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Waiter fired for twittering about celebs

A Beverly Hills waiter is shown the door after he tweets about comings and goings of various celebs. The last straw: he accuses "Hung" star Jane Adams of not paying her check.

Chris Matyszczyk
3 min read

It is not easy to feed the egos of Hollywood celebrities. It is not even easy to merely feed their intestines.

This seems to be the conclusion one reaches from the story of Jon-Barrett Ingels, waiter to the stars. Well, now former waiter to the stars.

You see, Ingels was merely an extra in the vast set that is Beverly Hills. He would be still or sparkling, depending on his audience. And occasionally, he would turn his Twitter account into a diary of how hard it was to make his daily bread.

According to the delightful Los Angeles Times blog Brand X, Ingels worked at the Barney Greengrass establishment in Beverly Hills. I am not entirely familiar with it. However, a minuscule drift toward Citysearch reveals to me that within its exquisite walls, one can espy not only the Olsen twins, but also Pamela Anderson.

So it would not have fazed Ingels at all to greet Jane Adams, she of the HBO penis-inspired series "Hung" and formerly the terribly neurotic skinny thing who consorted with Niles on "Frasier." According to Ingels, Adams ordered a soup and a lemonade, and for this sustenance received an entirely reasonable check for $13.44.

Adams allegedly explained that she left her wallet in her car. Ingels said she could go out and get it, but he claims that she never returned that day.

Now, given that a large swath of Hollywood waiters are aspiring writers, actors, and gigolos, one should be unsurprised that Ingels subsequently blogged about this episode at HowToSucceedAsAFailure, which appears to be his magnum opus. Or perhaps magnum hopeless.

BJ Novak, who doesn't look hungover to me at all. CC Angela N/Flickr

When a representative materialized the next day to pay for Adams' food, Ingels felt empowered to tweet at his Twitter account, PapaBarrett: "Tues: Jane Adams, star of HBO series "Hung," skipped out on a $13.44 check. Her agent called and payed the following day. NO TIP!!!"

Oh, Papa. Oh, Momma. Could he not hear the train coming even then? Well, no. When other celebrities were brought to his table, Barrett continued to tweet with an eagle's eye and a teenage boy's brain.

Ali Larter, the famous, um, person from "Heroes," was "not wearing a bra". BJ Novak, the louche and wayward intern from "The Office", was, perish the concept, "hungover."

As for Tori Spelling, she of the rather classic "Beverly Hills, 90210" and no obvious plastic surgery, well, Ingels described her as having "become hot." In the very same tweet, he offered indiscreetly that she eats "salami eggs and onions."

This was all within a few days in July. A month later, Ingels claims that Adams wandered into the restaurant, rather upset, and gave him his $3 tip. Ingels offered her platitudes of the "Aw, you didn't have to" sort. But Adams, he says, exclaimed, "Well, I read about it on Twitter!"

You know that the power of microblogging is such that this does not have a happy ending. Yes, Ingels was put out to green grass.

Of Adams, he muttered to Brand X, "All she could think about was herself and her pride and her ego."

I am not sure whether this was before he tweeted on August 15, "For the record, I think Jane Adams (Hung) is a great actress!!" and "Jane Adams (Hung), if you're listening, I am producing a Web series and would love you in it!!!"

So now PapaBarrett is unemployed but still tweeting. On September 10, he bemoaned that though the NFL has a Twitter policy, Barneys New York (visited by many a Greengrass patron) does not.

Jon-Barrett Ingels currently has 457 followers. He lists his occupation as "Unemployed, thanks to Twitter."