Featured Image Credit: KCTV 5
Topics: US News, Money, Food and Drink
Joe Harker
A teenager was left lost for words after a customer at the restaurant he worked at left him with an incredibly generous tip.
Ryheem Lumpkins, 16, works as a cashier at the Pizza Ranch restaurant in Independence, Missouri, and ended up really impressing a customer there.
The customer, one Robert Samay, was impressed by the 16-year-old's attitude at the till and decided to give him a $5 tip for it.
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Samay then noticed that Ryheem's hands and arms looked different and realised that the teen he had been so impressed by didn't have full development in them.
Ryheem told KCTV 5 that he doesn't see it as a disability or a condition, saying that 'God made me like this for a reason' and 'doesn't prevent me from anything'.
After handing over the $5 tip, Samay was so impressed by the teen's attitude and work ethic that he later returned to the restaurant with a much more significant amount of cash.
The customer tracked down Ryheem and started handing him $50 bills until the teen had received a total of $2,500 in the new tip.
Samay told Ryheem that he appreciated the teen's 'hard work, your good smile, your good attitude', saying he thought we 'don’t get that nowadays, especially with young kids'.
"I never had anything in my life that had happened to me like that before. That right there showed me that there are more people in the world that really care for me," Ryheem said of the $2,500 tip he was given.
The 16-year-old is wisely planning on saving the money for something important as he's been working towards being able to afford to buy a car and the tip should go a good way towards that goal.
In the long run, Ryheem wants to become a motivational speaker for children like himself.
He said: "Don’t ever hide it. Embrace what you have different from other people.
"Because a lot of people think it’s cool and a lot of people wouldn’t think it’s cool. The negative words, don’t let it get to your head. Because there’s a lot of positive in the world. There’s more positive than negative."
Workers like Ryheem rely on the generosity of customers and how much they're willing to tip and while few people would expect to get $2,500 for having the right attitude on the day, it's surely an incredibly welcome thing for the teen to receive.