A friend and I like to go to a restaurant in New York City that prints its checks from a machine. The check is not meant as a receipt for the meal. If you take it as a receipt they will follow you onto the street and ask for it back.
If you want a receipt, the manager has to swipe the machine with a special card to print one out. This is not a big problem during lunch when the manager is there. But, if you want a receipt at dinner time, it is a big hassle.
Why would a restaurant make it so difficult to get a receipt? We assume that they are trying to avoid declaring cash payments for tax purposes. But they are still generating checks. So I don’t see the advantage.
Here in Alabama some restaraunts give a receipt and a “drink chit” but only the actual receipt shows that all the appropriate taxes were paid.
You could compare the first “receipt” with what they give you as the actual receipt and see what discrepancies are noticed.
Your first receipt could also be used by the management to divvy up the tips at the end of the shift by recording where you were seated and who served you.
Think of it as a bill for services. In less automated restaraunts those “checks” should add up to the balance of the register for the night. If a waitperson conveniently lost one of those checks they could pocket the money and still balance the books. That is why you will also notice that those checks are sequentially numbered to see if any are missing.
It’s very odd, I agree, that a restaurant would make it difficult in the least to get a receipt.
I used to travel for business with a guy who would regularly cheat our employer by submitting receipts for nonexistant expenses. One of the things he showed me was that restaurants often keep a box of discarded receipts near the cash register, and will give you a handful for the asking, specifically to help people cheat their employers. I guess the restaurants looked at it as a favor they could do at no cost to themselves. At least, in the early 80’s when we travelled together, this was true - New England, the Southeast, Silicon Valley, New Mexico - he did this in many places when I was with him.
I have a family member who used to work as a waiter and bartender. He would “supplement” his income by taking and serving drink orders, and collecting the cash payment, but never ringing them up at the register. This would net him as much as several hundred dollars on a busy night, in addition to legitimate tips and wages.
Would the system the OP encounters in NYC be an attempt to deal with this kind of employee fraud? If so, I agree that they could have set it up easier so that a customer receipt is printed automatically.
Perhaps they’re trying to save paper? I know that here in LA, most restaurants will print three slips: an itemized bill, a credit card authorization, and a customer copy of the credit card authorization. Typically, two of these get thrown away immediately.
I suspect what may have happened is that a register dealer or importer went around and sold the same order/register system to many NYC restaurants… one that has this flaw/feature… and now the OP is encountering it “everywhere.”