 years in the past, he grew to become head of the Boys and Women Membership of Dane County, Wisconsin, and has used the place to make main donations and enhancements in folks’s lives.
“This yr we raised over $100,000. We gave away a model new automotive to a household of 5. We tipped a number of waitresses, we took about 50 households on procuring sprees and we secured toys for over 600 children in our county,” Johnson advised CBS Information. The cash, he mentioned, was all fundraised on social media, and he had taken suggestions on who to present items to.
He had spent the times main as much as his breakfast at Gus’s Diner making Christmas magic occur all all through Dane County, and he went to the diner so early as a result of he had a number of hours of gift-giving forward of him, he mentioned.
“I obtained up at like 4:00 within the morning. I mentioned ‘OK, let me see if I can discover a restaurant that is open at like 6:00,’ so after I Googled it, I noticed that Gus’s Diner was open. Coincidentally, somebody on my Fb web page had talked about Callie, so I went up there, not even understanding if she was going to be there, and as quickly as I walked in she was proper there,” Johnson mentioned.
In a video Johnson recorded of Blue receiving the tip, she will be seen laughing and tearing up. Johnson additionally wrote a notice on the again of the receipt thanking Blue for “smiling and dealing on Christmas Day.”
Blue advised CBS Information that she first thought the tip was “a complete joke.”
“I used to be like, ‘This isn’t occurring.’ You at all times see movies and also you hear this occurring to different folks, and also you by no means assume it should occur to you,” Blue mentioned. “He was guffawing and I used to be like, ‘That is simply not actual.’ It was actually thrilling. I solely cried a bit bit.”
Since their story has gone viral, Blue has reached out to Johnson and supplied to assist with every other charity work he does.
“It has been a wild experience,” she mentioned. “It has been wild. It has been very humbling and really thrilling.”