A pretty common reaction to someone stealing your tips that you’ve worked hard to earn might be, “Grr, that person stinks and I do not like him. Call the authorities!” But instead, workers at a coffee shop near Cleveland started a food drive after a man was caught on camera pilfering from their tip jar.

“He stuck his hand straight into the tip jar and took out as much as he could get and walked out like nothing happened,” the manager tells WKYC.com (warning: link has auto-play video) of the video surveillance. But instead of getting mad, the workers decided to get helpful.

“We assume that if he was desperate enough to steal tips, he’s probably in desperate times,” the manager explains.

The workers decided not to press chargers or even call the cops about the incident, and instead have turned the whole thing into an act of generosity by starting a food drive for the man at both the coffee shop’s locations.

The only problem is that they don’t know who the man is. If he comes forward, he’ll get the food they’ve collected with no questions asked.

That idea has some people on their Facebook page saying it’s a bad idea to reward a thief. That’s not going to stop the food drive, however.

“It definitely started a discourse. We are trying to show awareness that people are going through hard times,” the manager says, adding that if he sees these stories and comes back to the coffee shop, they’d “love” to have him back.

Coffee shop holds food drive for man who stole from tip jar [WKYC.com]

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