Dine and dash

A dine and dash is a form of theft by fraud, in which a patron orders and consumes food and beverages from a restaurant or similar establishment with the intent not to pay. The act may involve the customer leaving the restaurant with the intent of evading payment, or, less commonly, of the patron eating the food and then stating that they do not have any money.

Terminology

There are numerous slang variations for this act, including "dine and ditch", "eat and run", "chew and screw", "eat it and beat it", "eat it and street it", "lick it and split it", "book it and hook it", "bite and bolt", "stow it and blow it", "doing a runner", "hog and jog", "beating the check", "sip and skip" and "tab it & split."

In English law, "dine and dash" falls under the crime of making off without payment introduced in 1978; the law was later copied in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Simply failing to pay a bill when due is generally not a crime in most United States circumstances or jurisdictions. It is a contract debt, and the act is civil rather than criminal in nature. However, there are often laws that apply specifically to restaurants, hotels, and other circumstances, where the presumption is that the customer intended to never pay their bill in advance and therefore obtained the valuable services under false pretenses, a form of criminal fraud. In certain states, dining and dashing is not labelled as a criminal issue. For example, in California, it is considered a petty theft, while in Mississippi, it is a felony offense to refuse to pay a bill over $25.00.

Often, the establishment may make their employees pay the cost of customer theft to give them an incentive to police their customers. They may do so explicitly by deducting unpaid meals from wages or tips, or implicitly through an end-of-shift reconciliation system whereby the server is expected to provide enough cash and credit card receipts to cover the cost of their customers' meals, and keeps any surplus as tips. This is an illegal form of wage theft,[1][2][3][4][5] and if the server is held responsible for tabs that are not paid, the employer is liable for paying the server back his or her stolen wages.

Prevention

Some restaurants and cafes face large volumes of dine-and-dash food theft problems, which affect daily profits. To combat this, in some restaurants people have to pay before the meal is served, or put down deposits.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Schultz, Connie (December 15, 2009). "The costs of getting stiffed shouldn't be the server's to pay". Cleveland Live.
  2. ↑ "Payment of Wages". Ontario Ministry of Labor. November 2009.
  3. ↑ British Columbia Ministry of Labour and Citizens' Services (2005). "Interpretation Guidelines Manual: British Columbia Employment Standards Act and Regulations".
  4. ↑ U.S. Department of Labor (2009). "Fact Sheet #16: Deductions From Wages for Uniforms and Other Facilities Under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA)" (PDF).
  5. ↑ "Deductions that are not allowed" (PDF). Government of Alberta. September 2011.
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