'Staff were physically sick': The dine and dash mental health toll on restaurant workers

It's not a theft problem, it's a problem with owners meting out collective retribution on their staff members for things they cannot control. A law stating that restaurant workers cannot be punished for dine-and-dash would solve this problem.

There's a simple solution to dine-and-dashers and I was happy to deal with it as a customer when one of my favourite eating places implemented it: Have the customer pay up front before the food arrives.

Heck, they may have implemented that for my group specifically because we clearly had a few drinks in us and we might have looked like the sort of group who'd try it. The meaning was clear, but we weren't bothered. We paid. We ate. We thanked. We left. In that order. Perfect.

Of course, it would turn a tipping system like the US one on its head because the service charge would have to be baked in to the price, but anyone unhappy with service could be given something back after the meal. That is, once the customer's story of woe has been confirmed, and how much food they ate has been noted.

(If the manager still comps the meal and punishes the server, that's a different problem entirely. Let's face it, a terrible manager would have done that anyway.)