Gay waiter in Kansas gets hate and tears instead of a tip

A gay waiter in Kansas was left in tears after he received a homophobic slur instead of a tip. Still, he later received a public apology from the customer and is now using the incident to fund a worthy cause.

Noah Bierig was on his usual Sunday shift at a Bubba’s 33 restaurant in Wichita when he felt something different about one of his tables, he told local ABC affiliate KAKE last month.

Bierig recalled one customer kept looking at his painted fingernails and the colorful Pride bracelet given to him by his mother when he came out in the eighth grade.

“The first time I went up to the table, they were just shooting me a couple dirty looks,” Bierig said. “And every time I would walk away, they would kind of just start laughing a little bit.”

Bierig brushed off the incident until he looked at the restaurant’s copy of the bill where the customer had written “f*g” in place of a tip.

“That hurt me a lot,” Bierig said. “I’m not the type to cry at work, but I gotta say, that was definitely the first time that had happened to me.”

A copy of the receipt with the customer’s name was posted to social media by Bierig’s family and friends. It didn’t take long for amateur internet detectives to identify the customer.

The customer, a 21-year-old resident of Kansas, denied he was homophobic but said instead that he reacted inappropriately to the situation.

“I was going to wait until the morning to say anything but I will go ahead and address this now,” the man wrote to Facebook in a since-deleted post. “I know it was wrong of me to write what I did and for that I am very sorry. The overall dining experience wasn’t that great and I shouldn’t have dealt with it by saying what I did. I did try to call the restaurant to apologize to the guy but couldn’t contact him. I am sorry to anyone who was affected or hurt by my words. I have learned a valuable lesson in all of this and nothing like this will ever happen again.”

The man said he and his girlfriend, who was not with him at the restaurant, had received death threats and hateful messages and asked the public to stop.

A webpage was created to reimburse Bierig for the missing tip, and the page has taken off. He said the page has raised thousands of dollars to date, but he’s not keeping any of it. Bierig said all funds raised will be donated to GLSEN, the educational support and advocacy group for LGBTQ+ youth, and his employer Bubba’s 33 is matching his donation.

“I honestly wish that something like that was around when I was still in high school,” Bierig said of GLSEN, “because I'm sure that would have helped.”

You can provide a tip for charity here.