What is the proper protocol for dealing with a nice couple, who is not causing any problems, or does not wish to dine and dash, that happens to forget their wallet for whatever reason?
I’ve heard stories about people being asked to do dishes or other menial work to pay for their meal.
But what can a restaurant owner do when they quite simply don’t have the money and for whatever reason can’t go retrieve it (it’s far away, etc.)? I would assume he or she would not call the cops on nice people who genuinely made a mistake. Are some restaurant owners more forgiving than others? I mean, there is no way of knowing if they actually are planning to pay you back at that moment. Do you trust or not trust?
Thanks,
Dave
(Mods, I don’t know if this is GQ or IMHO, because I’m asking for both proper protocol and opinion.)
I had my wallet, but left my credit card at home sitting buy the computer (I was making online purchases). I of course didn’t realize this until after I finished my meal and tried to pay only to discover my credit card wasn’t in my wallet.
I just asked to speak to the manger. I told him what the deal was and offered to let him hold on to my drivers license while I drove home to retrieve my credit card.
He just sort of shrugged and said: “OK”.
When I came back to pay, he had this surprised look on his face as in, wow! he came back!.
I got the impression there really isn’t a whole lot they can do when one decides not to pay. But I don’t know.
But wouldn’t you have needed the driver’s license to drive? I mean, I see you weren’t pulled over on that particular drive, so it didn’t make a difference, but as a matter of principle I think the driver’s license is not the smartest thing to use as a collateral in such a situation if the debtor is supposed to drive.
Anecdote on my part: When I was travelling in South Africa, I actually locked myself out of a rental car at the Cape of Good Hope. I was standing right at the Cape, car locked, the ocean (or actually two oceans, Atlantic and Indian) in front of me, and couldn’t get into my car. I managed to call a locksmith in Cape Town, about 40 kilometres away. He drove over and even had to put up admissions fee to the national park where the actual Cape is located. He arrived and opened my car, but I didn’t have enough cash with me to pay him. I promised him to meet him that night in Cape Town to hand over the cash, to which he reluctantly agreed, probably thinking I’d never show up. Which I did, of course. No collateral posted.
I’ll bet that the idea of working off your meal by washing the dishes is nothing more than a movie cliche, or at best a memory of some long-lost practice which might have existed during the Depression Era. I heard a comedian ask the question “How does making you do the dishes make the restaurant any money? Do they send the dishwasher home without pay that night? I’d hate to be that dishwasher.”
Speaking as a business owner, this is something I’ve struggled with over the years. I’ve tried trusting people who say “I don’t have the money now but I’ll pay you next week” and the success rate seems to be somewhere between 25% and 50%. The majority disappear and we never get the money. If anything, it seems like the harder they work to convince you of their sincerity and trustworthiness, the less likely it is that you’ll ever see the money. I think most business owners simply console themselves with the fact that 99% of customers pay immediately and losing 1% of your revenue could be considered just part of the cost of doing business.
Interesting to know. Do you give them an address and ask them to mail you a check? Do you ask them to sign an IOU? Do you make a note of who they are, so you’ll know not to serve them again unless they’ve settled up from the last time?
(By the way, this thread momentarily confused me, until I realized that I was parsing “forget their wallets at restaurants” in a completely different way than what the OP intended.)
Cars don’t require that the driver has a licence with them for the car to operate normally, nor is one regularly required to present a licence to pass on public roads.
The chance of driving without a licence on the person causing a problem is infinitesimally small.
Note there is a big difference between not having the licence on the person and driving without a (valid) licence.
Also, I’ll bet that the regular dishwasher is going to be faster at the job than the random stranger who forgot his wallet. The regular dishwasher has a rhythm, knows how to operate the machine (not difficult in my restaurant experience) and knows where the clean dishes go when he’s done.
If it happened to me, I could call a friend or relative and ask them to read out their credit card number over the phone to the restaurant owner, and then reimburse my friend or relative later.
and nowadays, it’s probably illegal, too.
To employ someone, you have to withhold his income tax, file his social security taxes,etc or else sign a contract with him as a freelancer. . In a restaurant, you have to provide him with a hair net. In any business you have to show that you followed procedures explaining employee safety rules . A customer-turned-dishwasher (ie. not an official employee) probably won’t be covered by insurance, etc., etc…
I bet that just stepping through the door labeled “employees only” is a violation in itself.
Well, where I live you are legally required to carry your licence with you when you drive, and not doing so is against the law. Of course, the chances are slim of being pulled over; and if you are, you pay a small fine, which is of course, much less than the penalty for driving without actually having a licence. Still, it’s against the law.
Well, I don’t think I’ve been pulled over in more than 20 years. The distance between my house and the restaurant I was at was 3 or 4 miles. So I took a “chance”. Sure it’s against the law, but so is driving 2 miles over the speed limit, which I’m basically guilty of on a daily basis. And so is pretty much everyone else who drives a vehicle.
I forgot my wallet once when I was at a restaurant I had eaten at several times before. I told the server and she said, fine, go home and bring in your wallet.
I’d leave it with the manager or owner. I wouldn’t leave my ID with a server. Other than that, I don’t think it’s that big of a deal.
It’s not like you are just handing over your ID to some random person on the street. You are giving it as collateral to someone who manages a business.
The difference is that in such a case it’s simply me acting against the law. There’s not a third party in play who incites me to act against the law by holding to my driving licence, then asking me to drive.
But the restaurant manager isn’t inciting you to act against the law, since you voluntarily gave him/her your license, as a form of security. (BTW, it seems unlikely to me that I’d have my wallet but not my credit card, since that’s where it lives.)
