Posted on 01/25/2013 6:58:33 AM PST by jimbo123
Welcome to New York, pal — now go to jail.
An Italian tourist spent his second night in the city behind bars after staff at an upscale East Side steakhouse called cops when he claimed he left his wallet at a friend’s place.
Graziano Graziussi, a 43-year-old lawyer from Naples, is a regular at Smith & Wollensky — but this time, barely 24 hours into his latest two-week stay in New York, he realized he didn’t have his wallet on him when a waiter presented him with the $208 bill Monday night.
“I forgot my wallet,” the clean-cut Graziussi told the waiter — but the staff at the Third Ave. eatery wasn’t buying it, even after Graziussi offered some pricey collateral while he went to get the cash about 30 blocks uptown.
“I was going to leave my iPhone,” he said. “I suggested they bring a bus boy with me. . . . It would have been an easy trip.”
But the general manager called police instead.
(Excerpt) Read more at nydailynews.com ...
(1) If a con artist offers to leave a phone, frequently the mark will not actually take him up on it, either because it makes the scammer seem more trsutworthy or the mark thinks "what am I going to do with this phone, what a hassle" or both.
(2) Pretty much every legitimate phone comes with a replacement option if it's lost, so as long as you're scamming an amount of money that is larger than the replacement plan cost, you're still in the black even if you didn't get away with as much as you hoped.
Maybe. I eat at Wollensky’s grill, which is next door. They serve a hamburger for $17.50. It is every bit as good as you would expect an $18 hamburger to be.
They will not lose a cent of business.
The place is packed every day.
And also their customers are not really individuals - they are firms: banks, law firms, consulting firms, etc.
If I were a banker taking out 10 clients for a steak, am I going to care about this one deadbeat's sob story and change my plans? Not in the slightest.
Will the clients, who are getting a free meal on my firm's expense line, care at all about this deadbeat's sob story either? No chance.
New Yorkers know that people scam restaurants all the time.
I know the manager of a supermarket he’s said the same thing.
One of their regular customers stiffed them several times with the same story.
Never seemed to remember to bring the money after she got the groceries home.
It wasn’t as if she didn’t have the money to pay, she did. In fact she was quite wealthy.
She was just a thief.
She asked them to please keep the cart of bagged groceries, so that she could fetch the checkbook from home and come back to get them. The store manager suggested that she instead take the groceries home, put the cold things away, and then come back and give them a check. No ID was even asked for. Now it was a good neighborhood, but I was stunned at the level of trust.
Another time when in Naples, Italy, I and a friend went to dinner. When the bill came, we discovered that they did not take VISA. We only had enough cash to cover about 70% of the bill. We asked for the owner and explained our mistake, offering that one of us would stay, while the other retrieved more cash. The nice woman, looked over our bill and told us that the 70% we had would cover our bill. It was a nice and unexpected offer. Had I had the opportunity, I would have returned with the other 30% later, but ship movement prevented it.
But that point is neutralized earlier, as they also said he was a lawyer.
He's not a deadbeat. He forgot his wallet.
Give me a break.
No, I don't think I will. You're the manager of a famous restaurant, at a prominent Manhattan location. You have years of experience dealing with people, serving high-end customers and taking care of special needs. Being a people person, you have a certain flair for handling awkward situations and for being a good judge of who deserves your patience and who doesn't. If the Italian diner doesn't deserve a break, then neither does the manager who so royally screwed up. Because life is hard and unforgiving and we don't make special allowances for other people's stupid blunders -- even when they mean well. Right?
And what am I going to do with someone else's phone as collateral?
Take good care of it till he gets back. Do you think the guy's a street punk swiping people's phones? Clearly it's an expensive device and full of data the man will want to get back. It's reasonable evidence of his bona fides.
Come on.
No, you come on. The manager proved to be a bad judge of character, playing the New York hard ass and grossly insulting a guest over a paltry $208 check (at a restaurant that must gross $75,000 every day). He should be fired.
Just the other week I was at the grocery store checkout, the total was over $150 and when I opened my purse, my wallet was missing. I suspected I had left it on the seat of my car and not left it a home since I had gotten gas before going to the grocery store. Of course, unlike an already consumed restaurant meal, after telling the clerk, I left the already bagged groceries at the checkout went out to my car and came back and paid. The clerk however seemed more than a little annoyed and being that I am a regular customer at that store, I didn’t really appreciate her attitude.
All while wolfing down the prime steaks and toasting each other for the latest bank fee they put over on everyone.
True. I wouldn’t consider that a regular, but maybe the writer or the guy in the story does. As far as I’m concerned, if the host and waitstaff doesn’t know you on sight, you’re not a regular.
My experience: Probably the owners/managers WERE foreigners.
Cultural issues, Americans are generally able to work with people whereas foreigners are hard-nosed when it comes to commerce.
Americans generally value the customer whereas foreigners have deep distrust (sometimes downright hostility) towards customers, especially customers they feel might be trying to take advantage of them.
Try customer service at any US company and if the customer service rep is American, usually easier to work with.
If customer service rep is foreigner, then no chance of understanding or compromise.
So right, dude!
Power to the people!
Workers of the world unite!
I'm not sold on that argument.
Effectively you're arguing that the restaurant manager should not be given the benefit of the doubt for knowing his own business, but that the walletless diner should be given the benefit of the doubt.
I'm not sure why the choice of the diner over the restauranteur is inherently more compelling.
I would sue for false arrest.
All the evidence indicates just this. Everyone would have been better off if he had.
Evidently there is a much-needed free-market service. I can give my credit card by phone and have them send me frozen steaks. Why can’t I make a call and have them pay for a restaurant steak?
They could also call a local mafioso, and have him accompany the guy to get cash, and take a commission.
“But that point is neutralized earlier, as they also said he was a lawyer.”
I don’t think most leftists hate lawyers quite so much now that their biggest racist idols occupy the White Hut.
Doesn’t even matter that they SURRENDERED their law licenses.
Heck, most leftists I know ignorantly refuse to accept the Great Clinton’s impeachment because he wasn’t REMOVED.
Everyone might have been better off if this guy had brought his wallet with him.
As it stands now, the wallet-forgetter has now learned to bring his wallet with him, he's gotten his picture in the newspaper and his 15 minutes plus kept his phone, the restaurant presumably has the money it was owed without having to pay an employee to follow a customer to a hotel, the NY Post reporter got some extra papers sold, and I doubt the restaurant has lost any business.
As far as this case is concerned, all is now right with the world.
Small business is different. I manufacture a product for retail sale. I can’t pad the invoice with B.S. fees or bill someone for installation questions when they call.
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