It all started with a video from a stranger on TikTok.
In a show of appreciation, the person surprised restaurant workers with a giant tip – calling it #TipBackThursday.
Jenna Arcidiacono loved the idea. And as Michigan's restaurant industry floundered in early January because of the COVID-19 pandemic and dine-in ban, she decided it was time to join the weekly trend.
A month later, Arcidiacono has crowdfunded and given out more than $7,000 in tips to restaurant employees in the Grand Rapids area – tipping at least $1,000 at a time.
It happened again Wednesday morning when a lucky waitress received a $1,900 tip this week. Tanya Johnson and 18 other diners each left a $100 tip for their waitress in Ashburn, Virginia.
In a Facebook post that has since gone viral, Johnson says she got the idea from a friend. The plan was to get a group of people together for breakfast and have each diner pay with a $100 bill, leaving a sizable tip for a lucky employee.
On Wednesday morning, one diner, Karen Draper, took the generosity a step further and covered the group's bill on her own. This allowed the remaining diners to present their waitress, a woman named Rosa, with 19 $100 bills.
"Thank you," the waitress said in a video posted to Johnson's Facebook page. "You made my Christmas."
After the event, Johnson shared a similar sentiment. "It was such an amazing day and I know that the 19 of us can't stop smiling," Johnson wrote on Facebook. "It literally made my Christmas."
More than a hundred commenters have responded to Johnson's original post now, sharing their own gratitude and planning their own charitable activities during the holiday season.
Johnson, who is a real estate agent in Loudoun County, wrote that she hopes this inspires others to pay it forward and contribute what they can to their own communities.
"Let's do it again next week and the week after. More importantly, all of us can do it with our own small groups at random times just paying it forward," Johnson said. "We can change the world one by one!"
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