A waitress who worked in a truck stop restaurant received $50,000 in a will. The popular Do-Drop-In Truck Stop is on interstate 10 just west of El Paso, Texas. It’s open 24/7, and it seats 80. Matthew had been a regular customer there for the last ten years. He was 70 when he started eating breakfast there. He drove a 1980 Cadillac that was missing three of its hubcaps. The car looked like it hadn’t been washed since 1981.
Matthew was a skinny, bald guy. He wore glasses that sat crooked on his nose, and he was missing one of his front teeth. Every so often he joked about his missing tooth. “Ask me what happened to it,” he would ask his waitress. She would ask. “I ran into a door,” he would reply, and then laugh like it was the funniest joke in the world. Most waitresses thought he was a little weird. Each of them hoped he wouldn’t sit in her section. He usually sat at a four-person booth all by himself. He often spilled food onto the table and seat. To make matters worse, he was a terrible tipper—one dollar was it, even though he usually had several free refills of black coffee.
“Oh, he’s just a harmless, lonely old guy,” said Amber. Matthew had taken a shine to Amber. After the first couple of months of eating at Do-Drop-In, he made it a point to sit in her section. He had other jokes which he shared with Amber, but they were as bad as his tooth joke. She laughed at them anyway.

Whenever the other waitresses saw Matthew pulling up in his old car, they would tell Amber that her “boyfriend” had arrived. They teased Amber about the day the elderly Matthew would propose to her.
“What are you going to tell him?” asked Chelsea. “If you say no, he might go home and drink himself to death. If you say yes, the shock might give him a heart attack.” Amber put up with her coworkers’ jokes.
Matthew continued to visit the Do-Drop-In regularly, but never proposed to Amber. The last time he ate breakfast there, he told her he was not feeling well. That's why he didn't finish the pancakes, he said. And he had only one refill of coffee. For the first time ever, he left Amber a two dollar-tip. She tried to return one dollar, figuring that he had made a mistake. He said no, she had earned that second dollar. She thanked him.
In his will, Matthew left a dollar each to the Republican and Democratic parties; the rest of his money, $50,000, he left to Amber. He noted in his will that Amber’s friendly smile was the “syrup on my pancakes.” Amber’s coworkers were happy for her, at first.
But later, when she hadn’t offered to share her money with them, some of them got angry. “You’re supposed to share the tips,” said Chelsea. “We’ve always pooled all the tips for each shift, and then distributed the total amount equally. This $50,000 was just an extra-large tip from a regular customer, and she should share it with the rest of the breakfast crew.”