It’s nice to ride toward the end of the week with a happy tipping-related story for a change. A waitress at a Steak ‘n Shake eatery in Indianapolis got the biggest bonus of her life when a diner left a 7,433% tip.

She tells WTHR-TV that it wasn’t some superstar big-spender like Peyton Manning who dropped the huge tip. Instead, it was one of her regular customers who wanted to brighten her day.

“I was having a hard time at another table, but kept smiling and going on,” she recalls.

At first she thought it was $46, which would have been a huge tip on a bill that was only $5.97, but then she took another look at the credit card receipt and, we imagine, her eyes popped out of her head like a cartoon wolf.

“When I looked again, I said ‘Oh my gosh Miss Jo, I’m not taking that!'” the waitress says about seeing the mammoth $446 tip. “And she said, ‘Yes, you’re taking it’ and I said no and she said ‘You need to take it’.”

The waitress, a part-time college student, says she plans to use the windfall to pay her bills.

The Steak ‘n Shake manager says the big tip had a carryover effect to the rest of the staff.

“You’ve seen how everyone was pepped up a bit,” explains the manager, “it just makes me feel good about humanity.”

Adds the waitress, “I didn’t think I was worth $400 but, you know, she feels I am.”

This isn’t the biggest tip we’ve ever heard of. Almost exactly one year ago, a waiter at a Houston restaurant received a whopping $5,000 tip on a $27 check when some of his regular customers overheard him saying he needed to buy a car. That’s more than an 18,500% gratuity.

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