Ulyana Hrushchak was having a normal day at work waitressing at a restaurant in Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Little did she know that she was going to receive a surprise $7,000 tip.
The 24-year-old New York City server got a huge amount of tip thanks to comedian Robyn Schall, who asked her 140,000 Instagram followers for contributions on February 11. By the evening, she raised $13,000, reported Bloomberg.
Schall decided to distribute the fund raised on the internet to her waitress and restaurant staff while broadcasting the act live on Instagram.
In the restaurant, Schall talked to the waitress and asked a little bit about her life. At the end of the meal, she handed her the check.
When Hrushchak saw the generous tip, she was overcome with emotion. “I still feel like it wasn’t real,” she told the publication in a phone interview on February 12. “It’s one of these pinch-me moments,” she added.Asked about the idea of fundraising on the Internet and donating, Schall said, “Everyone’s struggling right now, and people just wanted to do something good.”
The comedian further said that she did not expect such a huge response. “I was so overwhelmed,” Schall was quoted as saying.
During the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Schall has relied on donations to support herself. In the period when the world went into a lockdown, she started performing more on social media channels - YouTube and Instagram. However, things really took off in November for her when a video about her 2020 goal list went viral.
Over the years, Schall has often contributed to charity and donations. For this, she has auctioned off little things from around her house — a wig from one of her costumes, for example — and broadcast the donation to Ronald McDonald House Charities.
This time, Schall wanted to help people in the hard-hit restaurant industry due to coronavirus-enforced lockdown. “When I see a restaurant close up, it kills me. It hurts,” she said. “I feel like it’s my own home getting boarded up,” said the report citing Schall.