Sorry man, but this is absurd.The founder of the company I work for basically only drank Miller Lite.
He would bring everyone together at the Miller's Ale House for a team dinner the night before the monthly corporate meetings every month.
One night, he ordered a bucket of Miller Lite in the bottle and the waiter told him that they were out of Miller Lite. The boss told this poor guy, "There's a Publix across the street. They have Miller Lite. Go over there and get some. I'll make it worth your while."
The waiter refused.
That was the last time we ever had a team dinner at Miller's Ale House.
Your server was supposed to leave the restaurant, ignoring his other tables, because someone said it would be “worth it”? It was completely unfair to put the server in that position to begin with, let alone punish him/the restaurant.
Servers are told regularly that they’ll get a big tip or it’ll be “worth it” if they do something out of the ordinary, only to get nothing or very little extra. He’d probably been burned before and figured it wasn’t worth alienating his other customers to chase a mythical “big tip”.