[arizonarachel]

You could just let it go - but what do you do when he figures out he can get freebies, and shows up the NEXT day?

Any establishment reserves the right to refuse service and could do so the following day. One "simple" incident isn't worth all this bad publicity!

But, in all honesty, have you ever been to CEC? The food is S.A.D. Maybe he couldn't digest the cardboard pizza and wanted a salad. Maybe he paid for a salad and was feeding his kids with it. I'm sure they ordered a pizza, which is pretty much worthless, and thought they were entitled to a salad. Who knows - maybe the guy thought the salad bar was free and couldn't understand that it wasn't?

It was a simple misunderstanding, I'm sure, that sparked the whole thing, but it just shouldn't have gone down this way.

[beezdotcom]

It was a simple misunderstanding, I'm sure, that sparked the whole thing, but it just shouldn't have gone down this way.

See, I don't know how you can be 'sure', since we don't really have that much to go on. I've seen both bad store managers AND bad customers, and I've certainly seen customers who made it necessary to call security in a mall environent - which anywhere else, would mean calling the police. You speak of a number of 'maybes' which could lead to a misunderstanding over the salad - but that doesn't necessarily explain that the man woudn't even show he had paid for ANY food AT ALL. What, then, should a manager do?

As for bad publicity - try refusing service to someone (assuming they're even identified on a later visit), and watch the fireworks, ESPECIALLY if there is ANY possibility that they can bring ethnicity into the argument.