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Tales of the rich, famous and inconsiderate:

When the world's richest man and the supreme anchor of network news stroll through downtown Watertown, S.D., a prairie village of 20,000, they hardly go unnoticed. And when they each guzzle down a large $3 cappuccino at the Past Times Cafe -- and then leave without paying, let alone tipping, the waitress -- it's a screaming headline.

Thus the story of Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates's and NBC News Alpha Male Tom Brokaw's visit last Friday -- to tape an interview for last night's "NBC Nightly News" about the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's $250 million gift of computers to rural America -- spread as far away as Great Britain. The British high-tech journal, the Register, reported it yesterday.

"When I got to Montana I asked one of the producers, 'Did we pay that woman in Watertown?' and he said, 'I don't think we did,' " South Dakota native Brokaw told us. "Having grown up in one of those small towns, I know the DNA of these places, and I know that when Brokaw and Bill Gates, the richest man in the world, leave without paying, that news will instantly ricochet up and down Main Street."

Past Times owner Corinne Arnold told us Brokaw and Gates have nothing to worry about; the cappuccino was on the house. But waitress Jackie Harrington, who spent five minutes brewing the steamed-milk treats for her distinguished customers, revealed that Gates and Brokaw abjectedly failed our Celebrity Tip Challenge, and left nothing on the counter.

As in zero. Zippo. Zilch.

"It's all right," the 25-year-old Harrington told us. "A tip is not an obligation."

Gates Foundation spokesman Joe Cerrell told us: "I'm not going to try to defend it, but basically it was a very chaotic situation. It was an oversight that we didn't leave a tip. The tip is in the mail."

Brokaw, too, said he has sent two $20 bills to the Past Times Cafe -- one to cover costs and the other, "with an inscription, for Corinne to hang up on her wall."

• Yesterday started out as a bad day for 23 Republican women who flew here from Houston for a week's visit -- only to discover that their prepaid rooms at the Sheraton National Hotel in Arlington were occupied and unavailable.

But after group leader Pearl Fincher phoned not only us but also her congressman, Kevin Brady, and one of her senators, Kay Bailey Hutchison, it ended up as a bad day for the Sheraton hotel chain and its parent company, Starwood Hotels and Resorts.

"I think it's time for the Sheraton people to get a little bad publicity," Fincher told us by cell phone as her exhausted charges waited to learn where they'd be spending the night.

First the Sheraton offered the angry women, who had paid $1,035 apiece for transportation and lodging, rooms at a Best Western hotel two hours from Washington. Then a Starwood official told us erroneously that they would be given accommodations at no extra charge at the Marriott Wardman Park. Finally, the women were put on a bus heading toward a Best Western in Potomac Mills, in Prince William County. . But as complaints from Capitol Hill grew more heated, the bus made an about-face and the women were returned to the Sheraton -- where, somehow, the promised rooms were suddenly found.

"These are normally very gracious women," said Brady, who has a breakfast meeting with them scheduled for this morning. "But when they need to, they stand up for themselves."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52859-2003May14.html