Restaurant Rogues -- Have you ever been a victim?

http://dailynews.att.net/cgi-bin/news?e=pub&dt=060618&cat=frontpage&st=frontpage2020_waiters_060616&src=abc

I don't know any ethical chef, manager or owner who would put up with any of that crap for an instant.

I've always tried to eliminate the pond scum from my staffs as quickly as possible.

I'm pretty sure the boys who wrote that book and waited in New Orleans wouldn't have lasted a week with me.

In my experience in the restaurant business (which generally did not involve fine dining establishments) I saw plenty of people who were willing to do this sort of stuff. But as Joseph says, anyone getting caught was fired on the spot. The ones who thought they could get away with it usually did not last long at all.

Mike

As a former waiter, this sounds like mental masterbation to me. Plenty of people talked about doing stuff like this, but give me a break -- 20 minutes for a charge to go through?

Give them another credit card. Why do you have a backup card anyway?

Are these jerks going to tell you two credit card companies are backed up?

No way, at least in my exerience working in restaurants and in eating in restaurants all over the US.

I think Bourdain, and now others like him, are writing for shock value, and a gullible press just loves to pass these types of things along.

While there may be isolated cases of this kind of behavior, presenting it as a hard and fast rule (never send anything back to the kitchen, etc) does an injustice to what goes on in most professional kitchens.

We had our credit card numbers stolen at a "fancy" restaurant I do believe. Used our Amex. We hadn't used it in a while and afterwards. All of a sudden $5K worth of stuff was charged in D.C. at places like Car Toys. Of course Amex sent us an investigation form, etc., etc. but we never heard a word back, so we'll never know for sure.