[michaelmrose]

Every economic situation with edge cases struggles to deal with malicious abuse of terms. For instance buying power tools to do a job using them hard for weeks then returning them in a non-saleable condition. Buying a tv for the Superbowl. Food waste all you can eat.

The commonality is willingness to flagrantly violate social norms, entitlement, and lack of empathy.

What I've learned from such situations is that subtlety is wasted and tolerating misbehavior leads to encouraging more from that party and others. Conversely there is near zero cost or even a benefit to be had from squelching it. Such customers are on average worth less than nothing. They will consume half your support trying to screw you and all of your profit if you let them.

Saying no is even surprisingly trouble free when you have been consistent and only becomes a struggle when you have a policy of sometimes given in.

The hardest behaviors to extinguish are those which sometimes pay off. See arcades, lottery, and slot machines.

The worst polict to adopt is forcing front line employees to be the enforcers while managers make exceptions. This leads to the strategy of constant escalation.

The best counter is you can speak to a manager but he'll give you the same answer then do it when need be.

[_jcyi]

That's all fine, and I wouldn't dispute any of that. I'm just surprised at the anger here over a situation where we have essentially no information other than that some guys ate sushi without the rice. If they had the restaurant's permission, then that's between them and the restaurant.

[Dylan16807]

"Can't believe they weren't kicked out" is not exactly anger.

And the word "guilt" is being tied to the hypothetical version where we do have the information.