Generous stranger leaves waitress a $10,000 tip in a Michigan cafe and then she was fired a week later

A Michigan restaurant server, who received a generous $10,000 tip earlier this year, was fired shortly after. Linsey Boyd, the waitress who gained national attention for the tip in February, was dismissed by the restaurant a week later due to issues reportedly unrelated to the tip. The server then shared her story with local news station, WNDU 16 News Now.

Not All Heartwarming Stories End Well

The story of Boyd begins with a man dining at a small-town eatery called Mason Jar Café and surprising the staff with a generous tip of $10,000. The man left the massive tip in memory of one of his friends whose funeral was taking place in the town, as per NBC5 Chicago.  

Boyd was serving the man that day and he told her to share the tip with her fellow workers. That's exactly what she did. She shared the tip nine ways with her colleagues with each receiving $1,100. The restaurant also thanked the man for the generous act in a now-deleted Facebook post. 

However, a week later, the server was fired over a phone call. 

Why was the server fired?

Mason Jar Café co-owner Jayme Cousins told News 8 via an email that they couldn't provide the full details of the server's firing as the labor laws prevented them from doing so. 

However, the owner did tell the publication that it was not related to the hefty tip she received. 

“I know there is a lot going around that we let her go because of the tip and that’s just not logical,” Cousins wrote in the email, News8 reported. She added that the decision wasn't taken lightly and it was a purely "business decision."

The server had a different story to tell. In an interview with WNDU 16 News Now, Boyd said that the place became toxic after the incident as some of the workers were unhappy with not getting a share of the $10,000 tip.

Boyd said she even went to the management to make them aware of the negativity and asked them to deal with it. However, to the server's surprise, the management dealt with the situation by firing her.

She told the publication that she will never forget what her manager told her.

“It was still getting a lot of publicity and attention, and the best way to calm the situation and to move forward was for me to not come back,” she recalled the owner saying.

After getting fired, Boyd took to Facebook to talk about it. She alleges that the management threatened her with legal action and asked her to take the post down. While Boyd deleted the post, she also recorded the threatening phone calls and hired a lawyer to fight her case, she told the local news outlet. 

“I would like to know the exact reason I am being fired,” she said in the interview. However, Boyd's lawyer clarified that she wasn't planning to take legal action and was just responding to threats made in order to be left alone.