Doughnut shop employee pays tribute to Mitch Hedberg on receipts
An employee at a Chicago doughnut shop was recently "given the ability to control what gets printed on the receipts" and promptly did what any Mitch Hedberg fan would do: pay tribute to the late comedian's doughnut routine.
"This is the first thing I did," Jon Becker, a 27-year-old staffer at Stan's Donuts, wrote on Reddit, posting an image of a receipt's footer bearing the quote from Hedberg's standup set.
"I don’t need a receipt for a doughnut," Hedberg says in the routine. "I’ll just give you the money, you give me the doughnut. End of transaction. We don’t need to bring ink and paper into this.”
According to Becker, not many people noticed.
"Most customers probably thought, 'Jeez, this receipt is long,'" Becker told Yahoo News. "Very few people read all the stuff that gets printed on receipts. The few that did actually read it thought it was pretty funny, though."
But Becker's Reddit post quickly went viral, generating millions of views and hundreds of comments, many from Hedberg fans.
Becker, an aspiring comedian who moved to Chicago from California to study at Second City, said that he's a fan of Hedberg's, though not a "superfan."
"I mostly just put the quote there because it's delicious chocolate glazed irony to have that on a receipt at a doughnut shop," Becker said.
His boss thought it was "hilarious."
"It's not like I work at Dunkin' Donuts," Becker wrote on Reddit. "This would never fly in a place like that."
But Becker says his boss' boss put the brakes on the tribute.
"[He] thought it was pretty funny, too, but also thought it was inappropriate," Becker explained. "He actually thought we had somehow been hacked before I copped to it."
Becker was forced to switch to a quote from "Simpsons" creator Matt Groening.
"Donuts, is there anything they can't do?" Groening's quote reads.
"Not the same," Becker said.
But after Becker showed his supervisors that his Reddit post had over a million views, he was ordered to put the Hedberg quote back on.
"Hooray for receipt-based comedy!" Becker said.
Hedberg died in 2005 of a drug overdose. He was 37.
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