When I was in college a friend and I went to a restaurant for their steak special. My friend became enamored of our waitress. The two guys at the booth behind my friend got up to leave as we were just after we got our check. As soon as they left my friend reached back and picked up one guy's tip and put it on top of his tip in an effort to impress the waitress.

The waitress got the same amount of tips as she would have received anyway. The other guy didn't get "credit" for having left a tip.

Theft? Stingy? Or just douchey?

I don't think my friend made enough of an impression on the waitress.

Yes

Theft and douchey.obv.

If he was really interested in the waitress actually talking to her might have been more effective, and less everything else that's already been mentioned.

I've been back and forth on this one for years. No doubt douchey, but I go back and forth on whether it was theft.

Oh, he did. He just wanted to try to gain a bit of an extra edge.

That just makes it look like you let your friend get away with not tipping. Terrible way to impress a server.

He didn't take it from the tip of his friend, but from a stranger at another table.

Hmm that's unclear from the post. But if that's the case, it's definitely theft.

Correct.

Have you tried reading the post that you quoted?

A Beast’s influence has spread beyond the pale.

I don’t think that can be theft. The waitress got the money. It’s clearly douchey but also ultimately harmless.

Howard,

Let’s say the tip on the other table was $10.

The tip taker’s bill was $100 and he left a $20 tip as planned plus an extra $10 from the other table. You say that’s not stealing. Ok.

What if he planned on tipping $20, but left a $10 tip and added the $10 from the other table. Is that stealing?

Now he tips nothing on his own, but moves the $10 tip to his bill. Stealing?

Finally, he leaves $90, but grabs the $10 to get to the $100 that his bill is. That’s of course stealing, right?

I think the middle two cases are analytically indistinguishable and are both theft. Both deprive the waitress of money that otherwise would have been hers.

The issue in this situation arises, I believe, because it isn’t immediately clear who the friend is potentially stealing from. It seems to me that once the guy at the next table leaves his tip on the table, it becomes the waitress’s money. In the original problem, the friend picks it up but never intends to use it for himself; he promptly leaves it for the waitress. So nothing has been taken from her.

In the other three cases, the waitress is left with less money; hence, theft.

The friend’s intent matters; intention is an element of theft, as I remember it.

HT,

Guy wanted to impress the waitress with an extra big tip. He just used other people’s money instead of his own. He’s deriving a benefit from the money taken from others. He also potentially deprived those customers of reputation/service if they return to the restaurant. Seems like theft to me.

I agree with Diablo. The other customers have to be presumed to be losing value of some sort in the sequence. Obviously a chance exists that they're just passing through town and that it doesn't make a difference that the waitress thinks them to be cheap bastards, but that's not the likeliest scenario.

It seems that in some places, at least, people continue to have an ownership interest in things, even after leaving them for certain others to take. I found a few articles on this issue in the context of rubbish, which seems like a close comparison since apparently no one else in the world was as douchey as the guy's mate above:

UK news article seems to argue pretty conclusively that you still own stuff even after leaving it- http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-13037808

US news articles on rubbish seems to suggest that if you're leaving something for someone, you haven't conceded property rights and abandoned it - http://www.slate.com/articles/news_a...y_garbage.html
https://www.local10.com/news/is-it-l...someones-trash
https://consumerist.com/2010/07/14/b...you-thousands/


So, I suspect, that when a tip is left (by the stranger) the ownership of that money instantly transfers to the intended recipient (the waiter or restaurant). If you then take that money - even if you return it moments later - it seems to be theft.

You don't get a free pass on stealing stuff just because you return it (sometime*) later.

*even if that sometime is a few seconds

ED, that is the issue I have struggled with since I witnessed this happen years ago. It is indisputable that he was attempting to derive a benefit--though not a financial one. It is indisputable (to me, as a witness) that the waitress was not deprived of one cent.

The remaining question is was the other customer deprived of anything of value. Monetarily, I don't see how. Potentially of future service, reputation, etc? Certainly potentially, but in reality? I don't know.

The taker was a college friend and is still a good friend, but this one act from years ago really nags at me. I guess just the fact that it still bothers me is a good indication that it was not completely harmless--or at least I thought it was not.

I don’t think that depriving the other customer of a benefit constitutes theft. It might be a tort of some kind, but I think criminal theft is a tough sell. It’s definitely an interesting question.

The slate article does, I think, deal with a somewhat different question, which is what happens when you arguably abandon something. That’s fairly different than this situation, where the other patron intends to leave something for the waitress. And the UK article expressly defines theft as “permanently” depriving someone else of property, which seems to support my position here.

Pro-thefters: what exact property has the friend taken, and from whom?

Tom, does your friend now admit his action was douchey?

Howard,
He took money from the other patron with the intent to permanently deprive him of its value. Fulfilling one's part of the social contract with a server, through the payment of an adequate tip, is one point of value among many that money has.

I used to work for a multimillionaire Ophthalmologist and he made us wash the 4 penny probes used to check eye pressure. This guy would freak out if you went over 40.5 hour for the week to avoid paying you 1.5x hourly even though he forced as to work when needed over our schedule.

He temporarily lost his license when he had PA's practice simple eye surgeries without being medical doctors because it was lucrative. Guy was despicable.

How can you be sure about that? If he really wanted to impress the waitress but that money hadn't been at the other table, might not he have given her more money out of his own pocket?

I do not think the patron owns the money after he gets up and leaves the table with no intention of returning.

I see what you're saying, and I do think the actual question of "theft" is in a grey area.

Continued participation in this topic frightens me since it is tip-adjacent, so I will leave it there.

I think he knew that at the time. We don't see each other often, and I can't recall the last time we discussed this. Maybe while we were still in college.

We were in college and pretty strapped for cash. The only reason we could afford to eat at this particular restaurant at all was because they had a weekly special for a club steak dinner. Even so, we could afford that splurge only about once a month. I can't even recall the last time I saw a club steak on a menu. I can assure you that we could barely afford the check + tip.