God Officially Forsakes Bad Tippers

If the rollout proves successful, a similar policy will be applied to airline passengers who treat flight attendants and fellow travelers with disrespect.

Heaven, February 20 – The Lord Almighty confirmed today that He has formally embarked on a policy of no longer paying attention to the needs of people who withhold tips at restaurants or grant them only stintingly.

God called a press conference to announce the new measures, which will initially go into effect in the New York Metropolitan Area this weekend and, after an auditing phase of three weeks, expand to include the entire eastern seaboard of the United States. By the end of 2016, the Lord expects the policy to go into effect in every country in the northern hemisphere, and the entire globe to be covered by March 2018.

“When they spread open their palms, I shall conceal my eyes from them,” announced God. “For lo, they have afflicted the downtrodden, and I shall forsake them as they have forsaken the minimum-wage workers.” The Creator and True Judge of the universe and all within it added that he found requests from such hypocrites “burdensome,” to the point that they filled Him, as it were, with loathing that He hath tired of bearing.

A spokesangel for the Lord elaborated on the timing and rationale of the new policy. “Humans have been oppressing and mistreating one another forever, but there’s usually some sort of redeeming aspect to the behavior,” explained Gabriel. “There is legitimate consideration for preservation of identity, for one’s own pressing financial needs, and a host of other factors. But there has been a plague in recent years of douchebags – yes, that’s the actual term He used – who manifest their douchebaggery by sticking it monetarily to people who work on their feet for hours at a time and suffer all sorts of unwarranted abuse, getting paid less than a living wage for their efforts.”

Gabriel acknowledged that predatory behavior that exploits the disadvantaged is hardly a new phenomenon. However, the scourge of bad tipping has become so widespread that every encounter for a waiter or waitress produces acute anxiety and further damages their already-fragile self-esteem. “When most waitstaff were struggling show business people the behavior could be justified, or at least reasonably rationalized – these people chose to go into showbiz, which demonstrates questionable values and priorities, so maybe you could say they brought it on themselves,” he explained. “But that’s simply not the case anymore even in the popular perception, so there’s no excuse for bad tipping.”

Once forsaken, bad tippers will find themselves completely subject to the laws of chance and no opportunity to override their situation via prayerful petition or resolutions. Whether they attribute such a change to their douchebaggery remains up to them, but Gabriel noted it was unlikely in the short term that such people will demonstrate a capacity for the self-reflection necessary to improve themselves. However, the increased misfortune to bad tippers will most likely remove them from the tipping pool, relieving the problem in some measure, at least temporarily.

If the rollout proves successful, a similar policy will be applied to airline passengers who treat flight attendants and fellow travelers with disrespect. The Lord acknowledged that once the bad tippers are removed from society, traveling douchebags might automatically disappear as well.