dodging restaurant bills

[splange]

Anybody ever done a runner from a restaurant without paying? Or used an ingenious way to avoid payment?

[Dingoeater]

I've only ever avoided paying once, but that was at a restaurant that was so bad that the food was virtually inedible. It wasn't so much avoiding paying as not paying on principle

[malaise]

My boyfriend and I walked out of a restaurant without paying not that long ago. The meal was alright, but halfway through our nice romantic dinner, a stag night came in, and were dancing on tables, screaming, shouting, and getting naked. Great! At that point the staff basically ignored us as we were trying to order a dessert and more drinks, and eventually brought the bill over. We sat there for ages and nobody came to take the money, so we went to the bar, where we were STILL ignored (the bar girl was chatting up the stag and had little interest in us). So I said "f**k it, let's go" and we walked out. The doorman held the door open for us and evertyhing, haha. I don't feel guilty because it was totally deserved.

[Plocket]

I used to work in a busy restaurant, and one evening a regular customer was half way through his dinner and had a heart attack. We called for an ambulance, and of course waved his wife off with him when she tried to pay. We sent flowers to the hospital and when he was recovered quite some time later he came in to pay the bill!

[kovac]

My friend and I left an expensive coffee house in Vienna without paying because we couldn't get anyone to take our money! They were so busy running around trying to serve everyone and kept telling us to 'wait one moment' - after about 30 minutes of standing in the middle of the cafe holding out our unwanted Euros we walked out. We felt a little guilty, but it wasn't that we had tried to avoid paying.

[beerbelly]

On a day trip to Scarborough , after a moby-dick fish lunch , my ex-wife said ,after 3 , lets run , before i could say WHAT she was away out the door !!

just realising what was going on ,i chased after her .
we got about 100 yards down the road when she said didn't you get the buggy ??

we had left our son in the restraunt .
of course she walked back in , bold as brass , and came back out with child and buggy .

no one had even noticed that we had gone !!

Still feel guilty 20 years later !!!!

[03brdealc]

yeh i ptetended to have cramp in my leh the indians that worked in the place phoned an ambulance and said dont worry sir and heres a free meal on us

RESULT lol

[FelixtheDog]

At a friends 21st we all went to a strip club where they had this option of providing a huge birthday cake in the shape of a girl's torso with two big icing-covered breasts and a vag with a big red jam slash & coconut pubes. We were enjoying the night, taking photos of our birthday boy with some of the strippers when a big ugly bouncer came over and took all the film out of our cameras..which included photos from earlier in the evening at his 21st family gathering. We were so ****** off that all the film was ruined that when we left, we told the waiter we'd pay for the cake at the front desk on the way out and then told the front desk that we had already paid the waiter. We took the remainder of the cake home and continued to party, with fresh film in our cameras. Serves them right & it was an expensive cake too.

[Karen2005]

Kovac - Something similar happened to my husband and I in a cafe in Paris. After sitting down for ages, we thought we'd caught the waiter's attention, so ordered two hot chocolates The waiter barely looked in our direction, let along acknowledge us and we continued to sit for ages, not knowing if our drinks were coming or not. Eventually, we decided to leave. Just as we reached the door, we noticed a waiter coming out with two hot chocolates and heading for our table. We ran down the road to the nearest Metro station and couldn't stop laughing. We hadn't exactly left without paying as we hadn't actually consumed the drinks, but we still felt a bit guilty. Serves the surly waiter right!

Also, when I was a child we holidayed in Cornwall. We drove through a small town and my parents thought it looked vaguely familiar. Then they realised they had visited the town about 20 years earlier and left a restaurant without paying! It was a genuine mistake though as when they had finished their meal, mum needed to go to the toilet, so dad said he'd meet her outside. When they had driven about 30 miles down the road, one of them turned to the other and asked how much the bill had come to. Unfortunately, both of them had assumed the other had paid, but had actually left without paying!