The 1% Receipt Too Good To Be True

Twitter, via Eater

Gut Check has taken a keen interest in restaurant receipts of late. Specifically, we've become fascinated and disturbed in equal measure -- well, actually, maybe a bit more disturbed than fascinated -- by the name fields on restaurant receipts and the potential for mischief they have for the disgruntled server.

But it was another part of the restaurant receipt that set the food world abuzz over the weekend: the tip line. On Friday, several food blogs posted the receipt with a 1% tip pictured above, which it obtained from a Twitter user called @FutureExBanker.

The 1% tip and the note to the server to "get a real job" were allegedly from the boss of @FutureExBanker, who told Eater that his/her boss "loathes the 99%."

It was a great story, pushing both the hot political button of the moment and the always lively (for food and restaurant blogs, at least) issue of tipping. So of course it couldn't be true.

Yes, the Smoking Gun got in touch with the restaurant whose server was supposedly a casualty of class warfare, True Food Kitchen in Newport Beach, California, and learned that the photo was a doctored version of a receipt for $33.54, not $133.45. Oh, and the actual tip?

And while the tip on the online receipt claims that the server was left $1.33 (or one percent of the bill), the actual tip was more than $7 on the $33.54 tab.

Shockingly, the @FutureExBanker Twitter account and a blog associated with it have disappeared.