Working in retail loss prevention for a number of years you get to realize that there are A LOT of scum out there who will rip you off any way they can and at times it seems that unless you physically nail something down someone will try to walk out with it.
In the gas station business it seems like they are combating theft with a “use credit card or pay in advance” tactic along with cameras monitoring vehicles and plates.
For those of you in the restaurant business, how often do dine&dash thieves strike? It seems like the window of opportunity for them is wide open. Busy restaurant, waitress in back or somewhere else, patron goes to restroom then leaves while partner soon follows, etc.
Do the employees constantly have an eye out for this that I’m not aware of? It just seems that too often my waiter/waitress disappears without a trace for extended periods of time in which I’m left thinking “gosh, I could have left 10 minutes ago and they still wouldn’t know I’m gone.”
I worked worked in the bar and restaurant industry for about 6 years total, and never saw it happen once.
I do live in a pretty small city, so we might have recognized someone if they had skipped out. But it is also a college town, with lots of young people coming and going all the time.
My sister and BIL did it once, by accident. They each thought the other went up to pay, on the way to the bathroom. They promptly called the place and sent a check, once they found out.
My DH and I forgot to tip once, because of the same sort of thing. I thought he put it on the card and he thought I put it on the table. We went back with the tip too.
I waited tables for 4.5 years, in all different types of areas, rich, poor, etc. I had a table walk on the tab exactly once. 3 teenage boys. I was cool with my manager and they comped the tab.
I worked in a bar/restaurant throughout college and never saw it happen either. It was an upscale establishment so maybe that had something to do with it.
I did it once, too, at a favorite restaurant. I was a regular, and they bring the food out to your table after you order at the counter. Somehow the waitress and I both forgot that I was supposed to pay at the time I ordered, and I sat down, thanked them for bringing my food, ate happily, bussed my dishes, and left. Later I realized what had happened, so I went in for lunch the next day, paid double, and all was good.
I also was chased down by a waitress once for dining-and-dashing. I pointed her back to the money we’d left on the table, and she was very embarrassed.
Daniel
That happened to me in New Orleans once a couple of years ago. We were visiting and I went out to lunch by myself. I paid for the meal with a healthy tip but the bartender/waiter tried to accuse me of chewing and screwing after I went to their video poker area and then tried to leave. I was pissed but the money was right on the sitdown bar the whole time. I didn’t get an apology but I should have.
I did a reverse dine and dash once.
Dined by myself; paying in cash. The total bill was only $12. I had a crap load of ones I needed to get rid of so I put twenty $1’s on the table and left.
As I’m getting into my truck I see my waiter running towards me full throtle. He gets to me and says: “Did you mean to stick this $100-bill in with the ones?”
Me: “Um, no. Thanks for that”
I had another ten in my pocket so I gave it to him and went on my way."
How lucky was I that day?
I’m the asshole
I did it once back in College, at a Denny’s, just for the experience I guess? (We were drunk.) I dunno. Felt like a dick, though, cause the waitress probably got stuck with the tab (granted it was probably $10-15 between the two of us, me and my friend, but still). Anyway, yea, I was the asshole. I’m normally a guy who tips at least 20%, too, 'specially cause most of my friends are bartenders or waiters/waitresses now.
I imagine it happens more at a Denny’s or that type of place, where they serve the “drunk crowd” and it’s super-cheap in both price and quality. I dunno, that’s just a guess.
My mother does a lot of aid work in third-world countries, and she tells me that she’s been warned any number of times about what you might call the “reverse dine-and-dash”. Apparently it’s a fairly common practice in some places for a waiter to go running after a tourist who made the mistake of paying without getting a receipt and demanding that they pay the bill. No receipt, they make you pay twice.
I waited tables and I’m currently a bartender…
As a waitress it happened to me probably 3 or 4 times; usually the manager will comp it (assuming you have a good relationship with said manager and you don’t do it all the time) but I remember one table of two executive-type older guys who walked their $90 tab and I had to work the rest of my shift to pay for it. My manager was a jerk who said “You should’ve been paying attention.”
Sure, but you also want me to run food/keep up with sidework/refill drinks, etc…it’s physically impossible for any waiter to keep a constant eye on their tables.
FTR it’s actually illegal to make a waiter pay for a walked tab…but it isn’t illegal to write you up for it, so that’s how managers get around it. “Either you pay it or you get a write-up.”
As a bartender it happens more frequently, because people are drinking and forget, or assume that somebody else in their party has paid. (And yeah some people just leave, because they’re jerks.) This is why I take credit cards to secure tabs from customers I am not familiar with.
And even that’s not a guarantee; I’ve been left with declined credit cards, and yes I’ve paid my fair share of strangers’ bar tabs. (We can “pre-authorize” credit cards to make sure they’re valid, but in a busy bar it just isn’t realistic to do that with every single card we’re holding.) However, the fact that I CAN pre-authorize a credit card means it’s my fault if the customer leaves and the card is declined…
Thus the tabs I’ve paid. :smack:
Oh, and regulars walk their tabs rather frequently…
But we always get the money back the next time we see them, so I don’t really count that.
I work in a casino and it happens quite a bit. Just due to the type of business, it’s not unusual to keep a tab open for a couple of hours. Lose your money, walk out the door, forgetting that you had dinner two hours earlier and never paid. Ironically, this is especially a problem with employees since there’s only a limited time to eat. Often I’ve had them bring me half the meal on one break and half the next. Only did it myself once, but since I’d been regularly tipping that particular waitress 80-100%, she gladly paid it and let me know the next day.
Strangely, even more common is ordering a drink then taking off and leaving before receiving it.
Used to happen here on outdoor patios…easy to walk. That’s why most patios have a little decorative gate around them now.
My son is a server and had it happen to him a few times. Both places he worked were where you pay at a register as you leave. If he gets busy, it’s hard to keep an eye on a table that’s leaving to make sure they pay.
He’s also encountered what he calls “rush chasers.” These are people, according to him, who go to a restaurant with a full parking lot, figuring it’s busy, and they can complain about slow food delivery/slow service/whatever and get a meal comped. He’s had one woman come in and do this a few times, and she only comes in when they’re busy.
When I worked late night restaurant security, I saw it a couple of times in just a few months.
Most common way was: A bunch of friends come in separately, order separately, leave separately. ALWAYS was the first to leave who failed to pay and the others refused to cover for their “friend” who walked out. Without fail, the restaurant would refuse to make a fuss over it and just write off the skipped bill.
A couple of other times, whole parties just tried to walk out as if nothing was wrong. I’d usually end up going after them and asking if they “forgot” to pay their bill.
The other ones I saw were the Race Baiters. Usually black women. Would complain about people looking at them, getting bad service, stupid little things, food being cold, blah, blah, blah. Endlessly. Just to get food comped.
I have done this on two occasions. Once was on accident, we were all wasted and the place was super busy. Everyone in the group simply left. I feel bad about it, because it was pretty big tab, but no one wanted to go back. Hopefully the waiter didn’t have to pay for it, best I recall he was pretty nice.
The second time was totally intentional. My best friend and I stopped in a local pizza place. cough Pizza Hut cough
The place was mostly empty, and there were about ten people (teenagers actually, I never once saw an adult) milling around behind the counter chatting and laughing. It took forever to get seated and waited on, I finally had to go up to the counter to place the order. It took even longer to get our food, which should have taken 20 minutes tops with the lack of other patrons and the over staffing. They never came back to check on us, never re-filled our drinks and never even brought us a bill. After almost two hours of being ignored we just left, I feel it was pretty justified.
I worked as a server for 2 years, I had it happen once. The majority of those 2 years I was in a fairly upscale place, for 3 months I worked in a more “family” style restaurant that was cheaper. It happened in the upscale place. It was a group of 3 youngish (17-20) gay guys (I make the gay assertion based on the fact that they were openly putting their arms around each other and touching each other intimately.)
They ordered pretty much every damn thing they could, from appetizers to dessert. I think their total bill was about $90. Two of them left early while one was still sitting there finishing up his dessert. I gave the last guy the check and when I came back, he had bounced and left nothing in it. I looked around in the near vicinity outside but didn’t see any of them.
That was only one instance in a period where I served literally thousands of tables, so I wouldn’t say it’s a big problem. But of course it happens once in a while.
I worked as a server for 3 years and it happened twice. Once when a table walked out - just a regular looking couple.
Once when a guy’s card was declined but he had booked it out of there before I caught it.
Really though, not very common. I worked in a family restaraunt.
We had a waitress take our card and give it back, but not run it. We thought something was weird but shrugged it off, left tip on the table, and left. She ran after us in the parking lot. It was annoying, though when we first saw her, we were pretty sure she was hung over.