After seemingly skipping out on his lunch bill, a pastor then paid his tab using a “thick envelope of cash,” suspected by viewers of a viral TikTok video to be tithings from his church service.
In a viral video posted to TikTok, user Lari (@girllariri) said she and a co-worker tag-teamed a table of 20 customers dining in after a Sunday church service. Seated at her half of the table was “the pastor of the group,” she described in her video. He picked up his own check and the check from the other table, which totaled an amount equal to roughly $100.
“Everybody at his table cashes out and I’m still waiting for him,” Lari explained in her video, which has been viewed over 16,100 times since it was first posted on Dec. 11. When she approached the table and asked if the check was ready, the pastor told her it was. Upon inspection, however, it was empty.
“He’s helping me look for it,” Lari revealed, describing how they searched the table and the floor for the money but could not find it. “I go and get the server that was helping the other half. She comes back with me and he’s like, ‘Oh, nobody picked up my tab?’”
That was, in fact, the case. Lari pondered how someone could have picked up the pastor’s tab if he had picked up both his and the next table’s. “He gets on the phone with somebody, I guess trying to figure it out, and I’m kind of just standing there waiting, not really knowing what to do,” she said in her TikTok. “At this point, it just looked to me like he was trying to skip out on the check.”
He and the rest of the table got up and walked away from her and her co-worker, at which point Lari went and got a manager. The check was eventually paid for with money from a stuffed envelope, one that Lari and viewers believe was filled with the church’s tithings collected during an earlier service.
“Can’t say for sure,” Lari added before ending her video. “But I’m pretty sure.”
“He did all that to make sure everyone had left and couldn’t see him do that. He definitely has a big story about it, for next Sunday,” user @slightmelfunction speculated.
“Sounds like every pastor I’ve ever known. He didn’t pray hard enough for a 30k square ft mansion apparently,” another user joked.
@girllariri psa your money might go towards some ribs for the man in charge #serverlife #servertiktok #exchristian #deconstruction #fyp #trending ♬ original sound – Lari
Other servers shared stories about waiting on church crowds. “I waited tables back when there were still smoking sections and Sundays were the WORST! You either got church people who had already given all their money to the lord or you had an empty section bc the sinners were still in bed,” one wrote.
“I swear Sunday brunch brought THE worst people. Looking down their noses because you’re working,” another recalled.
The Daily Dot reached out to Lari via TikTok comment.