You are Not Entitled to Something Free!
A true restaurant story
A few days ago, a three men came in to eat at the restaurant I work in. We were having a busy day and my co-worker was a young, new-ish server. She had their table. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.
She took their orders, joked around with them, and brought their food.
Unfortunately, in all the chaos of the day, she forgot to put in the order for his French onion soup and didn’t realize it until she brought out his lasagna. She apologized and offered to get it for him right away and he declined.
Our young server continued to check on them throughout the meal. They said everything was good and finished every bite.
When she took away the last of the dishes, the man who had ordered the French onion soup told her that he thought he should get his lasagna for free. The lasagna he ate and said was fine as he was eating it. He suddenly got very cranky when she told him that she couldn’t do that. After all, he did eat it.
She was a little flustered and came to me as the senior server on shift. I told her I would talk to him.
I apologized for the inconvenience and said that we were terribly sorry about the soup and we would absolutely make sure it wasn’t on the bill. However, I said, since you ate and obviously enjoyed your lasagna (pointing out the last empty lasagna plate on the table) we have to ask you to pay for it.
He made excuses about how it wasn’t as good as usual (despite the fact he’d told her otherwise) and he only ate it because he was hungry and in a rush (which he’d never mentioned before). I asked if he’d told her that his lasagna wasn’t good as we could have replaced it with something else. Of course, he couldn’t say he had told her because he didn’t.
When I stood firm on our policy, he said he didn’t think we were “that kind of place.”
I took his payment at the cash register and he made a point of saying, “No tip!” Chances are, he probably wouldn’t have tipped anyway.
Why is it that so many people think they are entitled to something free in a restaurant? Yes, we want customers to be happy and leave full and satisfied. Yes, we want customers to enjoy their experience.
But if you won’t tell us that there is a problem, won’t let us fix it, you have to pay for what you eat. If you don’t eat it, that’s a different story, but if you eat it, you have to pay for it.
Yes, the server forgot to put in the order for his soup. If he wanted it he could have had it made and ate it after his lasagna. But he didn’t want it made. So, he wasn’t charged for it. Because he didn’t eat it.
Free might be an option in certain circumstances. Like, if you ate most of your meal and then found something in your food like a hair or a piece of plastic. Of course, that’s up to management. Perhaps if your server did something bad like spilled a drink on you or was rude, the management might decide to comp your meal. But that is at the discretion of the managers.
Free is not owed to you when you ate the food and had no complaints throughout the meal!
What do you think? Should this man have gotten his meal for free?
