Chapter 5 — My Table, My Responsibility

I went straight to find Julian, my manager, and I found him near the host stand, and I told him, breathless and rattled, that the couple in the corner booth had walked out on a four-hundred-dollar check.

I expected, I think, what any reasonable person would expect.

I expected him to be annoyed at them, not at me.

I expected him to say let me pull the cameras, we have their faces, we have the reservation, maybe a card on file, we’ll handle it.

That is what a decent manager does when a customer commits what is, after all, a crime, a straightforward theft of services.