On occasion, you'll see a receipt used in unexpected ways. Cheap customers leave a joke instead of a tip. Restaurants make comments about their customers. Strange requests are passed from customer to restaurant, and vice versa. Here's a whole collection of unusual restaurant receipts we collected for your entertainment. And remember: read your receipts closely. You might be surprised by what you find on it.
Whenever you walk into a restaurant, you're entering into a contract with the company or person who runs it. They'll provide you with food, and you'll provide them with money at the end of your meal. That transaction happens via the production of a bill and a receipt for posterity.
Usually, the receipt is just a record of the amount you've spent, and an opportunity for you provide the serving staff with a tip if you feel that they've done a good job. Some service staff depend on tips in order to keep their bills paid, so they're always grateful.
It's a good thing that a debit or credit card works via swiping, not via signature. If we had to rely on a valid signature for payments to be processed, a lot of restaurants and staff would be missing out on money. People just love to leave fake names.
This is a particularly impressive example. Apparently, one of the greatest Presidents in the history of the United States of America rose from the dead to eat at this restaurant. We hope he didn't go to the theater afterward.
Not everyone who leaves strange notes on receipts stiffs the staff out of their money. Some of them just want to make a statement at the same time as sharing their wealth. Here's someone who just wanted the staff to know how strong their faith is.
We don't know what prompted them to share their religious thoughts over lunch, but perhaps it also prompted them to be extra-generous. 30% is a good tip, and we imagine whoever picked it up was happy.
Anyone who's worked waiting tables knows that this happens occasionally. Sometimes customers can be a little more friendly than we'd ideally like them to be, and they ask us out after they're done with their meal.
A kind note like this is harmless, though. It's a shame whoever left it didn't have the courage to ask their server out directly, but we suppose a written compliment is the next best thing. Sadly, we'll never know if a text was ever sent, or whether a date was made.
Going out for a meal to celebrate your birthday is a fine tradition, and it looks like whoever left this note had a great time on their special day. It also appears that whoever served them helped to ensure they enjoyed themselves, and so they got their reward!
We're not sure about their system of basing their tip on their age, though. That gets more and more expensive as you get older. We bet that the restaurant is hoping the customer lives to be 100, and then comes to celebrate the occasion with them.
Leaving notes on a receipt is a two-way street. Most of the time, it's the customer who leaves the note, but the restaurant can also print whatever they like on there. Apparently, this restaurant uses that ability to provide selective discounts.
We all know where they're coming from with this. It's never fun when you spend money to go out for a meal, and the meal is ruined by young children screaming and running around the tables. This is a nice way of recognizing good parenting.
Here's our first look at a really rude customer. Only when someone has experienced really bad service should a tip be withheld. When that happens, it would be helpful if the customer provided some feedback, so the restaurant knows where it went wrong.
This is not helpful feedback. This is just patronizing, and doesn't help anybody. The restaurant hasn't failed anyone here - the customer has failed the test of basic politeness and decency. They should boo themselves.
In recent years, we've seen restaurants and other service industries use the footer of a receipt as an opportunity to show off their quirky personalities. Sometimes they'll write a joke, or an amusing story.
This place hasn't done that - they've just thanked the customer in a very enthusiastic style. Did the cashier really type this up as an individual greeting in the limited time they had, or does this greeting appear at the bottom of every single receipt they printed? If so, how does that work when the customer is female?
How many of us truly pay attention to everything that's written on a receipt? Do you pore over them and read every line, or do you just check the amount is correct and then make your payment?
This restaurant wanted to find out the answer to that question, and it turns out some people really are paying attention. We don't think Chuck Norris has an Xbox Live account on his PlayStation, but the bottom line of the receipt clearly does matter to some people.
We can usually understand how or why a note came to be on a receipt. Whether it's a joke, an insult, or a general observation, there are many reasons why you might want to use a receipt to communicate. We can't make head nor tail of this, though.
Apparently, whoever served this customer does not yet produce milk. We think it's unlikely that the customer asked them to, and they clearly provided some milk anyway. Why would anyone feel the need to print this? It's bizarre!
Everyone knows what the word 'tip' means in the context of a receipt or a bill, but some people still find it hilarious to pretend that they don't understand. Here's a memo for all those people: Service staff have come across every single one of your jokes, and they've ever found them funny.
Nobody should look directly at the sun, so as advice for life this tip works. As a way of thanking whoever served them for their dining experience, it's a cheap and nasty thing to do.
Serving a large group of drunken people at a table isn't always fun. They can be loud, they can be disruptive, and they can be generally difficult to deal with. Most waiters and waitresses have a coping strategy to deal with those situations, and it seems this one got hers just right.
Whatever she did to entertain and appease this group, she definitely made a strong impression on at least one person at the table, who wrote her a long note of thanks. We hope it was backed up by a large tip!
What do you need to have a great experience at a restaurant? For us it would be great food, great drinks, wonderful company, and a fine ambience. We don't think we'd ever want or welcome the introduction of fire to our table, or the venue in general.
That leaves us scratching our head as to why 'FIRE' has been listed on this receipt, or why it's been presented with so many exclamation points. At least the customer wasn't charged for it - although if there really was a fire, we'd be expecting a discount!
Not all of us are great at math, and the person who presents you with the bill has the advantage of using technology to work out the amount payable. When you're sat at the table trying to work out the appropriate tip, things aren't always so easy.
This person arrived at the correct amount eventually, but not without a little difficulty along the way. It might only have made a difference of one cent, but accuracy is important when it comes to billing!
There are certain foods you're advised to avoid eating if you're going out on a date. Onions are one example, but garlic might be the ultimate 'no.' Nobody truly relishes the prospect of kissing someone whose breath smells like garlic.
This pizza restaurant is trying to push back against that idea by trying to tell us that garlic breath is sexy. We're not convinced they're impartial on the subject though. If you made your money by selling garlic bread, you'd try to put a positive spin on it too!
Before we discuss the content of this note, we should point out the amazing birthday deal this restaurant offers. A free burger on your birthday? Sign us up, we're very interested! Our interest might wane a little if the rest of the receipt is accurate, though.
We're not aware of any restaurant in the world where diners are invited to come and eat naked. Was George naked because it was his birthday, or does everyone go there in the nude? That's a little hazardous if you're eating hot food!
There's no definition for what is and isn't a 'real job.' Being a waiter or waitress is definitely a real job. You have a boss, you have a schedule, and you receive money in return for providing a service. You also have to put up with ignorant customers like this.
This 'tip' isn't helpful in any way. It's just someone who can afford to spend more than $100 on a meal denying their server their fair share. The server doesn't need to get a real job. This person needs to get some manners.
Here's a customer who's at the other end of the scale from that last example. They clearly appreciated what their server did for them, and they've been very generous with their tip. It looks like they were prepared to be even more generous, too!
If the note is to be believed, the customer asked the server to pick a number between one and ten, and that number became the basis for their tip. They could have picked ten and received $100, but they didn't know the rules of the game at the time.
Very few people are professional poets. Writing something meaningful within a poetic structure is very difficult, and most of us don't even bother trying once we've left school. That didn't stop this restaurant giving it a try, though.
Perhaps they should have picked something other than a haiku, which demands a very specific syllable structure. They managed to fit their message inside that structure, but they weren't able to make it coherent. Stick to food, guys, you're probably great at that!
We can't quite remember who started the tradition of saying 'that's what she said,' any time someone says anything that sounds even vaguely rude, but we know it's been around since at least the 1990s. It's old, and it's tired.
Being old and tired hasn't stopped some whimsical restaurateurs listing it on their receipts like it's still hilarious and brand new, though. As a side note, who orders wings and asks for them to be delivered extra wet? They can't be wet and crispy!
There are times when it's acceptable to deny a tip to a server. Receiving bad service would be a good reason, but so would being outright insulted by the restaurant you've come to eat in. Based on what's written at the top of this bill, we're seeing the latter in action here.
Given this business makes its money by selling food to people who are hungry, it should probably avoid body-shaming the people who come to eat in it, else it may find that they stop turning up.
Earlier on, we saw an example of someone using their receipt to try to ask their waiter or waitress out on a date. We suppose this is a little bit like that, only it's a more unorthodox request.
Asking someone out on a date implies there might be at least a little bit of romance to the occasion. This request is just an invitation to get straight down to business with more than one person at the same time. We wonder if this strategy has ever worked for the couple who tried it?
We'll give this person at least some credit. They've left a tip, and the tip is about right in proportion to the amount that they spent. It looks like it was such a small transaction that there probably wasn't' any need to leave a tip at all, so this was a kindness.
What we're less clear on is how they've managed to fail such a basic math question. This is just simple subtraction. Even if you can't work it out, there's a calculator on your phone that can!
Getting money off your bill at a restaurant is a good thing - especially when you haven't asked for it. Under any normal circumstances, we'd welcome it. We don't think this receipt counts as normal circumstances, though.
Being called a nice person and told you have a great smile is all good. 'Best looking' is borderline. 'Best Butt' is just a little creepy, and probably make the customer more than a little uncomfortable. Also, how did they work out the discount amounts?
There is a little wisdom in this statement. Children can, on occasion, be scary. Once you've had children, you'll find that plenty of things in life that used to scare you no longer have the same impact. Often, it's because you're too tired to care!
We don't know why a bakery would need to tell its customers that they don't scare them, though. How many people hit up the bakery every time they want to terrify someone? It's not like people dress up as bakers for Halloween!
Very few things separate generations like meme language. Most under 35s will recognize this phrase immediately, and will be able to picture the meme it originally came from. People who are a little older will wonder why this gaming store uses such bad spelling and grammar.
For those not in the know, 'Y U No' translates to 'why haven't you?' This customer is being asked why they haven't pre-ordered a brand-new video game - although that's really none of the store's business.
As much as we'd like to take this receipt at face value, we think it's unlikely that one of the hottest stars in the entertainment business is waiting tables in her spare time. Lady Gaga is a multi-millionaire. She doesn't have to work another day in her life if she doesn't want to.
Having said that, Gaga has been known to do strange and unusual things over the years. Perhaps she's taken on a little side hustle to fill her time between albums. We wouldn't be totally surprised!
There are some people who believe that we're all living in a very advanced computer simulation, and that reality is simply a dream we're all sharing. This was the plot of the hugely successful 1990s movie 'The Matrix,' which starred Keanu Reeves.
Waking Reeves' character Neo up to the fact that the real world is an illusion was crucial to the film's narrative. Here's a restaurant trying to do the same thing for its customers. That means the food wasn't real too, though. Can we have a refund?
Indian cuisine is a lot spicier than Western cuisine. Even when you go to a curry restaurant and enjoy a spicy meal, chances are that it's a little less hot than the same meal would be if you ordered it in India.
It looks like this restaurant usually goes for the authentic approach with its curries, but has exercised restraint on this occasion. The customers weren't Indian, and the restaurant clearly didn't believe they could handle the heat! It's better to be safe than sorry.
This is just a straight-up nice thing to do. The manager of this restaurant has noticed that their customer is pregnant, and decided to provide them with a little helping hand to make their day easier.
Even a small discount would have been likely to put a smile on the customer's face, but in this case the manager has discounted a whole third of the bill. Acts like these are what creates customer loyalty. Other restaurants should take note!
The word 'booby' on its own could mean one of several things. It could be the name of the server, although it's a very unusual name if so. It could also be the name of the restaurant, but that doesn't seem particularly likely either.
What we really hope is that it's not a reference to the appearance of the customer who paid the bill, because that would be horribly out of line! We'll never get to the bottom of this mystery, but it's probably not a word you should habitually print on receipts.
Delivery notes are there to help takeaway drivers get to their destination. Usually, you'll see information about door codes, where to park, or how to contact the customer. This warning is a lot more specific, and a lot scarier, too!
Why there are ninjas in someone's parking lot is anybody's guess, but at least the delivery driver has been warned to keep an eye out for them. We still think it's probably a matter for the police, though.
Our issue with this receipt isn't that someone's written 'cash' where the tip amount should go. As long as the diner really did give their server some cash, no harm was done. It's unnecessary to write it, but there's nothing wrong with it either.
We're a little more worried about the fact that based on the signature, the diner was Pac-Man. What did they order? Hundreds of tiny little pills as a starter, followed by a few ghosts as the main course?
You need a little basic math knowledge to understand what's happened here. The diner has worked out how much the tip to their server should be, and come away with a figure of roughly fifteen percent. That's a little low, but it's reasonable.
If they'd tipped higher, though, they wouldn't have been able to use the Greek letter Pi to symbolize the value of their tip. The math checks out - the amount of tip required to get the bill to $30 is the value of Pi - but it's a little bit pretentious.
Oh dear. This is a case of a well-meaning server getting things very badly wrong. The human body comes in many different shapes and sizes. We should never assume that someone's pregnant unless we have evidence to confirm the suspicion.
At some point during this customer's meal, the server has clearly made a comment that implies she's pregnant - and she isn't. That's resulted in a sarcastic comment, and probably zero tips. We can understand why the customer would be more than a little upset about the comment.
Please, someone tell us that this receipt isn't what it looks like! The color or ethnicity of whomever serves you should never be an issue. It definitely doesn't need to be recorded on a receipt, either. Even if they were white, surely the customer can see that with their own eyes?
Our best guess is that 'White' is the name of the person who provided the service, but even if that is the case, they should probably stop printing it on receipts. It's bound to end up on the internet, and it doesn't look good.
This customer was presumably in very high spirits by the time the bill arrived! As well as paying for their meal, they've also suggested that their waiter or waitress should 'shake it like a salt shaker.'
It's possible that they quickly realized the advice could be misinterpreted. That would explain why they also drew a frying pan with some bacon in it, just to confirm that it was the bacon they wanted shaking and not anything else. Does shaking bacon help it to cook, though?
Without wanting to go too far into the mechanics of this, nobody likes a bad smell when they're eating. It can put you off your food, and ruin a perfectly good meal. That being said, there are some processes human beings can't control, and passing gas is one of them.
Because of that, we're amazed this restaurant can apparently get away with levying this fee. Is it even legal? Did the customer confess to the act, or did the restaurant have a thermal camera to prove their guilt?
Everyone has their own preferred brand of soda. For the majority of people, it comes down to Coke or Pepsi, although other options are, of course, available. All soda companies are at war with each other, although we've never seen that war depicted like this.
We may never know what drove this customer to create a cartoon version of the soda wars on the back of their receipt, but it at least provided some entertainment to the waiter or waitress who found it.
We can't see enough of this receipt to work out whether the waiter, seemingly named Chris, got a tip as well as this lovely drawing from their customer. If they also got a tip, everything's great. If they didn't, they might be waiting a while to get any value out of it.
Whoever drew this is clearly a talented and creative artist, so it's possible they might become famous one day. If they do, this receipt could be worth hundreds or even thousands of dollars. We'd advise Chris to keep hold of it!
Some customers don't just assess the performance of their server based on what they provide for them, and how friendly they are. They also take into account what their server is wearing, and how attractive they are too. It may not be right, but it happens.
This particular server has either been on vacation recently, or they've been working hard on their tan. It's a little strange for a customer to go as far as writing a note of approval for them on the receipt, but we guess it's nice that they noticed.
Certain names can also be insults. Traditionally, 'Dick' is short for 'Richard.' It can also mean something totally different, but we don't need to explain that other meaning to you because you already know what it is.
We're really hoping that in the case of this receipt, either the customer or the server was called Dick. If they weren't, someone's been extremely rude. We're guessing it's a name thing, because if you were insulting someone, it's unlikely you'd pass on your thanks at the same time.
Here's another seemingly famous restaurant visitor, although we don't think anyone would be rolling the red carpet out for this particular guest. Of all the supernatural beings you might wish you could invite if you were throwing a dinner party, Satan would have to be a long way down the list.
Even as a joke, signing your name as 'Satan' is more than a little creepy. This is one customer that the server probably isn't looking forward to welcoming back whether they left a large tip or not.
It's nice to be thanked, but there are ways of thanking people, and we don't think this is a good one. We can't even decide what would be worse here; this message being printed on every receipt, or someone specifically typing it out for one customer.
The customer has helpfully included their purchases in the picture, so we can see that what they were buying is indeed a little unusual, but that doesn't give the store the right to comment on it in such a way - unless they meant it as a strange compliment.
Everyone knows what the phrase 'my two cents' means. Giving your two cents means offering your opinion, and often doing so when nobody's asked for it. Here, a customer has literally given two cents to the server along with their opinion.
As the note says, 'get faster cooks,' it seems that they had a legitimate reason to be unhappy with the service they received. If that's the case, though, just don't tip. There's no need to get smart about it.
Just like we don't think Lady Gaga was really waiting tables on the receipt we saw earlier on, we also don't think Kim Jong-Un, the leader of North Korea, is really waiting tables in this restaurant. The famous name is only half of what's going on here, though.
The server is not just Kim Jong-Un, they're also apparently unhappy. We're sorry to hear that. Maybe they should consider going and finding another job if this one isn't working out for them!
Here's yet another example of someone using an obviously false or inappropriate name on the signature line of their receipt. We're choosing to believe that rather than the possibility that there's a couple out there called Mr.& Mrs. Teeth, and this is how they chose to name their child.
Despite their horrendous name, this customer turned out to be quite a generous tipper. We admire them for keeping their kindness despite seemingly walking around with a name like that.
Does anyone know where this place is, and how we get there? We're asking for a friend. Seriously though, if we take this receipt at face value it's quite the bargain. We know people who would pay ten times that amount or more for the same service.
In practice, we suspect that this is the name of a cocktail. Had the customer ordered anything else to go along with it, the receipt might not have looked quite so strange.
This receipt tells a story. It was printed well after 1am, and it belongs to a customer who came in and ordered nothing but one single steak. As a waiter or waitress, you'd probably ask yourself what that customer's deal was. We'd probably still avoid writing this in their receipt, though.
There are two ways this description could have got where it is. Either the customer phoned ahead and gave this as their name, or the staff thought it was an appropriate description of them. If it was, we doubt they noticed it.
When you place an order with a server, you can specify ingredients that you don't want in your food or drink, as well as the ones you do. That being said, we don't think anyone's ever had to state that they don't want this particular juice serving to them before. We don't think we've ever even seen it on a menu.
After a little bit of thought, we've concluded this must be a typo. We suspect it's supposed to say, 'whole juice.' Someone should probably get around to correcting that before it happens again.
Not everyone likes 'Yo Mama' jokes. They're usually very rude, and they're almost always demeaning. There are people who still find them funny, though, and apparently this burger restaurant thinks enough of them to include them on their receipts.
If we're going to give them any credit, they've at least written 'YO MAMA JOKE' in block capital letters before printing it, so anyone who doesn't like them can stop reading then and there instead of carrying on down to the joke.
