It Was Never About The Tip Jar

So the Boston and London Marathons recently concluded, with plenty of stories of camaraderie, sportsmanship and humour coming out of them. This story follows a guy who unfortunately shares the same first name as one of the Boston Marathon bombers in 2013, and the bombing is in the background. 

This is 'Process of Elimination' by Saïd Sayrafiezadeh, published in The New Yorker on April 26, 2026. The protagonist Tamerlan Thompson is blond-haired and blue-eyed, and a lifelong New Englander. He is flawed and annoying. He is 26 years old and is working in a coffeeshop in New England in 2013. Boston is two states away from him. 

The opening lines already pegged him to be accused of stealing the tip jar that went missing a month ago, and told us that this Tamerlan Thompson was about to be fired, without explanation. He went to the Department of Labor to file for unemployment but he hadn't worked at the coffeeshop long enough to qualify for unemployment benefits. He went to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for file for unlawful termination. He didn't hear back from any of the jobs he applied to.  

Then he found a job as a barista with a newly opened outlet of Starbucks. There were no tip jars at this outlet. He was promoted to shift supervisor. By now, it was seven months since he was fired. He finally heard back from the Commission, and there was a mediation meeting arranged with his previous employers. 

To his surprise, the person who fired him was actually the manager, and the owner of the coffeeshop was someone he had never met, "the man who I had thought was the owner was only the manager, and now here was the actual owner, who had no idea who I was, and, moreover, appeared flummoxed as to how we had arrived at this situation." 

The 'manager' wrote his side of the story and insisted that he never fired him because of his name or because of the tip jar. Which left us to conclude that when spring break came, and the coffeeshop didn't need so many staff, Tamerlan was simply fired for being too new, or the only one too young, or the odd one out. Whatever it is, he didn't seem to have been fired for incompetency or making a mistake, which means, he should have had severance or redundancy pay. But there was none. Since he had no severance payment, the case counsellor asked if he would accept four hundred dollars in compensation. And to his surprise, the other side offered higher — eight hundred dollars and an apology. 

He was also surprised to learn that his ex-colleagues didn't think he had bonded with them, or he was a team player. So they met in the next room for final resolution and closure to the case. I don't know if this would bring closure to both parties, emotionally, but it was technically a closure of sorts.  

He had brought his notebook with him, of course, “Management” written on the cover. He was not the outsized entrepreneur that I had always thought him to be, but, rather, one of those fortunate employees who had worked long enough at the coffee shop to qualify to enroll in college courses. I suddenly felt a sharp sense of remorse for having caused this ordeal in what I had considered the pursuit of justice, and I felt sorry for the manager, who, no thanks to me, had certainly not curried any favor with the real owner. I wondered if the eight hundred dollars would be coming out of the manager’s pocket. I wondered if he would be fired. But there was no turning back now, and nothing left to do except for everyone to sign the forms in triplicate saying that we were in agreement with the outcome.

And when that was done, the manager turned to me, his hands folded in front of him on the conference table, barely able to make eye contact, mumbling his compulsory apology, as if we were children in the schoolyard.

“Sorry for the misunderstanding,” he said. None of it mattered, of course. Starbucks was coming. Starbucks was going to swallow everything.

Then the case counsellor handed me the check for eight hundred dollars.

“We hope this will make you whole,” he said.

In an interview with the same journal, the author is asked if he intentionally didn't bother to provide clarity as to who took the tip jar in the coffeeshop. He is asked if he intended Tamerlan to be convinced that the was fired because of his name and the identity it suggested.

And this is something that all of us grapple with — do we judge people because of their names? Do we link it to their facial features, their ethnicity, or have a preconceived notion of them and their background based on a name? What's in a name? 

The author explained, 

This remains the unanswered question of the story: Is his accusation true or not? It remains unanswered for Tamerlan, as well. As far as I can tell, the only indication of doubt is when he admits in the final scene in the conference room to having some regret for having put the owner (actually the manager, he learns) through all of this. Beyond that, he’s motivated by pure self-interest. The case counsellor says he believes Tamerlan’s version of events, but that might just be the result of his understanding that he can easily settle the matter to the satisfaction of all the parties, i.e., by having the owner of the coffee shop cut a check for eight hundred dollars. In any case, I wanted the readers to be left wondering what is true. Perhaps we should take the manager at his word when he claims that he dismissed Tamerlan simply because it was the end of the spring semester. Or maybe Tamerlan is correct in sensing that there was more to it than that, and it was not a mere coincidence that he was fired right after the Boston bombing. We know that Tamerlan has been led to this conclusion out of some necessity. The truth in this story seems to be elusive and unknowable, and this circles back to your earlier question about what kind of assumptions are made about people with names like Saïd or Tamerlan. I think it’s equally fair to ask what kinds of assumptions are made by people with names like Saïd or Tamerlan.