Waitress brought to tears after being left £4,000 tip just for her

Whether it's the long hours, messy tables or just straight-up annoying customers, it's clear there are more than a few downfalls attached to working in the service industry.

But for one waitress, it was her lucky day at work after she received a hefty tip from a very generous stranger. Talk about a grand gesture...

It was just another regular day at work when Lauren started serving a table of four locals who would later change her entire life.

The four diners had wracked up a pretty steep bill already at $518 AUD (£297) and decided to follow suit with their spending when it came to the service charge.

Upon charging the customers for the food bill, Lauren noticed something totally shocking at the bottom of the receipt.

"I keep going over and over in my head the actual experience of it happening second by second," she revealed.

The diners added a staggering $10,000 AUD (£5,700) tip for the server, totalling the final amount to a huge $10,526 AUD (£6,049).

A pricey lunch, indeed.

Lauren called the situation 'surreal' and 'amazing' and couldn't believe what had just happened to her.

"I made them say the number out loud because I thought, 'What if I have just got too excited and I've stupidly read an extra zero or something like that.'"

Lauren's colleague, Charlotte, recounted exactly how her co-worker responded after she was given the life-changing money.

"She came up to me crying," the co-worker began.

The university student even called over the café manager to make sure she was even allowed to accept such a huge sum of money on shift.

"She was just like, 'Is this real? Was it a mistake? What do I do?'"

Much to Lauren and the other staff member's surprise - the generous tip was not a mistake in the slightest.

The tipper said that $7,000 AUD (£4,022) of the tip was specifically for Lauren while the remaining $3,000 AUD (£1,724) was to be split and shared between the other staff and the restaurant.

When thinking about what she would spend the money on, the student revealed that she had never been overseas.

"So," she explained, "the first thing everyone's saying to me is to go on holiday."

Clearly doing well for himself, the café-goer reportedly owns over $120 million AUD (£68.9 million) worth of property.

"I'm happy for Lauren and she is a really hard worker and she deserves it," her co-worker added.

Lauren was over-the-moon and couldn't contain her happiness over the grand gesture.

She added: "I am just extremely grateful. To know that they thought that much of my service is amazing.

"That money's going to help. A lot."

People couldn't wait to share their reactions to the lucky tip.

One Facebook user posted: "That's awesome! Great service rewarded and very generous."

Another noted that the news was 'a way to encourage' people to work within the hospitality industry due to a 'shortage' of labour.

"Wow that's crazy," wrote a third person, "amazing, unreal, enjoy!"

"The power of giving, there's nothing like it," a final person added.