The restaurant tab conundrum.

In My Humble Opinion
101

Man (we’ll call him Jim) in a restaurant finishes dining. Waitress slaps the 15 dollar tab on the table and says: “I’ll be right back”. There are no CCTV cameras and Jim waits for a time nobody is looking at him to just walk out.

When the waitress returns to the table, she sees Jim is gone and no money on the table. She then proceeds to chase him down in the parking lot. Jim claims he left a 20 and it was stolen.
Who is responsible for paying this bill?

(It can’t be the thief, because he doesn’t really exist.)

The only people who know this is different to the situation in the OP are Jim/Bob.

102

I voted the restaurant. I’m not sure why some posters are hung up on the idea that Bob is on the hook because he didn’t physically hand the money to the server.

He made his payment in a commercially reasonable and customary manner. It was left on the premises of the business, a place where the business has dominion and control over. If the business is worried about theft, then they can alter the terms of the contract by telling Bob prior to the meal not to simply leave money on the table but pay by doing X.

103

Bob took back his own money. The placement of the money on the table is a commercially reasonable method of payment. However it does not become property of the restaurant until they take physical possession. Prior to that moment, Bob is free to alter his payment.

None of this changes the fact that money left on the table is a legal and valid method of payment.

104

I believe the burden if proof is on Bob. If Bob can’t prove he paid, he’s on the hook.

105

This scenario has actually happened to me years ago, with a group of fellow broke students who hadn’t even made it to the point of leaving the table when the ill-intentioned neighbor seized the cash and ran off with it. Some of our group chased him but a capture was not effected.

Yes, we paid the bill again, successfully this time, and it seriously hurt, because broke students. But we owed the restaurant the money for our bill, and the initial attempt to transfer money to the restaurant in payment of the bill had not succeeded, so we still owed the restaurant the money.

Sure, transferring the money to the restaurant by leaving cash on the table is a legitimate way of paying, and generally succeeds in its purpose. But if it doesn’t succeed, the customer still owes the restaurant the money.

Now, our experience was more clear-cut than Bob’s in the OP, because we actually saw the thief steal the money from the table. If Bob knows nothing about it until the server chases him down in the parking lot, how is Bob supposed to be sure that the server didn’t just make up the story to shake him down for more money?

106

I think Bob is at fault and should pay again. You can’t assume that money left in a public place will stay intact until picked up by the person who should get it. Wait for the waitress or just hand it to her on the way out and say keep the change.

107

I did put this on Twitter and the two lawyers who responded were quite confident that Bob owes the money, one likening it to mail being stolen - the interception of your payment does not nullify the debt owed.

108

I would agree. And it was something that’s “foreseeable” in that leaving money in a public place like that is ripe for theft.

109

Interesting. That analogy has made me rethink my position.

110

By risking their money on an investment with no promise of return?

I think you’ve hit the heart of the issue. The restaurant didn’t screw up, except by not having perfect anti-theft measures in place. But the buck has to stop somewhere, and in private commercial establishments, it stops with the owner.

People saying Bob failed to pay his bill have not convinced me at all, and in fact I’m wondering if I’m crazy or you guys are. Paying your restaurant bill by leaving cash on the table is the normal, accepted way to do it. The “check is lost in the mail” analogy does clear up the thinking on that a little, but I don’t think it applies. It’s more like paying your bill by going up and handing cash to the landlord, and the landlord comes back later and says “I misplaced it, can you pay again?” Having waiters collect money from table tops at their leisure is how restaurants get paid.

It’s on the restaurant owner/manager to ensure there is enough staff to watch every table to prevent this sort of theft, or else eat the losses on whatever gets stolen due to busy or distracted staff. The could have scheduled another worker for tonight, but I guarantee they saved more money by leaving him off the schedule than they lost by this theft. But the point is this isn’t the customer’s or employee’s calculation to make. That risk/reward calculation falls squarely in the owner’s lap.

Bob fulfilled his responsibility completely. The waitress has no responsibility at all, and shouldn’t even be part of this hypothetical. Thank goodness we have decent a restaurant owner here in the thread to assure me not every server is held responsible for dine and dash bills or I’d lose the rest of my rapidly shrinking faith in humanity.

This highlights the difference, in my mind, between wage earners and entrepreneurs. One takes risk, the other doesn’t. Waiters should get paid their wage regardless of their job performance. If they perform poorly they can lose tips or be fired, but the one benefit to earning a wage is that if you show up, you know you’ll get paid and how much. Taking a wage or salary job is the opposite of an investment. If the company does amazingly, my boss might share some of those profits, but they’re his to share or not as he sees fit, assuming my employment contract doesn’t say anything about profit sharing. But if the company does poorly, they can’t make up for their losses out of my paycheck. The most they can do is ask me to work for less money or fewer hours, or lay me off.

That’s the trade off. As an employee, I know I’m going to make $X/month until I quit or the company fails, but as an owner, I know my income will vary with the success of the company. There might be losses, but the idea is that the potential rewards are much higher. But so are the downsides, which for many entrepreneurs might mean losing their complete life savings, retirement and home. But they could also become billionaires, which no mere employee will ever do.

Anyway, let’s change the hypothetical a bit: Assume Bob pays, the waiter pockets the $20, and tells the owner that Bob dashed. Is Bob responsible now? Why or why not? He still didn’t wait until after he saw the cash go into the register. The thief is just now the same person as the waiter. In neither case did anyone see the theft. In both cases the owner believes it’s a dine and dash. Is Bob still on the hook?

Ultimately, realistically, the owner is on the hook whether Bob paid or actually did skip payment. They have zero evidence Bob lied or failed to pay, and any legal proceeding will cost several orders of magnitude more than the loss itself. The owner is eating the loss either way.

111

The server is an agent authorized to act on behalf of the owner of the restaurant. The table is … nothing.

Yes, usually it’s just okay to leave money on the table. But I have never in my life paid by leaving money on the table and then leaving the restaurant. I’ve left money on the table and then I witnessed the server taking it. That completes the transaction, legally speaking. I gave the money to the server. The table part is irrelevant.

Yes, usually you’re not going to have any trouble if you put the money on the table and then leave. But that’s on you for taking the chance that someone else will take it before the owner’s agent collects it.

112

I think this cuts to the heart of it. If we presume the owner, not the server, gets to make the final determination on responsibility to pay, then considering the three following scenarios:

  1. Bob kept the money.
  2. The server stole the money.
  3. A random thief stole the money.

All three scenarios look exactly the same to the owner. So what are his options?

  1. Accuse a customer of theft without proof. Possibly lose the customer. Possibly gain the money. Possibly gain a lawsuit.

  2. Accuse the server of theft (or otherwise make it their responsibility to pay). Reduce morale. Possibly encourage turnover.

  3. Suck it up. Deduct the cost of the meal from profit. Forget about it within the hour.
    Given how much free stuff I’ve unintentionally gotten from restaurants by barely complaining (‘Steak not perfect? Have another!’) I don’t see too many restaurants choosing option 1 over option 3, unless they’re seeing people dine and dash a lot.

113

It seems to me the question of “who is legally responsible?” is a different question from “what should the restaurant owner do about it?”

114

And the answer to the question “who is legally responsible” varies wildly based on the specific circumstances of the restaurant and the policies it enacts. Based on the rather enthusiastic behavior of the server in the hypothetical it seems probable that there’s a policy in place that makes the server responsible - they know that the money will come out of their wage if it doesn’t come out of the customer.

115

The restaurant having a policy making the server pay for missing tabs is not an indication of legal responsibility. Take it to court, a judge would not make the server pay if a customer skipped out.

The server is the agent of the restaurant offering and delivering a service and goods, not the person contracting to receive and pay for the delivery of the service and goods. That’s the legal situation, regardless of the restaurant owner’s policies.

116

Okay, then the answer to the legal question depends heavily on whether the judge is wearing itchy pants that day.

It’s a standard convention in the restaurant industry that customers don’t always have to hand their money directly to the person behind the register. Given that the judge can’t really take the server’s word here, there’s no real difference between dropping the money on the table and leaving and dropping it on the counter and leaving - by which I mean, the counter next to the register with the cashier standing opposite it. In both cases you’re placing the money on a surface owned by the restaurant in a manner commonly understood as an appropriate method of paying, and in both cases you have only the employee’s word (or assumption) that you didn’t do so.

I mean, yes, some judge might get pedantic and say that everybody who isn’t able to show a printed receipt is still on the hook for the money, but I can easily see another judge ruling the opposite way and asking what the evidence is that this otherwise reputable citizen did a dine and dash.

117

Oh, and the OP explicitly stated that they were asking for opinions more than legalese.

118

No, one doesn’t have to hand it to someone directly, but generally you see a restaurant employee collect it, regardless of where you have put the money.

There is a real difference. The difference is that the cashier sees the money, and has received it. That’s the the act of paying your bill. The dropping of money on the table or the counter is a red herring. It’s an irrelevant side issue.

You’re missing the mark in terms of what event constitutes the paying. The putting the money on a surface is only incidentally connected to the act of paying the bill, because it is usually accompanied by the customer seeing the cashier or the server collecting the money. Without that part, the putting the money on a surface means nothing.

This is another red herring. I didn’t say anything about a printed receipt. The question is whether the customer has given the money to an agent of the business. Only then has the bill been paid. Counters and tables aren’t agents. Their role in the process is incidental. Yes, you can usually get away with leaving the money on the table and exiting the restaurant, but that’s just the customer taking the risk that something will go wrong. Usually, nothing goes wrong, but that’s really just a matter of luck.

119

Well, you’re certainly willing to assert this, but I don’t buy it for a hairy half second. If you leave money on the table in a restaurant you are doing one of the following:

  1. littering
  2. paying
    and I don’t accept that you’re littering. Similarly, by your argument, when you leave a tip for the server on your table (perhaps after paying the bill by card or in advance) you’re not giving the tip to the server, you’re being slightly inattentive with your money and they’re stealing it from you.

If a server is not stealing tips when they pick them up of an abandoned table, then the table necessarily holds a privileged status as a money-transference service. Otherwise, again, picking up tips is theft.

120

Say the hypothetical now is a movie rental store, you dropped your movie in the slot for “overnight returns” and then the place gets robbed later and they steal the movie you returned. Are you on the hook for the cost of the rental because you didn’t place it directly into the hands of an agent of the business? No. You dropped it in the place the business has designated as an acceptable place to return movies.

Well, restaurants for at least a century if not longer have made it clear you can leave the money you owe right on the table and that works as payment. Once you’ve done that, your responsibility is finished. You’ve paid. Now the owner can decide how vigilant he wants to be to ensure theft doesn’t happen from that point forward. If he wants to pay more workers to watch tables, contract with a security company, or install a bunch of cameras, but that’s his prerogative, and no business of either the customer or server.