Texas Man Tips $0 to Stockyards Bartender. Then He Orders Another Beer—and Asks for Something

The customer made sure Lex saw the zero. Not just a blank tip line. He wanted her to see a $0 with a line through it, deliberate and petty. Then he came back to the bar and asked for a free drink.

Fort Worth bartender @lexusjustlikethecar recounts the moment she refused. Her short tale is also about the frustrations of navigating a service industry where many customers expect generosity regardless of their selfishness.

What happened at Stockyards?

“So last night, I'm bartending in Stockyards,” Lex started. The Fort Worth Stockyards is a historic district north of the central business district. It's a big tourist destination and nightlife hub that leans, with a tip of the Stetson, into Fort Worth's "Cowtown" heritage. It’s got cattle drives, honky-tonks, western-themed bars, and other attractions.

“This guy comes up, and he orders a beer with me,” Lex said. “He's in a jolly old mood, and I'm in a good mood too. I give him the beer, and he closes out—and he makes sure to leave a $0 tip with a big mark through it. He wanted to make sure I knew that that was a $0 tip. Noted. Tipping's optional.”

But then the guy comes back to the bar.

“And I'm not gonna lie to you—he's getting the side-eye. I'll get to you when I get to you. You're the last on my list and the first on my [expletive] list right now," she said.

This sets the tone.

“So anyways, he orders another beer. And I bring it to him. And then he says, ‘This one's on the house. Right?’” she recalled, laughing.

“[Expletive] no. I ain't doing you no favors,” she remembered thinking. “I don't give away [stuff] because that's literally stealing. And two, I said, ‘Hell no.’ The nerve is crazy.”

The peanut gallery

The comments section since the clip dropped has become something of a battleground. We have defenders of the non-tipper squaring off against service workers who say the entitlement is the point.

“Omg, you didn't get a tip for pulling his beer out of the fridge and putting it on the bar! The humanity,” said one user, who needed to create a fake account to bash her.

Another said, “So job is to bring me a drink, you do that, so why tip for you doing your job, tips are for over and above.”

One person chose to complain about the beer. “Who wants to tip on an overpriced beer anyway, especially if it’s the first beer?” they wrote.

Another man understood her plight. “You work at the Stockyard, I live over by the Stockyard. Deland [is a] great place; every worker should get a tip,” he said. “They work hard. I understand that I have a son [who] does the same thing.”

A woman was “surprised by all the non-tippers in the comments.” She went on to comment that, “if you're in America, tip. Unlike in many other countries, servers and bartenders here often make way less than minimum wage because their employers factor tips into total comp considerations. Can you live off of an hourly wage as low as $2.13?”

This remains the rub. How can the so-called tipping fatigue be squared with “the hourly wage as low as $2.13”?

Tipping Fatigue

The federal minimum wage for tipped workers is $2.13 per hour. This rate has not changed since 1991. This is why tips remain a critical source of income for service workers.

Since at least COVID, tipping has been undergoing a transformation, with digital kiosks suggesting tips as high as 30% of the bill, versus the traditional 15%. This shift is not limited to jobs with a lower "tipped minimum wage"; even those earning regular wages might expect tips.

The broader issue here is that workers tend to blame customers rather than management. Servers get angry at customers for "only" tipping 15%," instead of focusing their ire toward employers who refuse to pay fair wages. And then the employers flip it back onto the customers, who claim the servers are greedy.

'I have a policy in place'

There are similar stories to Lex’s case.

In an almost identical story to the Stockyards story, Rose (@roseinthecity) shared how she handled a customer who kept coming back to her end of the bar without tipping. After two rounds with no tip, she pointed him toward another bartender. "I have a policy in place," Rose explained. "You have a good two times to come up to me and not tip before I'm just done serving you for tonight."
Seems fair.

@lexusjustlikethecar

Patch reached out to Lex for additional information.