The year was 1989. I was a bartender working the undesirable Saturday day shift at O'Tooles Roadhouse at McCowan Road and Highway 7 in Markham, Ontario. It was totally boring. Dead. I was the only bartender working both the main bar, which was completely empty, as well as the service bar. My girlfriend, let's call her Shanice, was the only waitress on shift working the dining room.

Four guys came in completely drunk. Shanice could obviously tell they were drunk - anyone could've - and so she sweetly fed them our stock line that she couldn't let them in because they didn't meet our dress code, which was 'actual code' for 'we'd rather have nobody in the dining room instead of just four drunk dudes'. Surprisingly, the guys took her message with equanimity and left the bar.

Fifteen minutes later they were back, this time wearing a thousand bucks worth of off-the-rack tuxedos from the Moore's Mens clothing shop next door. We weren't prepared for that, so they took a table and ordered a round of drinks. Double rum and cokes if I remember correctly. I made them and Shanice served them.

Here comes the interesting part.

Shanice came racing back up to the bar and said, "They tipped me a hundred and fifty dollars!"

I go, "What?! On twenty bucks worth of drinks?"

"Yeah! They told me that they just won the lottery!" (so that explained the tuxes)

I said, "Holy shit! Send them up to the bar for their next round!"

And Shanice did just that, dog bless her.

So one of the drunk dudes comes up and orders four more rum and cokes. With a flair not unlike Tom Cruise in the movie: Cocktail, I made four of the most technically fucking gorgeous rum and cokes ever to grace this earth. I admit that it wasn't exactly rocket surgery, but that's not the point. Then I placed them in front of the drunk dude expectantly.

He wasn't even facing me. He was likely ogling Shanice - she was almost indecently hot back then. "That'll be twenty." I said.

And holy shit, the dude reached into his pockets and pulled out at least a couple of thousand dollars in crumpled bills, threw it all on the bar and said, "Help yourself."

So with a big smile, I took a ten and two fives and respectfully backed up a step, smoothing the bills out and I waited expectantly for my $150 tip. After a moment and again, without even a look at me, the dude swept up all the bills back up from the bar and crammed them back into his pockets and walked away.

WTF?! I called Shanice back to the service bar and told her.

And she said, "I don't understand? They said 'Help yourself' so I took a hundred and a fifty and a twenty and said, 'Like this?' and they said 'Whatever' and I made a hundred and fifty bucks!"

And because unlike Shanice thirty years ago, I, for the last time in my life, did the honorable thing and took only what was owed instead of what I wanted - and ended up getting stiffed by four drunken lotto winners.