Tipping culture debates are nothing new, but one Los Angeles bartender just encountered a whole new level of audacity.
A customer who stiffed the staff on an actual tip decided to offer something else instead. The bartender’s viral response has struck a chord with service workers everywhere who are tired of being treated like their labor doesn’t deserve real compensation.
Bartender Shares Wild Customer Encounter
In a viral video with more than 48,000 views, country singer-songwriter Diner (@localdinergirl), who bartends in West Hollywood to support herself, shared what she called “reason number 7,000 that I wanna get out of LA.”
The incident started when two customers came into her bar and deliberately selected “no tip” on the payment handheld when settling their tab with Diner’s co-worker. In the service industry, bartenders and servers typically communicate about customers who don’t tip so everyone on staff knows what to expect.
But after last call, one of the women approached the bar with what she apparently thought was a generous offer.
“She walks up to the bar, and she looks at my co-worker, and she goes, ‘You are so amazing tonight. I have 4,000,000 followers on Instagram. What is your @, so I can give you some notoriety?'” Diner recounted.
The co-worker in question is around 40 years old with about 600 Instagram followers, aka someone for whom social media clout holds little to no value.
“We both kinda, like, laugh. We both just go, like, ‘What?’” Diner recounted.
That’s when the customer’s attitude shifted from condescending to outright insulting.
“She looks at me, and she goes, ‘You know what? At least I don’t have to work at a bar to pay my rent,'” Diner explained.
The woman continued, essentially telling Diner that working in a bar meant she’d failed in her career and calling the establishment a “s—hole.”
The comments hit a nerve for Diner, whose parents own and still work at a family restaurant. She’s also a struggling artist currently in a year-long dispute with her label that’s preventing her from releasing music, making her bartending job a necessity.
“It took everything in me to not follow her outside and just knock her out,” Diner admitted. “I literally had to sit there and be like, ‘It’s not worth it.'”
In her video, Diner pushed back against the toxic mentality she sees in LA’s entertainment industry culture.
“Instagram followers and TikTok followers—none of that s— actually matters. And it’s just, like, it’s exhausting. The city is exhausting, this mentality of people,” Diner said.
“F—— tip your bartenders. Tip your waitresses. Like, there’s nothing wrong with having a job and f—— paying your bills. And just because you work at a restaurant doesn’t mean you failed in life,” she added.
The ‘Exposure’ Payment Scam
The promise of “exposure” as payment is so common that it’s become a running joke in creative industries. But it’s not funny when you’re trying to pay rent, bills, and groceries.
Companies that offer to pay in exposure are “fully aware” they’re taking advantage of people and doing so to avoid paying market rate, the Content Witches wrote.
The blog points out that “exposure bucks aren’t a real currency,” and you can’t pay your landlord with Instagram followers or send them through PayPal. Despite what exposure peddlers claim, it rarely leads to actual work.
Artist Kelly Helsinger wrote on Messy Ever After that exposure is essentially a gamble, and usually the person offering it gets the better end of the deal. She shared her own experience doing live painting at an art fair for two days in exchange for exposure. She worked 20 hours over two days and made roughly $30 from one print sale.
“Even when exposed to the right audience, things might not go as you hope,” she wrote.
Illustrator Lo Harris explains on her website that working for exposure should only be done “sparingly, strategically, and with very specific intentions.” She emphasizes that a simple social media tag doesn’t cut it as real exposure these days. Harris suggests it might be worth considering unpaid work only in specific situations, like if it adds something new to your portfolio that could lead to better jobs, if it’s for a cause you genuinely care about, or if you can negotiate to do it on your own terms with clear boundaries.
But even then, artists should always try to negotiate at least some payment first.
Commenters React
“Her 4 million followers need to know this about her,” a top comment read.
“But she doesn’t have money for a tip???” a person said.
“Since when has having a job to pay your bills become shameful? Social media has ruined everything!” another wrote.
“Bro bartenders actually make really good money job shaming is so weird,” a commenter added.
@localdinergirl
BroBible reached out to Diner for comment via Instagram and TikTok direct message.