what a moron. Only in the south where an idiot would fight over a seven dollar meal.
Ohh yeah, its the principle of it right? Friggin idiots.

lets see whats better

spend 2 days in jail or pay 7 dollars?

If the man would be so petty as to refuse to pay for two plates, I can't be mad at the restaurant for being petty enough to put the law onto their side.

Two days in jail over one additional $7 plate. Who's really wasting who's time?

Sounds to me like he was just being a cheapskate and got called on it.

What would you have these cops do? Go after real criminals like ACORN and all the voter fraud that's going on? Nah, let's just go after two people who are too cheap to pay for 2 meals.

I'm a very big supporter of people being responsible for their own lives/businesses. If I open up a restaurant that is all you can eat, I don't let people in until they pay.

Honestly, I'm getting the feeling that this story has a lot more to it than we are hearing. Perhaps there was an assault or some disorderly conduct that got pled down to theft of services?

(My comment below was made about the restitution idea.)

Did she order menu items to eat, or just "tag along" with her boyfriend to an AYCE restaurant because she would miss him too much if she didn't go?

It seems that the "punishment" wasn't scary enough to get him to pay the $7, huh? How right must you think you are, to wait around for the police to arrest you rather than pay $7 to get out of there? Did he really not have access to $7? If not, looks even more likely that they were stealing... between two people they can't scare up $7 to avoid arrest/citation/humiliation?

How many of you couldn't come up with $7 in cash, debit card or, worst case (in avoidance jail!!), credit card if you had too, especially if you were going out to eat with your non-hungry lady-friend?

Fill in the blanks of the story with all the missing details and I might feel differently, but I think they got caught trying to have her eat for free, and were too proud or broke, to stop the train they started. Then they got squished. Bummer, but find a way to bring an extra $7 for your lady and this would not happen.

By the way, how much fit must you throw to be arrested instead of just receiving a citation?

As for not seeing any signs saying you can't share a plate at an all you can eat buffet...well, that's sort of a no-brainer. Heck, people will pull any lame excuse out of the air just to take the blame off.

@Rhayader: So if I steal $7 from you then you can't call the cops? Its not a real crime?

What if he only ate 80% of what he could eat, therefore, still retaining 20% he paid for which he then shared?

Silly? Yes. But so is this restaurant.

Ultimately the gripe here is a punishment not fitting the crime.

But it should have been pro-rated against what she was capable of fully eating.

Had they both walked in and ordered one plate to share, then yea, sure, kick him out of the place.

We often go to dinner as a family with one of us maybe getting salad bar. Should I be locked into jail for bringing back my kids a handful of croutons? Or me stealing a tomato of my wife's plate?

Did the restaurant warn him first or just immediately insist on an extra $7 charge? Are parents allowed to place food they got for their kids on their kids plates, or do kids have to get the food themselves? Can two people order the buffet but have a 3rd plate shared between them?

@xwildebeestx: Umm No.

Disorderly conduct is when a person refuses to cooperate with the directions of a police officer and is causing a scene which could, if unchecked, escalate to who knows what kind of idiotic behavior.

This exact same scenario happened to a freind of mine who wanted a refund for some alteration for his fiance's wedding dress.

He made the statement - Oh Yeah then call the police then! They did, they came they escorted him out and were going to let him go until he very stupidly made the comment "We have the best cops bribe money can buy." and he got to spend the night in jail.

He was in the clear and got stupid. Which is, I imagine exactly what happend to dude at the buffet.

You see botrh of these could have been a civil matter after the fact in a small claims court but Oh no You mister asshat (and yes, I would say that to my friend's face) have to make a scene.

I also suspect the police were called when he was called upon to pay for the second meal and became belligerent and abusive. He DID plead to DC after all.

I don't KNOW this of course, anymore than the rest of you who've analyzed this thing to pieces know what actually took place but that would be my guess.

@timmus: Sorry, theft is a criminal matter as classed by law.

If you steal a piece of gum costing a penny it is still theft not a civil matter.

Duh.

I imagine he probably reacted rather confrontationally too (I think thats a word?). My faith in normal people with normal reactions to situations like these would have me believe that something else must have been going on, like he was making a scene. I mean, he could have just left and paid for his, but he stayed. I dont know. People are crazy, I guess.

@little stripes:
If you were the restraunt owner, losing money in this economy because some jackass thought it would be a good idea to try and get himself a two for one special, it would be an important crime to you. Thats their livelyhood. All crimes are important, or it wouldnt be a crime. It would be acceptable.

i'm sure if he's douchy enough to do this to a restaurant i'm sure he's screwing other people as well.

I think calling the police was a bit much, but from the restaurant's viewpoint, this was similar to someone ordering a meal and refusing to pay for it. That being said, I think a better thing to do would have been to accept payment for one meal and tell the patron that he and his girlfriend were no longer welcome in the restaurant given that they refused to pay for the full meal.

I can picture him saying "you gotta try a bite of this" after she finished her meal.

once eating at a pizza buffet, i secretly threw a couple of slices out of the window for a starving homeless guy. am i a criminal?

I'm not saying NOTHING should have been done, and I'm not blaming anyone but every buffet I've ever been to charges at the door and they don't let you in just to watch your friends eat. "No lookie loos" comes to mind!

If I'm the officer I take the person out in handcuffs, put him in my car, tell the owner to fill out a form (I forget what they're called) to say this person is no longer welcome on my property and to call 911 if they show up again. Then I walk back outside, drive the idiot home, tell him that he's no longer allowed at that place and he will be arrested if he does show up there. I strongly suggest that he give me $7 to bring to the owner. Everyone is happy, I just saved thousands of taxpayer dollars and I don't have NEARLY as much paperwork.

(I am not a police officer, so don't tell me I'm a bad one or I can't do that....)

@aftercancer:

Felony charges on Wall Street? Which felonies? Be specific.

So, why did the police arrest him and not her? She was the one who stole the service.

- if there is NO sign pointing out the policy, he has a case.

- NO one in their right mind would plead guilty to 'disorderly conduct' if they're innocent.

- like the others point out: why would she go watch her boyfriend eat?

Seems odd.

We don't need to ask restaurants to put up signs that say "must pay for food", seriously.

Needless to say with over 40 plus items. We can be there for a bit.

Rude yes, but there is little they can do. Its a all you can eat and they cannot tell you that you can have only so much food.

Why was the man charged and not the girlfriend? Didn't the girlfriend accept stolen goods?

A crime is a crime is a crime. I thought this was completely ridiculous until I read that it was a buffet restaurant. It can't be too easy to make money at a buffet so I'm sure they need all the help they can get - is it a mom and pop place?

And who goes to a buffet with their girlfriend and only orders 1 plate (for himself, and not his GF??) The guy was planning on doing it the whole time and he got caught.

I know I have a tendency to blame the OP, but this one just seems so OBVIOUS. Or am I just being cynical?

"I'm suing because I ate the package of batteries and the package didn't tell me not to!"

Um, why is this a story?

If I was this dude I woulda popped for the $7 and hit the road.

A bank NSF fee is a lot better than D-block.

I understand he probably wanted to look hard in front of his girl, but come on.

@Beerad:

"being an asshat can be a crime". Depends on the quality of the assadasher.

@EyeHeartPie: And what's to stop one person from going to a buffet... and a few friends from taking "just a couple bites". It doesn't state how many plate of food were taken either.

Perhaps this guy has done it before. It may not be worth $7 for one incident, but if this guy has been going from place to place, doing the same thing at multiple places, then it can add up. And sadly, I know people who do stuff just like this. Anything the can do to save a buck.

So yeah, calling the cops may have been unnecessary, but perhaps there was some prior history (either wih him or this being a constant problem at the restaurant).

My problem here is this: why in the hell would either side make such a stink about 7 bucks? My thought is that the customer initially made things difficult, and ultimately put himself on the path toward a couple nights in the slammer. He could have easily solved things by coughing up a little dough, but no.

At the same time, the restaurant manager could have made his own life easier by just asking the guy to leave. I'm not sure if he actually did this or not; the post makes it sound like he immediately called the cops after the guy refused to pay. The validity of that response depends a lot on how the conversation went.

@tevetorbes:

It was a theft, the guy pled to disorderly conduct. If they pulled Columbo off a murder investigation to handle this, if Grissom and his crew performed any DNA tests to verify that the girlfriend had eaten the food, if a single speeder failed to get a ticket (oh wait - scratch that one) then by all means there was a problem here. But my guess is no other crime is going unpunished. I bet dispatch would have pulled these guys off this case if they had needed to be somewhere else. i bet these cops would not have said, "Can't stop to stop this murder in progress, we have a buffet theif here"

I bet the wheels of justice didn't have to slow down at all while running over the Buffet bandit.

No sign? Yea right. Cheap buffet restaurants always have a sign about sharing plates.

I think buffets are just a bad idea in general. But seriously, this is a waste of time. Sure the guy is a moron for trying to pull this, but they should've just banned him from the restaurant or something, not get him arrested!

Well, good, I'm glad they are getting REAL criminals off the streets!
OFF WITH THEIR HEADS!

(Insert eye roll here.)

By the way, I do consider giving someone else food off your plate at a buffet to be stealing. The terms of the buffet are that you get to eat all that YOU can eat. Not all that you can eat and feed to your friends... Don't go into a buffet if you don't plan on paying for a plate.

Heck... some non-buffet restaurants charge extra for "shared" plates... even if the portion is the same as for a single plate... These are generally the same restaurants that charge you for bringing your own wine.

The same can be held for not responding to a call or to protect a stupid buffet from a 7 dollar """""theft""""""

Classic.

In this type of scenario you pay by the PERSON, not by the plate. So if she ate anything and didn't pay it is theft. Period.

Please work with real numbers, don't pull the RIAA BS.

How about a sign then? Maybe right when you enter?

Everyone has rights. What we need is common sense and cool judgment. This is most likly an ego contest between the customer and the resturant manager. I guess the outcome could have been alot worse people have been killed over this kind of stuff.

a) what you'd said that would possibly considered a candidate for disemvowelling and

b) why only part of your post was disemvowelled.

Then it occurred to me what the joke was. Doh.

Second time was a crazy customer who, I admit, had gotten some bad service from us (cuts both ways--he had a ridiculously foul mouth and bad attitude so his service ended up as the last on our tech's list). He shoved me, and I immediately whipped out my cell and called 911. Between me, the cops, and him, we made a deal: You won't get charged for assault if you don't expect a refund and never come back again.

I generally would never bother for a criminal record, except for a second time loser. I'm betting most stores are the same.

For those that say this is a waste of money, if I hadn't have called the cops, I expect in the first case nothing would happen except customers having a laugh at the idiot and his picture going on the wall, but I wanted to close and go home (I suppose if we were in a state of anarchy I would have locked him in the store... :D ). In the second case, it would have cost our healthcare thousands of dollars (paid by taxes in Canada!) and produced a court case after a serious fight breaks out. In both cases, the police made life easier for everyone involved, by calming things down, relieving tensions, and explaining to each party what the smart move is.

The third time, you wonder? A customer refused to pay their bill for a satellite install I'd worked hours to complete (no, not just some wimpy 18" dish). As it's a "civil matter" the cops refused to come. Ended up costing my store many hours of lost labour dealing with the guy (which cost customers hundreds of dollars--customers end up paying for everything) and ended up costing him the ability to have a good credit rating. All in all, probably over $1,000 wasted in the community over something two cops would have solved in 10 minutes. Even at $100/hr. it would make more sense for them to nip these issues in the bud. *sigh*

Think about how much extra you pay on your items at the store to compensate for the scammers in stores where the manager doesn't call the cops before you suggest there's no good reason to call them over a $7 charge. Just saying...

@Flame: Who would pay for a buffet and be comfortable with people watching you like a hawk to make sure you don't share?

Yay surveillance.

Don't know about you, but I'd have paid the $7 and not gone to jail.

I consider myself pretty cheap, but I can't imagine a situation where I would rather spend 2 nights in jail than pay $7, no matter how wrong I feel paying that $7 is.

It's not up to the police to decide which offenders should be ignored. They are duty-bound to respond to all violations regardless of importance of scale. They will, however, be pulled off of something like "theft of services" if a more serious crime is being occured and there are no other officers available.

It is not the restaurant's fault for wanting to prosecute what many think is a "petty" crime, but a crime nonetheless. People should be angry that this man and his girlfriend are wasting taxpayers dollars and police resources because they are unwilling to follow the rules of eating at a buffet.

Many feel a "taste" is appropriate but ultimately, you are not paying for the product you are consuming. If it were a fixed-meal costs, then it would be okay but it is certainly not appropriate at a buffet.

I'm sure they are performing triage... I seriously doubt that the officer(s) called to the scene would be out there busting crack heads during those particular moments. It's more likely they would have been handing out tickets for people driving 10 over the limit.

This is no different from someone shoplifting, if everyone cried out that police should not be arresting and prosecuting shoplifters as long as there might be murders and rapes occurring somewhere within their jurisdiction then stores would have empty shelves in a matter of days.

If other patrons felt threatened, or even simply annoyed, I'm sure the added stress probably would or did tee off someone to the point that calling the cops was the only thing left outside of taking the matter into one's own hands.

Stories like this fascinate me because I honestly can't believe people behave this way, yet it seems to happen every day. Stories like this, sans much detail, also frustrate me as well because you have so little to base your own opinions and arguments off of. Aside from the what if, you have a series of unfortunate events which taken out of context can be interpreted a vast multitude of ways.

Personally, I'd ask the patrons if they would like to purchase another meal for the going rate. If they decline, I would kindly remind them that it is against policy for someone to purchase one buffet meal for two people and leave it at that. If the patrons continued to violate that, I would ask them to leave. If they refused, I would repeat the offer one last time and suggest that perhaps this is a matter for local law enforcement. If they did not take the hint that their then behavior was out of line, I would be left with no alternative than to call the local police in a non-emergency capacity. I have other patrons, staff, and property to be concerned with - the $7 made from one customer does not alone justify the additional use of staff resources to resolve the matter. I would decline to press charges and allow the police to remove the individual. They would subsequently be banned from returning and other locations would be made aware of the patron so as not to admit or serve.

At that point, I would offer anyone currently in the restaurant free vouchers for another meal.

@nobodyman:
My suggestion would be to change the rate structure so that this scenario never comes up again. Charge $7 for entrance to the buffet instead of for a plate. Then there's no ambiguity.

@Geekybiker: Agreed, sure, jail is extreme, he should have been issued a sommons or something though.

Well, I know of buffet restaurants (Ponderosa--ick) where you don't have to buy the buffet, because they also have menu items. Maybe she got a menu item and he got the buffet?
Anyway, I always thought that rule was in place so a family of 10 (or a group of broke teenagers) couldn't buy just ONE buffet and eat from it.

I had no idea that restaurants went the "school route" and have zero tolerance for a couple of bites.

Stupid.

Nd w wndr wy kds r tlkng lk ths nwdys...trt ppl lk mrns, i spps thyll act lk mrns.

As for jail, it's usually only an overnight stay until one sees the magistrate.

You can't compare crimes across types. Violent crimes are not the same as non-violent crimes.

But we do have petty larceny and grand larceny. Why? Because within the same type, the amount of damage caused (financial, physical, mental) dictates, in part, the seriousness of the offense and the seriousness of its prosecution.

@chuloallen: sharing = stealing? If anything they should have charged the girlfriend for the theft. She was the one who ate without paying. The guy didn't "steal" anything he didn't pay for.

That's theft. Plain and simple. Just because it's food doesn't make it less serious.

The guy is an ass for sitting in jail trying to get sympathy. They should have just paid and it would have been no big deal.

I've got sympathy when someone gets harassed for walking out of a store without buying anything, or when they get patted down with no evidence of theft.... but this is just cut and dry.

What this guy did is no different than if he'd grabbed a salad from a restaurant kitchen and given it to his girlfriend to eat. Theft = crime.

If he paid for his meal why did he get arrested for the food she stole. I guess he conveyed the stolen property while she received the stolen property also they were wearing clothes when they commited the offense why did they not confiscate their clothes. Also did the manager yell CITEZENS ARREST like Gomer if not that could be kidnapping or something.I really beleive the only remedy is to get a greedy lawyer and sue the resturant. Call all of the patrons of the place and the employees as witnesses as is his right and spend 3 days in court after we pick the jury. AFTER ALL A LAW WAS BROKEN. Maybe. All you people harping on the fine line of the law how would you like to spend a day waiting to testify in some stupid ass case like this after all he has his rights to just like the resturant.A WASTE OF TIME ALL AROUND OVER A FEW BITES OF FOOD SO SOMEONE CAN POWER TRIP.

I don't agree with this, but I have to be on the restaurant's side. I know calling the cops was overkill, maybe people do this all the time and they don't take the restaurant seriously.

It's also unfair to the restaurant, especially that type of establishment.

As you can imagine, my mother got quite upset (she always felt she never got her money's worth there anyway) and proceeded to call the manager a few choice names. She then took out the chicken, tore it up into itty bitty pieces, put it in a napkin and spit on it a couple of times! I have not seen her so angry in years. In the years since neither she nor I have been back to that restaurant (again, bear in mind that we had been weekly regulars up to that point).

So, while rules are rules, restaurants can really shoot themselves in the foot if they don't also apply some common sense. Seniors are their best customers usually; rarely do you see a senior load up a plate and then leave half of it uneaten (unless they feel there is something wrong with the quality of the food, which is another issue entirely). This manager claimed he was just following corporate policy (and since he was new there, he may have felt the need to prove himself as a manager) but sometimes I think it's prudent to use a little common sense when applying the rules.

My guess is that this guy who got arrested will never go back to that restaurant, but possibly neither will family members or close friends who hear about the incident. And a probably a least a few people who've heard the news will decide that's not a place they wish to do business with. Is it worth losing customers over a few bites of food? Of course, if he's lying about her only having had a couple of bites, or if he's been making a habit of doing this, that's another matter altogether. But in these times I think restaurants ought to think carefully about how many present and potential customers they can afford to offend by enforcing a rule.

There's a lot we don't know about this story. Was he really just being a cheapskate, or did she perhaps say one thing ("Honey, I don't feel like eating anything, you just get something") only to change her mind once she was staring at a plate of food? Did he perhaps not have enough money to pay for two meals? Did he offer her the "couple of bites" or did she take them from his plate? For all we know, maybe they arrested the wrong person - maybe she was the one that should have gone in the slammer (if anyone deserved to do so) but he took the rap (ain't love wonderful). Did the manager come onto him in a hostile manner, making the situation much worse than it might otherwise have been? The article leaves so much out that we can only guess what might really have happened here - after all, most rational people wouldn't choose to go to jail if they could avoid it by paying $7, unless perhaps they were absolutely convinced they were in the right.

The problem is that this kind of petty theft adds up. The restaurant manager probably deals with dozens of these kinds of thefts every week. Prosecuting this crime acts as a deterrent for other would-be "dine and dashers".

Bottom line, the cops shouldn't be called to resolve a $7 dispute. Are these people 3 years old?

This is why there are so many disclaimers, no plate sharing, etc etc all over the place. I wish people would stop trying to search for every available loophole and stop trying to take advantage of business owners. She ate food, she owes money. Period.

This is a perfect example of the customer being wrong.

Still though, I don't think more "policies" is the answer here. You can never have enough policies to cover every single contingency.

This is a case of common sense and decency being overridden by stubborn parties on both sides. The fact that the legal system needs to get involved to solve a $7 dispute is ludicrous. Both the customer and the manager should get a hard kick in the ass.

Grow up, people.

He did not plead guilty to the theft only disorderly conduct. He probably refused to pay over the few bites and they would not let him leave so he went off then the cops got there and wala disorderly conduct. If they droped the theft charges I would sue the resturant. Once again power trippers escalate a small situation into a large one.

It seems to me that if all you sell is $7 meals, someone stealing a $7 meal is something to be concerned about.

On the other hand, once he realized he WAS going to be arrested over this, he should have coughed up the 7 bucks. 2 nights in jail over $7? Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face....

@Jabberkaty: Except for the fact that "being an asshat" isn't a crime, and is too often used by police as in "oh, we don't like that guy and he's not committing any crimes or violations so let's bust him for discon."

@zibby:
who said she wasnt eating.
theres lots of times when my husband goes " try this its great " and i have a bite, and it is great, so i have two more...

but if she was just looking at him like a hungry puppy and sneaking bites when no one was looking... shame on them , that is stealing.

Yes, I get that police respond to small things like breaking glass and what have you. But on the flip side of the coin, while the officers were dealing with a tiny little theft of $7, they might've pulled over and arrested the drunk driver who, because he didn't get pulled over, ran into a family in a sedan and killed them all.

Backing out of the "what if" argument here, there is no way I would have called the police over something like what is described in this post. And that's the argument people are making here. Nobody in this thread has said the cops were wrong for having responded. They are saying that the manager was wrong for calling them in the first place. This is not a stolen purse that has IDs and (potentially) credit cards, and all the other things that purses contain. This is not somebody's house being broken into or a drug deal. This is a manager getting uppity over a $7 plate of food that probably cost his company something like $4.

All that being said, I'm assuming that this was the only reason the cops were called. The post says he plead guilty to disorderly conduct, which means he might've been making a complete ass of himself in the restaurant. In that case I would have called the cops.

@Jabberkaty: i have ramen for lunch, but I would not eat the stuff on that picture -- at least when it's presented like that.

By arresting this guy it serves as a deterrent for other people who would do the same.

Anyway, as far as the $7 charge goes, it does seem like a waste of time. It seems like it would be been better just to throw him out or have the police throw him out if he wouldn't leave. I was told by a friend who worked as a security guard that there's an unofficial policy in my city to not even bother prosecuting thefts under $10. They arrest people, hold them for a few hours, and then let them go.

And yes, there are police and sheriff departments who abuse speeding enforcement as a way to generate revenue rather than legitimately enforce the law (that's what happens when your town's budget is based on income from tickets). But that's a different matter entirely.

"Man Jailed After Letting His Girlfriend Eat Off Of His..."

Imagine my disappointment when I got here. Thanks a lot, Consumerist.

Personally I avoid all buffet style restaurants after I threw up immediately after eating at one as a kid.

No one goes to jail if they're polite and respectful.

Back to reading "how to embed HTML images"...

@Red_Flag: You're argument sounds like what you'd say when you get pulled over.

"I'm glad the police are out here pulling people over for speeding. It's a good thing there are no murders to catch."

The police are there to protect and serve. If someone wants to call the police over a theft of a paperclip, that's their progative. Frivalious would be demanding the police to put as much resources to finding that theif as they would a rapist.

Manager: This guy must never eat here ever again!

The only reason there is a hypothetical is because I believe $7 is not worth enough to send a squad car out unless that precinct basically was just sitting around at the station. (Being that it's in/near Atlanta which has had a spike of violent crimes this year, I doubt that).

So I asked a legitimate question -- is there any monetary amount of theft that is frivolous to call the police for? $7? $1? $0.01? At what point is the plaintiff abusing the system?

For that matter, if the customer wasn't being threatening in any way and the restaurant called 911 instead of the non-emergency line, I hope the restaurant was fined.

The jail would have been avoided and the restaurant would have been paid if the police threatened to arrest the girlfriend instead of the guy.

@calquist: Excellent point. I'm guessing there's hijinx here that would have gotten in the way of a good story.

Yup, I'm also with the restaurant on this one.

@SkokieGuy: I agree. The restaurant was within their rights to ask for $7. There is a difference, though, for someone to have a taste (come on, who hasn't done this?) and someone to have a meal. I don't mind the tasting thing. That's part of experiencing food!

If the restaurant is getting bent out of shape because of a taste, I'd agree that there is a huge waste going on here. But if they ate more, then the restaurant was right to protect their store.

Just because it was $7 doesn't negate the fact that they stole something. If the ax didn't fall on them, it would have fallen on someone else.

One question though, why was he thrown in jail and not her? He paid for his food by my reckoning, she is the one that stole food she didn't pay for.

Time to wait and identify the prick manager and then slice his tires.

He'd probably take your name and respond to my call. They clearly had the resources to respond to this call, if a house was being burglarized or there was an assault in progress they would have gone to that. But that's not the case because they DID have the resources to respond to this very legitimate complaint.

You're making up hypotheticals just to make a weak point.

Not enough information. If she had a meal on her own (Iron Skillet has a full menu and buffet choices -- fine truck stop eatin') AND it really was just a bite or two, then hassling him for a second buffet charge (in addition to one buffet and one prepared meal) would be better for the restaurant not to be too picky. Based on his lame "no sign" defense, I tend to blame the tight-walleted Texan.

It reminds me of a diner that I used to live near; they indeed did have a sign, not for any buffet, but for "meetings." If you were taking up space at their tables and not ordering food, they charged by the hour.

Is this guy a lawyer or something? Does he think he can successfully argue what "All YOU can eat" means?

Most customers are very honest and get easily offended when someone is cheating the system. It's not fair to them if someone else is getting something free and the establishment ignores it The manager acted appropriately.

But guys in my neighborhood don't get two days in jail for steeling $7. There's more under the hood.

[img][www.nbc.com]]

Law enforcement is not an unlimited resource.

@little stripes:

punishing a crime? That's key to what I expect taxpayer money to achieve. If you are suggesting that committing the crime is a waste of taxpayer money, then I agree.

Two patrons, one plate.

XD

I'd like to think that I'd get the same service is someone stole my crappy 1999 Saturn that's worth MAYBE $1,000 (if I'm lucky), as some rich dude who had his Lexus stolen. The amount shouldn't matter, it's the crime!

What would you be saying if this dude had pursed snatched from a poor old woman in the slums but the police didn't take her statement because there wasn't enough in her purse?

Often times, when police respond to small calls like this they make a bigger arrest because of it - some calls the cops cause they hear glass breaking - instead of criminal mischief it's a burglary. They pull someone over for expired registration, ta-da: drugs in the car. The fact that he also plead to disorderly conduct leads me to believe he wasn't acting like a gentleman.

The cops act as witnesses for the state in cases like this. Instead of just asking the dude nicely to leave, cops can make him leave and arrest him if he tries to come back.

You can't say to me that you know from this article that the restaurant owner didn't already try all the things you mentioned BEFORE they called the cops. The story doesn't go into it.

Um. it's called stealing, people.

had a chinese place do this to me after feeding my 3 yr old off my plate. she barely ate 4 or 5 bites and i had to pay for a whole buffet. last time i went there.

@Ftp1423: The only time I've ever let anyone eat off my plate was when my kids were really really little.....maybe a year old or so, and they couldn't eat a whole plate by themselves. No one ever seemed to mind.... This, however, is a wee bit different....

Also, the article doesn't make it clear how exactly the customer reacted. It sounds like he felt he did nothing wrong, but I'm wondering how long the staff argued with him before calling the cops.

He paid for his food, she refused to pay. So shouldn't she have been arrested instead. I'm just saying I would probably take the heat for my wife, but not my girlfriend.

@Jabberkaty: Ban him from the place, then. Put his picture up (I've seen them before). Calling the police for SEVEN DOLLARS is a waste of time, effort, and money.

When we have murders, domestic violence, bank robberies ... seven dollars? Really?

Having her pay is the only resolution I can see. Restaurants are not charities.

I think the police call was the correct choice. If he was entered into their system, the place can get a copy of the report, might have his picture on it, also ask for a non visit / trespass if he were to show up again.

Leaving your car unlocked and having your quarters stolen and not calling the cops but still wanting them to DO something about it is frivolous.

How is this fair to the owner of the restaurant if the cops don't show up when the thief is still right there?

@Kimaroo: *ate

I was with a group who wanted to eat at CiCis Pizza.. I didn't want to eat but I wanted to sit and chat with them.. I ordered a water glass, but I made sure that I didn't take so much as a cruiton off of their plates..

He should have paid once they confronted him.. she at food so he should have to pay!

It may be that they've tried similar things, but I can't say cause it's such a short story.

There comes a point when petty theft (if you assume the restaurant is the honest party) isn't worth the taxpayer dollars of actually hauling this guy in and taking him to court.

Frankly, it IS a poor choice of police time for a $7.00 charge.

A more reasonable approach might be to request payment for the second meal and if the customer refused, the buffet advises them that they are banned from future visits.

I've been in many stores that have photographs of problem customers by the registers (i.e. Don't take a check from this person, etc.).

A one-time loss of $7.00 is far less expensive than the manager's time to deal with the police, appearing in court, etc.

[www.dumblaws.com]

This madness must be stopped now, before it's too late.

What is your alternative suggestion? The restaurant gave him the opportunity to pay for the second buffet. He refused.

Should the guy simply get away with theft of $7? Ok. Then the next guy who steals a $10 DVD from Walmart should just walk too? What's the line you would like to set that I can steal without repercussions?

"OM NOM NOM!"

@Jabberkaty: Oh, I know, I wasn't blaming the cops, as they have no choice -- but the restaurant for calling the cops for something so fucking ridiculous and unecessary.

Since it's his girlfriend, no opportunities for Housewives of Atlanta references, damn!

He PLEAD to disorderly conduct, which will be better for him, his wallet, and his record.

I agree with the restaurant on this one. She stole food and I'm will to be there is a lot more to the story than just that blurb.

I love it.

1. How long was the girlfriend at the restaurant with the guy? Was she there the entire and didn't want to pay fort he buffet?

2. Did she really have just a few bites? or were they trying to run the system?

It just doesn't add up that a couple would go to the restaurant and the girl not plan on eating. What excuses could there be that she just sit and wait while her boyfriend ate at a buffet? Go through a drive threw if only one of you is hungry.

On a side note - $7 for all you can eat Buffet? I'm so there. God, that Ham looks incredible.

Stop posting yummy food pictures when I have PB&J for lunch!

AND, those officers were arresting him instead of taking care of more important "crimes." Ridiculous.

What a WASTE of tax payer money.