Student waitress bursts into tears after diner tips over £5,500

A waitress in Australia was left in disbelief after a customer dropped a whopping $10,000 AUD tip (£5,684).

University student Lauren couldn't help but burst into tears when the customer gave her the enormous tip at Italian restaurant Gilson, in South Yarra, Melbourne.

The diner was settling up the lunch bill when he stuck an extra $10,000 on top - and Lauren couldn't believe her eyes.

7NEWS

"I made them say the number out loud, because I thought, what if I have just gotten too excited and I've stupidly read an extra zero, or something like that," she told 7NEWS.

"I keep going over it again and again in my head. The actual experience of it happening, second by second, was surreal and amazing."

Naturally, she wasn't sure exactly what was going on, or whether she was allowed to accept such a mammoth tip and even called over her manager just to double check.

Ordinarily, staff at Gilson share out tips evenly, but the customer was very particular about how he wanted the money to be distributed - $3,000 (£1,704) was to be split among the staff, and the remaining $7,000 (£3,978) was to go in Lauren's back pocket.

7NEWS reported that the anonymous tipper was a young, self-made cryptocurrency businessman who owns more than $120 million AUD (£68 million) of property in the suburb of Toorak.

Looks like there are plenty of millionaires who can be so generous.

"I am just extremely grateful, to know that they thought that much of my service is amazing," Lauren said.

No doubt the other servers at Gilson are now wishing they'd been covering his order, but it sounds like there's no hard feelings about Lauren walking away with 70 percent of the huge tip.

Fellow waitress Charlotte Crow recalled the moment Lauren came up to her to tell her about the tip: "She came up to me crying, she was like 'Is this real? Was it a mistake, what do I do?'."

She added: "(Lauren) is a really hard worker, she deserves it."

Given this work ethic - and her very limited travelling experience - Lauren's colleagues have encouraged her to go away on holiday with the money.

"I'm going to be honest, I've never been overseas, so the first thing that everyone was saying to me was to go on a holiday," Lauren said.

"That money is just going to help, a lot."