Do restaurants make staff pick up the tab if you don’t pay your bill? We try to get to the facts
So do restaurants make waiting staff pay when customers leave without settling their bill? A fortnight ago, in his “Money talks” column, Patrick Collinson related how, at an airport restaurant earlier this month, he was told by a waiter that they had to pick up the tab if a customer did a runner. Yet the company in charge vehemently denied the account, saying: “This does not take place.”
The waiter’s account is far from uncommon, but companies tend to reject any suggestion that they have such policies. So we asked readers – for example, those who work in a restaurant – to get in touch. Quite a number did.
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