School sues caterer who spent $29 000 tip that was given in error

[CrazedClerkthe2nd]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090916/...e_dame_big_tip

This is a toughie. I mean on the one hand it WAS the school's fault, but on the other who would ever expect to get a tip THAT big?

Should she have to repay them?

[ReadyToRetire]

I wonder how much the job was that she would even think that $29,000 was an acceptable tip.
I'm sure she knew it was wrong. I think she should have to pay it back.

[JLRodgers]

Not sure how big the events were, but if $29 was the total bill, it would seem odd the phrase "catered" would even apply. If it was an actual "tip" on top of the bill, that would seem to be an insult.

As a note, I do know some people in the catering business who single-handedly bring up about a million in catering events -- a $30K tip from a company would be a surprise, but not unexpected for some events.

edit:
another article I found (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/...n5315832.shtml) makes it seem like she worked for the school, and the school just paid her a tip for work she did -- that she did not cater anything, nor do anything making her money (i.e. she was a waitress with tips same as any restaurant).

[gremcint]

She said in court documents that she called the school's catering department three times about the payment, but didn't hear back until she received a threatening call from the school in June.

if that's true then she did try to clarify the situation.

[CrazedClerkthe2nd]

if that's true then she did try to clarify the situation.

If it were me I would wait until I heard something or got some definitive answer about it before I went out and spent the money, just to make sure I didn't end up in the situation I'm in now.

[JLRodgers]

On another board I'm on, they linked a different article that added her supervisors told he it was not a mistake (http://www.myfoxchicago.com/dpp/news...091609_3540314).


Although I did see an interesting comment by one commenter on one of the articles: the check writer not only added a 3 to the check, but also did not put in a decimal point (of course it would seem they undershot the decimal to hit the three).

[Sliceanddice]

I wonder how much the job was that she would even think that $29,000 was an acceptable tip.
I'm sure she knew it was wrong. I think she should have to pay it back.

but you forget in the article it states she tried to contact them THREE times to obsolve the problem and they ignored it until it was too late then sued her.

[Sandman]

I think she will win. She made a good faith effort to resolve the issue and the school never responded to her.

Their loss is her gain.

[Mnemjian]

Whether or not she tried to notify them of the situation, I don't think they have any legal recourse. It's not like she altered the amount herself; they made a mistake and she didn't feel morally obligated to return the money. They're probably just suing her hoping she would just give back the money instead of having to go to court about it

[wolfie]

With the amount of the cheque being $29387, it looks like the data-entry person "fat-fingered" their numeric keypad (decimal point is under the "3"), with the decimal point being replaced by the "3".

Of course, if the software used had some sort of sanity checking (i.e. all values must have ONE decimal point followed by 2 digits - whole dollar values must have ".00"), this could have been avoided.