Before being elected as governor, then-Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott left no tip after dining with a party of 20 people at Rainforest Cafe in Grapevine.
On Aug. 27, 2022, a tweet was published that claimed Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, once dined with a party of 20 people at a Rainforest Cafe restaurant in Grapevine and did not leave a tip. That tweet has since been retweeted and liked thousands of times. Readers emailed us to ask if the story really happened. We’ve so far uncovered no evidence to definitively confirm or deny the rumor.
In the viral tweet, a user named @DeniseBinAR claimed that her niece, a former waitress at Rainforest Cafe, came home in tears after receiving no tip from a large party that included Abbott. “His wife told my niece, they should be honored to serve him,” the user said. (Abbott’s wife’s name is Cecilia.)
My niece was a server at The Rainforest Cafe in Grapevine, Texas. Abbott came in with a party of twenty. Two servers. Not one dime for a tip. His wife told my niece they should be honored to serve him.
My niece, single mom, came home in tears.
— Denise
(@DeniseBinAR) August 27, 2022
To learn more, we called the Rainforest Cafe restaurant in Grapevine. A manager on staff directed us to contact their parent company, Landry’s. We placed a phone call to Landry’s, who then directed us to an email address for a public relations company. We sent questions to the PR company, the Twitter user, and Abbott’s press inbox. Lubbock-based radio station KFMX.com published that Abbott’s office denied the rumor, saying he had never visited the Rainforest Cafe in Grapevine. We will update this story if we receive responses from any of our outreach.
We found several tweets from the same user that provided additional information. For example, this wasn’t the first time that @DeniseBinAR had tweeted about the story. Another tweet from 2019 described the same purported incident:
My niece served Greg Abbott and a party of 20. NO TIP. Not a dime. His wife told the server she should be honored to serve him.
— Denise
The user also tweeted that her niece has since experienced a stroke and that the incident happened years ago while Abbott was serving as the state’s attorney general. Abbott held the position between 2002 and 2015. According to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the Grapevine location for Rainforest Cafe appeared to have opened in or around October 1997.
My niece has had many health problems, including a stroke. This incident happened while Abbott was attorney general.
— Denise
One person responded to @DeniseBinAR, tweeting that at least some Rainforest Cafe locations have a policy of automatically adding 18 percent gratuity for large parties. “When my niece was serving, there was no auto-gratuity,” the user responded.
When my niece was serving, there was no auto-gratuity.
— Denise
A screenshot of the viral tweet was also shared on Reddit, where it received nearly 90,000 points. For readers unfamiliar with Reddit, this meant that it was an extremely popular post.
Despite a complete lack of evidence, most of the top-voted comments in the Reddit thread indicated that users believed that the story was true. They also apparently believed that the purported incident at Rainforest Cafe happened recently, completely missing the other tweets that claimed it supposedly happened years ago and before Abbott was elected governor.
Far down in the Reddit comments, one user asked if there was a receipt that could be shown as proof. A different user responded sarcastically, “A random internet claim is much more effective.” Another user replied to the request for a receipt, also saying with some sarcasm, “Are names of famous people usually printed on receipts?” Someone responded, “Do you typically accept tweets with no evidence as fact?”
This story will be updated if we find more information regarding this currently unsupported rumor.
Sources:
@DeniseBinAR. Twitter, 27 Aug. 2022, https://twitter.com/denisebinar/.
“Greg Abbott.” Ballotpedia, https://ift.tt/7OwQ65K.
—. https://ift.tt/TRdgSY0.
“Rainforest Cafe.” Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 13 July 1997, p. K-22, https://ift.tt/wSheFiG.
Raven, Renee. “Update: Greg Abbott Refutes Allegation That He Didn’t Tip Texas Servers.” KFMX 94.5, 30 Aug. 2022, https://ift.tt/Lgtpf7l.
SpaceLaserPilot. “Servers Should Be Honored to Serve Governor Abbott, Right?” r/antiwork via Reddit.com, 28 Aug. 2022, https://ift.tt/CqsdFzM.
Did Greg Abbott Dine at Rainforest Cafe and Leave No Tip?
Source: Kapit Pinas
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