What do restaurants do with customers who are too broke to pay for their food?

I worked in a place where a guy left to go to the ATM, they don't take credit cards,

and he left his date there and never came back for her. The owner felt bad and just let her go.

Apparently an employee had to give her a ride home. I definitely wouldn't play

dumb in a bar for three

hours to get a free meal, so I believe her. When that happens, I comp it and tell them to come

back and pay me when they can. Don't worry about it. Either I gain a customer for life, or I don't.

But things happened, and it's hard enough to be a person on the planet without being scared

that someone's going to get you for making a mistake.

One time I was on a date and my card wouldn't work. They had some ancient piece of crap debit machine.

They looked at me as if I was the leader of the Third Reich when my debit didn't work.

And before I could pull out the spare cash, with the foresight to prepare for anything,

the woman behind the counter starts mouthing me off, telling me I am what's wrong with this

world, and another bum looking for free food.

I'm not a restaurant owner, however, our owner likes to hold meetings, and the same topic was

bought up. He brought up the story of how a business meeting was being held at their restaurant.

A guy offered to pay for everyone's meals, time came to pay, and the card was denied.

At our restaurant, we're to say everything is our fault.

The server came up to the guy and said that our machines didn't read the card correctly, and it was our fault.

They had the guy give them their address, and they mailed him the tab later on.

On the way out, the guy came back and thanked the server and the manager for not embarrassing

him in front of his co-workers.

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