Last week an image showing the "tip" left by a rich banker who had dined at a Newport Beach restaurant spread around the internet. The financial tip was slightly less than 1%, on a bill of over $100, but the patron also left a life-advice tip: "GET A REAL JOB".
Naturally, the image provoked the customary rage reaction from netizens.
The image originally was posted on a blog called "Future Ex-Banker" run by an anonymous blogger who said he worked in the corporate office of a bank for a boss who represented "everything wrong with the financial industry." He further claimed of this boss:
So proudly does he wear his 1% badge of honor that he tips exactly 1% every time he feels the server doesn't sufficiently bow down to his Holiness. Oh, and he always makes sure to include a "tip" of his own.
The image has now proven to be a hoax. The owner of the restaurant, True Food Kitchen, searched through their receipts and found the original copy, which included neither the stingy tip nor the insulting piece of advice. The "Future Ex-Banker" blog (futureexbanker.wordpress.com) has been taken down.
I gotta say, the original image was a pretty good photoshop job. I'm guessing that the hoaxer scanned the original receipt, digitally erased some of the information, then printed out a new copy, wrote the new "tip" on it, and took a picture of it. That would be easier than doing the alteration entirely digitally.
I'm also curious whether the hoaxer was a liberal or a conservative. Given that the hoaxer had to know that the hoax would eventually be exposed, it makes me think this might have been
black propaganda by a conservative, trying to make it look like a liberal/progressive hoax.
Links:
Daily Mail,
Huffington Post,
Smoking Gun.
Comments
I'm not sure this is as "busted" as you'd like to think...
It doesn't seem that unusual to me that the merchant would have the guest copy, since a lot of people leave the guest copy -- especially if you're given multiple copies of the receipt, as sometimes happens. But it raises the question of which copy was used to make the fake. And why was the tip written on the guest copy?
I guess the hoaxer could have signed the guest copy, left that at the restaurant, and then taken the merchant copy -- and used that to make the fake version.