Featured Image Credit: Michael's Bar & Grill
Topics: News, US News, Food and Drink, Crime
Lucy Devine
A restaurant in Missouri revealed a shocking twist after a diner tried to pay their bill with a $1,000 note.
Michael's Bar and Grill in Manchester explained that a customer dining at the restaurant had ordered a burger and several sides before approaching his server to pay the bill.
The restaurant said that the customer asked the server if they had change for a $100 bill, but while they went to locate some change, the man made a shocking move.
First Alert 4 explains how instead of waiting for the server to come back to pay the $40 bill, the customer vanished from the restaurant, leaving behind a counterfeit $1,000 note instead.
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By the time the staff had realized what had happened, the man had already left the parking lot.
“Unfortunately, it’s happened quite a few times lately,” said Kristina Moriarty of Michael’s Bar and Grill.
The bill was labeled as 'ancestor money' which, in Chinese culture, is burned to provide the spirits with material wealth in the afterlife.
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“We work for our tips, and this affects us. The profit margins are too small for this to keep happening,” said Dawn Lamb, a bartender who has worked at Michael's for 32 years.
Feeling fed up with the number of dine-and-dashers they were encountering, the team decided to take matters into their own hands, via the use of social media.
“Here’s the thing, if you do this, we are going to expose you, and we’re going to make it aware. So we again can prevent this from happening,” said Lamb.
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After investing in cameras and extra security measures, Michael's shared a post online, picturing the person who had skipped the bill.
“We have cameras everywhere. We have license plate readers, we have facial recognition that we had to invest in because unfortunately, these things keep happening to small businesses around here,” Moriarty explained.
After the restaurant posted about the man who hadn't paid, he decided to pay them a visit just a few days later.
Moriarty added that after presumably seeing the post online, the customer returned to pay the $40 bill and also left a tip for the server.
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He also apologized for his unacceptable behavior.
Dine and dash crimes are becoming increasingly more common.
In the US, around five percent of people have admitted to having walked out of a restaurant without paying.
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While it might not seem like a huge figure, even occasional incidents can be detrimental to small businesses.