The “Shocked” Waitress

Rabbi Binyomin Pruzansky tells of a story of a large religious family in Israel going on vacation down to Netanya. During one of their pitstops they stopped at a kosher restaurant and asked the waitress if they could use their restroom. She agrees, and the children all go to use bathroom.

As they were leaving, the manager sees the children using the bathroom and begins to yell at the father. “This is a restaurant, not a rest stop. Who says you could use the bathroom?”

The father sees that the waitress is horrified because she was about to get fired. He quickly says, “We were not using this restaurant as a rest stop. We came to eat lunch. My kids were just using the bathroom before we eat. We are just waiting for our table.”

The waitress watched in shock as the large family sat down and ate an entire meal to spare her from embarrassment. At the end of the meal, the waiters came out with a big cake and sparklers. The father of the family tried to return the dessert, but the manager insisted he keep it. He told them that he had seen the waitress crying telling him that this family was so unreal. They must be angels. She should have been fired, and this man spent all this money just to protect a stranger. [In some versions of this story, the manager waived the entire bill for the father in his admiration for mesiras nefesh to help save the job of the waitress.] Reprinted from the Parashat Lech Lecha 5787 email of Jack E. Rahmey based on the Torah teachings of Rabbi Amram Sananes.