I don’t know about that, but I do know restaurants will definitely charge you for not cancelling within X hours before the reservation. One time I tried to make a reservation for friends, and I chicken out after realizing it will be $20 per person for no show, so if the four of us decide to cancel, it can be $80 on me.
Increasingly the case here in the UK, amongst mid-range and upper places. I know of at least a couple of highish end local places that require full payment for the food at the time of booking, leaving you only drinks and , usually, service charge to pay on the night. One of those says it’s entirely non-refundable although they are happy for you to move dates or pass on the booking to someone else., so long as you notify them them 48 hours in advance. The only issue I have with that is the then delay in finding a new available date. We had to cancel as one of us was unwell but it was then over 3 months before there was another available table. That ratio of bums on seats must be aproblem many restaurants would like to have.
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“Bums in seats”? Silly Yank in the Uk story, feel free to scroll by.
In 1994 I was in the UK for a couple months and I walked into an underground station with an empty Coke can. I looked everywhere, no trash bins. I ask the info person where I could throw the can and she said, “We have no trash bins, the hoodlums keep putting bums in them! Set it to the side, our man will pick it up.”
I was a bit confused, and like an idiot I asked, “If the hoodlums keep putting bums in the bins, why don’t the police arrest them?”
The info lady looked confused then realization dawned in her eyes: “They put BOOMMBBSS in them.”
Me: “Oh!”
I set the can by the wall and walked away feeling about a foot tall…
I was also there when the peace agreement was made and that was a beautiful day.
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Good story, Ziv. Yeah, lack of rubbish bins were a thing for years. They bombed by city twice - once breaking windows in my office building and, the second time, I was just on the outskirts of the city centre when it went off. Scared the shit out of me.
But you sort of yearn for the good old days, when you only had to worry about Irish terrorists. Now, they’re back, forming up alongside the Islamist terrorists and the white far right terrorists. Murdering bastards the lot of 'em.
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Pricing the takeout menu at a discount to table service would recognize the relative costs of doing business in those two markets, and maybe even pump up takeout trade. As for the hospitality aspect, we tend to subscribe to the approach that you try a restaurant because you heard the cooking’s good; you return for the hospitality.
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I was there at the same time as you and had a similar exchange in an underground station about the lack of trash cans, with the same explanation. However, I’d had my purse snatched; the police told me (and they were correct) that they’d find it in a trash can away from the station, because there were no trash cans in the stations for the reason you mentioned. They gestured towards my back pack and said, if you’d left this on the platform, no one would have gone near it. Got my purse back with everything but the cash still in it. Even the wallet itself and credit cards.
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I never realized that my friend @buttertart from CH was here too! Greetings Buttertart! 
She very rarely posts here.
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Yes. Next question.
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I think you need to start tipping at 50%. Next question?
Well that one was interesting! Article, but also the comments of course. I think the intended audience is customers, but maybe not.
I was so incredulous about the California minimum tip wage being $2.00 community, I looked it up, even though I knew it wasn’t true.
I was also thinking my recent experiences in dining out did not reflect the customer bein charge.
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So a new bar opens here in Portland, ME today 4/12/23 – Room for Improvement. I was curious to see “Walked Tab” on their menu. I assume it means when you’re running a tab & leave w/o settling up.
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Maybe that’s the standard tip added to your check when you wander out without retrieving your credit card. Which seems reasonable.
That seems like an easy way to make money, if the card was taken to start the tab.
I remember someone I know left a credit card at an Indian restaurant in town, and when she went back to retrieve it, the owner showed her a stack of a dozen credit cards that had been left at the restaurant. He didn’t track down the customers, he just kept the cards in a stack, with an elastic band to them together, in case any customers dropped by , eventually, to ask about their credit card 
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Seems reasonable to me too but I agree that it could be a too convenient way to pad the bill. I’d never seen “walked tab”. OTOH I rarely go to bars. Heh, long gone are the days when you’d put a $20 bill on the bar & tell the keeper to run a tab. $20 in 1973 is $135.xx today so you’ll be laying down 8 20’s to cover the it all & with a decent tip.
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I have a former friend who always seemed to forget to pay for her meal at a pub, often when my ski club would have pub nights every couple weeks.
I’ve paid when she has done this at least twice, and I’ve had another friend mention he paid for her tab when she left without paying.
I now know that she’s a mooch and a scammer . She is 54 and she lives beyond her means. In her case, it’s a fake absent-minded dine and dash attempt, and friends/acquaintances unlucky enough to be sitting with her take care of the bill, trying to collect later, unless the server catches her on time. I suspect she knows it’s uncomfortable for many people to ask about money owed, and that they take a loss. She then assumes they have forgotten about it. Of course, they don’t forget. LOL.
The same friend owes me around $150 from a trip to Italy, in 2017, when when she asked me to upgrade to a double room so she wouldn’t have to get her own room in Rome. I tried to collect once, around Oct 2017, and she said something about being bad about remembering to pay people back and that I should follow up a email showing what she owed. I had already sent her a copy of the updated invoice by email in August and September.
She had the nerve to ask me for $40 bucks for a concert ticket when she still owed me $150ish from Italy, 3 months before. Her 50th birthday was in March 2019. The gift I gave her? Some regifted wine that had been in the bottom of my pantry since my last Christmas open house in Dec 2016. Probably corked. Value? Priceless.
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Emphasis on “former”.
“Schnorrer” is the technical term.
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Someone need to teach her then. It is a bad habit.
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