There's a restaurant recommended by a student (because it's his dad's) that I love. I eat there 3-4 times a week. A couple of times someone tried to rip us off by giving us a total bill that was $5-$15 higher than it should have been. I finally made it clear that I wanted an itemized bill and we haven't any problems since.
Tonight a person next to me asked for the mixed grill. (I took pictures when I ordered the mix grill a while back for the blog.) She was delivered fish. She sent it back. The waiter we've had many times came over and it was clear that he could not simply take it back. The implication was that it would be his job if he told them that he had made the wrong order.
He then reached into his pocket and removed 40 dirhams and asked us to say we ordered it as take away if asked.
We ate the rest of the food, the fish was brought to us as take away and then the bill. The bill included the fish, but with his 40 dirhams he left on the table the fish was basically free.
I hate fish. It was an honest mistake. I clearly heard the woman order mixed grill. I have no idea how he heard fish.
So what do I do? I pocketed the forty from the waiter and go down to the cashier and say, "We never ordered fish. Please take that off our bill." I then used the waiter's forty to help pay off the bill.
Nah, I couldn't do that. I ended up tipping him enough to cover the price of the fish and some extra. In other words, I gave a 40% tip in a place where tipping is not expected at all. I gave the fish to another in our party.
I'm not completely altruistic: I get this waiter all the time and I know my veggie tray will be full of the veggies I like from now on.
This is insight to how I think: The price to fix the error (which I had nothing to do with me) is 40 dirhams. That's .2% of my monthly income. For the poor waiter the cost would likely have been his pay for the day.
In the greater good - greater loss philosophy, buying this fish I don't like made perfect sense.
Ah, now there's a good liberal!
ReplyDeleteI would have done the same thing.
I would have done like the waiter had instructed. Does the waiter still get yelled at because he charged you inappropriately for the fish?! I guess we won't ever know. Then you tipped him better for bad service. You created an incentive to try and buy his way out of this or other situations in the future. I feel you were trying to do the right thing though so you get good karma points for that.
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