Scammers, Part I

As promised, we will have a hard-look at the fun and exciting world of restaurant scammers. Due to time constraints, this post will be divided into three sections: 1. What is a restaurant scam? Who are the scammers? 2. Scammers: A waiter’s worst nightmare and 3. Scammer’s impact on the industry.

In the B-Rate Sigourney Weaver/ Jennifer Hewitt** movie Heartbreakers, a mother/ daughter team scam unsuspecting rich men into marriage only to divorce within days and take half their money. Along the way, the pair of nit-wits run a minor scam or two on the side. When eating out, Weaver’s character brings a small vile of glass shards and pours them onto her dish, then insisting to speak with the manager. Any spineless manager, afraid of lawsuits, or worse, a costumers not coming back, would do the same: comp the meal (And I’m sure women like this leave 20% on the value of their meal, too!). This is an example, though slightly far fetched, of a restaurant scammer. Remember the finger in the chili scam at Wendy’s? Same thing.

**(You may be thinking, “but every Sigourney Weaver and Jennifer Hewitt movie was B-Rate or worse.” You would be correct!)

All too often, guests decided to manipulate the system to score a free salad or save $5.00. In my experiences, scammers come in all shapes and sizes. They are of all races, though noticeably, black women (NOT a racial slur, but a verifiable observation) are most likely to scam a waiter/manager/ restaurant. Note: black women rarely want money taken off their bill, they just want extra food/alcohol they did not order for free. Families with small children are the number two culprit followed by yokels and then finally, foreigners. Perhaps it is a culture of entitlement, ego, poverty, or dishonesty, but these crooks seem to come out of the woodwork and show up at my tables at least once per night.

Running a scam is simple enough: You claim you didn’t like your food (even if it’s 3/4 eaten), didn’t receive what you ordered (you did, but you want more for free) or claim certain items come with certain sides which you did not receive. Sometimes, scammers, will complain at length to a manager in hopes of a comped meal. Other times, they will simply leave before it’s time to pay. But the most common type of scam is manipulating the menu to get more bang for your buck (this is a fun one!).

I will elaborate in Part II on the types of scams and how they are run. We will cover the “I didn’t like it”scam, the “this is not what I ordered” scam and the “Dine and Dash” and the Menu Manipulation scam. Each will be have a detailed explanation and anecdote. I’ll try my best to get Part II up tonight, but it might be tomorrow afternoon.