In place of a tip, a lesbian couple's viral Valentine's dinner receipt had a stern message for the restaurant's staff: "Don't tell lesbians they need a man on Valentine's day."

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Ellie Parker of Greenwood, Indiana, who posted a picture of the receipt on Facebook on Sunday, wrote that when she and her girlfriend went for a first Valentine's day dinner together, they were shocked to get an unsolicited lecture on their sexual orientation instead.

"I'm not normally one to complain on social media, but the service I had at dinner tonight warrants a little complaining," the post begins:

Parker explained in the post that a chef at a Japanese restaurant asked the couple where their male counterparts were. But when the they told him they were "each other's valentines [sic]," the chef reportedly pushed the point.

"'Well it is legal, but it's such a waste not to have a man,'" Parker's post recounts him as saying. Later on, he even proposed a third wheel candidacy, offering to come home with the couple to "'heat things up.'"

"I cannot believe I paid over $50 to have my relationship insulted and sexualized," the post reads.

On February 14, Parker wrote that the restaurant offered to refund the couple's money, but, she said, "nothing can make up for the way we were treated." However on Tuesday, Amiée Parker, who claimed to be Ellie Parker's mother, said the restaurant had actually only offered the refund on the condition that the Facebook post be removed.

"UPDATE: The restaurant would only refund her money if she removes her post," Aimée Parker reportedly wrote. "I'm proud that my daughter knows that no amount of money is worth compromising her values or hiding the truth!!"

While shorting servers on a tip is regrettable, homophobia is also an issue.

The incident is upsetting, but also likely hardly anomalous. There aren't necessarily reliable statistics tracking how many lesbians are told they need a man, but the experience is empirically robust, as Jezebel has cataloged. In one example, a male user on an online dating site responded to a lesbian woman's rebuff with a picture of his penis and a message: "I'm really very honey sorry [sic]."

"Telling a man that you have a boyfriend is safer than telling a man that you're a lesbian," the YouTube personality Arielle Scarcella said in a 2014 video that Mic pointed to. "Because men respect other men more than they respect our individual sexual orientation."

ATTN: reached out to Parker about the experience, and will update this article if we hear back.

[h/t Metro]