Wow, that’s just a plain, unambiguous case of stealing.
-Kris
Sorry. I’ll never do it again.
AuntPam: I went to a place like you discribed exactly once. The try to sell it as an up scale “prepare it how you like it”, super quality food. How I like it is cooked for me. $25 for an uncooked slab of meat. That included baked potatoes near the grill in a pile. Sliced bread like Wonder bread piled by the fire in a bowl. All the melted butter flavored hydrogenated oil you wanted in one gallon metal cans. Salt, garlic powder and seasoned salt. No pepper, that’s too expensive. Pop is $5 and though you have to do everything else for yourself, the pop had to be brought to you by the waitress. You went without the beverage most of the meal, because she wasn’t around. Everybody in the party has to cook their meat and run back and forth to the table about 100 feet away , through a maze of booths. Nobody in our party of 8 ate together, because everything was ready at different times. For the person that may want some topping for the potato or the meat, they offer them for $1 to $4 a piece. Mushrooms were $4, Onions $2. I don’t think real butter was availbe for even an extra charge. Any side dishes were extra. I felt like an employee at Wendy’s during my break. The food was of the same quality. I stayed adement in my decision, and refused to eat there again. After I refused, a few other’s spoke up refuse to go there again. One couple liked the place, six of us didn’t.
Yes, hearing the entire story I would hazard a guess that it wasn’t going to make or break the place or server anyway. There are many many reasons why a restaurant closes it’s doors, but walking out of a restaurant without paying just because you had to wait a little, that’s just shady. Walking out of Dangerosa’s story though, that was really really bad service, the place was in it’s death throes. I wouldn’t doubt many of us would do the same.
Right. Never just stiff. If you have a serious complaint- do so to the management. In the OP’s case, I would have walked up to the front desk, asked for the MGR, and explained the situation.
I have done so in the past, and it has resulted in:
my entire meal being comped, (and an assurance from the MGR that that was that waiter’s last day) OR
free drinks and dessert
a gift cert for my next time
or an attitude which said “piss off” and a lukewarm apology.
That’s a 75% good result. 
Now if service is merely substandard, then the tip is cut to 10%. But if it’s so bad that no tip is warrented, then a complaint is.
No, you may not just walk out no matter how bad the service or even the food is. If the food is not edible, then you can dispute the bill with the management of course. IANAL but if you had a reasonable complaint about in-edible food, and you made it clear to management, then even if they didn’t agree to reduce or comp your bill it seems to have now turned into a civil matter. They can sue you if they like.
I don’t know how long you’d be expected to wait to pay, I guess it all depends and how much fuss you make. If you don’t get a check in a reasonable time, then go up to the cashiers and still no one comes to take your mnoey, and then you yell out in a loud voice- “I want to pay, if you don’t come get my money, you can send me a bill” and leave a card. If they do send you a bill, :eek: you can then dispute it if you like.
Note that sometimes food and even service is beyond the waitstaff’s control. But if so, you have a right to an explanation from your waitstaff.
Bad analogy. If you want to buy a piece of merchandise but can’t find someone to buy it from, you can drop it and leave. If you’ve already eaten a meal and can’t find someone to pay for it, it’s not really going to satisfy the debt to throw up your meal and stomp out.
Obviously you’re obligated to pay for your meal. But if the restaurant’s staff makes that substantially difficult, I can’t see the moral problem with leaving. It’s certainly not my responsibility to try to track down absentee staff. I’ve never been in that situation, but if I was I wouldn’t feel any compunctions about it. There’s no part of the implied contract that suggests it’s a customer’s responsibility to wait an hour after they wish to leave in hope that their server will stop neglecting them.
No. He could remind whoever was not manning their station that customers were waiting. Any employee who behaved that way - telling a customer that it was “not his job” to accept payment and not finding the person whose job it is - should be fired on the spot, and ideally horsewhipped.
:rolleyes: Please.
Fortunately, I’ve hardly ever had that experience. While I’ve had occasional poor service in a restaurant, I’ve rarely gotten the feeling that the server didn’t care about me. It’s certainly not something I’m liable to “accept”, either. If the restaurant is too full to provide adequate service to additional patrons, it’s the staff’s responsibility not to seat them. And there’s certainly no reason why good service shouldn’t be provided when the restaurant’s nearly empty. Either way, there is no reason to “accept” bad service under any circumstances. The idea is ludicrous.
This is what I get for composing my clever responses before I finish reading the thread. I’ve been noticing how often you say exactly what I intend to before I manage. Clearly, you are a person of wit, wisdom, and discernment. 
Precisely.
Yeah, but it’s funny. 
I would hope not. That’s a really crappy thing to do to someone who apparently provided fine service but wasn’t your waitress. The customer left that money on the table thinking “this is for the waitress,” not “this is for the fucking cuntwipe sociopath who steals tips off of restaurant tables.” You’re very lucky you weren’t caught. Waitresses take good care of cops.
FWIW, if we’re weighing in on the issue, I see nothing at all wrong with stiffing a restaurant that refuses to take my money. If they can’t be arsed to take my money, I assume they can’t be arsed to chase me on the way out either and I wouldn’t lose a moments sleep over it.
I know tipping threads usually bring out the charged emotions, but you still need to be aware of the forum in which you’re in. So, saoirse, no insulting posters outside of the Pit.
When I was a teenager, my friends and I had a horrible waiter at Buca di Beppo’s. He rarely visited the table and was somewhat cocky and disrespectful when he did. The table next to us actually yelled at him during our meal.
He moved from “bad tip” to “no tip” territory, however, when he dropped our pizzas while loading them into leftover boxes. He told us that to make up for it we could all have free desserts, so we ordered some pieces of pie. But after delivering them, he informed us that his manager only allowed him to give us one of the desserts for free. That was it - we resolved to leave no tip.
But then we had a better idea. One of us wrote “you suck, pat” on a napkin (his name was pat), and then put a single dollar on top.
Yeah, I know, pretty immature, but we were kids, and he deserved it.
I ordered Chinese food last night. It was supposed to be delivered in 30 minutes and it took 45. The delivery person didn’t ring my bell; she called me on her cell phone. I buzzed the door and she didn’t come in. I walked down two flights of stairs only to find that she hadn’t brought a pen for me to sign the credit card slip. I tell her I have a pen in my apartment and she refuses to follow me upstairs. So I come back down two flights of stairs, all the while calculating how much she was losing off her tip. I go to sign the slip, and I can’t bring myself to leave the tip line blank, so she ended up getting a dollar. Which is less than what I’d usually tip but a dollar more than she deserved. Damn my inability to withhold the entire tip.
This isn’t entirely related, but I’m reminded of it by all the talk of walking out on your bill.
I witnessed some bizarre behavior last week. We went to this tasty Mexican restaurant for dinner to escape our broken air conditioner problem. The entire time we’re there, there’s a couple across the aisle from us who are obviously completely wasted on something, especially the woman. Suddenly, they erupt in a fight. The man yells, “I put it right there!” pointing to a spot near the edge of the table on her side of the table. She mumbled something completely incomprehensible, to which he replied, “but that’s what we were paying for dinner with!” He gets up and walks away, after which she leans back and slides her hand into her pants. It didn’t look like she was scratching, more like she was hiding something, it was about as quick as someone as messed up on substances as she was could manage.
The man returns, and the woman stumbles out. The man begins searching the vicinity of the table, between booth cusions, etc., and the waitress comes over. He proceeds to explain to the waitress that his 100 dollar bill has disappeared, and asked that she please go to the kitchen and see if it had stuck to the bottom of a plate. But only quite a bit less coherently. She leaves, he continues his search while mumbling to himself about his crazy wife.
Waitress comes back and tells him that nobody has seen a 100 dollar bill. He and the waitress go out into the bar/entry area. At this point, we’re done eating and we’re waiting for the bill. It’s about a half an hour before she can finally get away from them and bring us our check. I ask her if it all worked out okay, and she said, “yeah, I suppose so…” I told her about the woman putting her hands in her pants, and she says, “seriously? Guess we know where the 100 dollar bill went…I had to pay their bill.” 
I felt terrible that we didn’t let her know about it earlier, but what were they going to do? Make the lady take her pants off? So we tipped her 50%, which I hope made up for it at least a little.
Waiting five minutes in no way justifies theft.
I remember reading about the penny in the water glass trick in a book called Sneaky Feats, which further suggested leaving a foreign coin of no value at all. It’s easy to do. Sneaky Feats went on to suggest leaving a foreign coin worth less than a penny. Frankly, I would never do this – not leaving a tip is sufficient, and in far better taste.
The last time I did not leave a tip, about two years ago, we were in a beer and chicken wings type place with our hockey team. I ordered wings and fries, but asked the fries be given to another person. The waitress agreed, but forgot the fries, was gently reminded four times, and eventually shrugged her shoulder and said, “while too bad, you’re not getting them.” The waitress was very attractive and probably figured this would help her out in these situations. I paid for the entire table of twelve people, left no tip, discussed my problem with her manager and told her and her manager why this was this was the first time in five years I was not leaving a tip.
I have intentionally stiffed a taxi driver one time.
It was shortly after I had broken my ankle, and I was walking on crutches. I was pretty obviously on crutches, if you know what I mean. (Accordingly I was taking lots of taxicabs.)
I got in one cab, and the driver said, “Oh, are you going out dancing?”
That’s right, make fun of the disabled. Fortunately for my sense of vindictiveness, I happened to have exact change.
To the OP: You were 100% justified in not leaving a tip. As I’ve said before many times in other threads, I was a waitress for a long time until just recently, and it’s completely understood that bad service = bad tip.
The only thing I would suggest is that next time, you ask to speak to a manager, or fill out a “comment card” if there is one, so that perhaps you can save someone else from going through such an unpleasant experience. Better that they know WHY you rationally chose to not leave a tip, and have a chance to remedy the problem, rather than just thinking you’re a cheap jerk.
I don’t know if it’s illegal or not, but in my opinion that’s fucking criminal. Any restaurant owner who makes his/her staff pay for skipped checks deserves to be beaten with blunt objects.
Hmmmmmm. I can’t say I’d walk out without paying.
My reaction to the five minute wait would, depending on mood, be:
- Call for service at increasing volume.
- Walk around the kitchen and/or back room until I ran into the senior person in charge.
- Stand around in their lobby suggesting people eat elsewhere. Heck, maybe I tell people coming in that I work there, and we’ve just been closed down by the health department because someone urinated in the soup. [Okay, that would only be on a really bad day. Unless #2 didn’t work, in which case I’d be the guy who urinated in the soup and then called the health inspector.
It’s to cut down on servers pocketing the check and claiming a walkout. Horrible yes, but there are plenty of dishonest servers, bartenders can be even worse.
I asked my sous-chef this question today and he said he’d wait just to stiff 'em. I came up with a compramise. This assumes you’re paying by card. Wait(if you can ) for the server, give the card, wait for the check to come back and tell the server “could you wait here a moment?”, if they do write out the check for the exact amount and (hopefully they’re watching you write) BAD SERVICE in the tip section, hand the check to the server, then leave. Can’t get the point across much better than that.
I’m wrong, because you say so, that makes sense. Other poster will back you up (and presumably provide arguments that you cannot). Sorry, the “vast majority” of posters will back you up. That also makes a lot of sense.
You would have “gotten away” with a free dinner? People don’t “get away” with things that they’re entitled to. They get what they pay for. In this case you got a meal, and threatened to not pay for it. Without even discussing your poor service with a person in charge. You threatened to steal food. They heard you screaming (your words) and then they took payment. Truly, you are a champion of the people’s rights.
Please note that I have not, nor will I, endorse the guy at the counter’s behavior. He was rude, plain and simple. Should he be fired, IMO probably. Still, cash control procedures at many restaurants prohibit unauthorized employees from accessing the till.
Suffice it to say that you were wrong. You demonstrated belligerence, impatience, willingness to break the law, rudeness (albeit in response to rudeness), and you have insinuated that you’d rather have other posters defend you, than argue your own case.
Can we agree on this? I feel that you are saying in effect “Waiting for 5 minutes at the counter of the Frisch’s, and being treated rudely, entitles me to threaten to leave without paying for the food I ate. I would follow through with that threat if my demand was not met.”
If you think that my above statement accurately describes your feelings, then we need to agree to disagree. If I have misread your intentions, please clarify.
Have you ever been to the ER? I have. I’ve been there with several friends as well as on my own. Often times the people in the ER are bleeding. Bleeding. Some had injuries that could have resulted in loss of limb if not death. Were people screaming after having waited for five fucking minutes? Only the families of those that had been shot were. The rest of us waited patiently, bleeding on the carpet. God forbid we should have to suffer waiting five minutes paying our tab at Frisch’s.
Behavior such as this:
is never acceptable for rational people. How many of the “vast majority of posters” have said that they would have handled the situation in the exact same manner? Hmm?
I’d be awaiting your response, but maybe I should be waiting on other people’s opinions, and then treating them as your own. Should I only count the good ones?
Funny how someone that has the balls to announce that they are willing to commit petty theft, hasn’t the balls to defend their decision to do so.
Again, I say “Five Minutes?”. Do you shout “Faster!” at your microwave?
BTW in case anyone cares, the winner for the 2006 rebuttal of the year award goes to…(drum roll)… Excalibre for this stunning little gem.
Ahem.
[Cue standing ovation and teary-eyed critics]
Only six years on one’s high school debate team could produce such a stunning rejoinder. Congrats. I am humbled by your simple sarcasm.
Aw c’mon, man, he wasn’t trying to be mean!
-Kris