The mind of today’s youths is a complex one and I had such a unique encounter today. To make a long story short, for the first time in 9 years, my restaurant experienced a dine and dash. Perhaps I had jinxed it, while talking to many others in the industry, they often shared such stories at their workplace. I always told them how fortunate my situation was since we rarely had to deal with customer complaints etc.
Four young white guys around the age of 16-17, dressed like your typical kid with the baggy jeans, runners, and hoodies came into eat around 5:00pm. Their appearance was very clean and was not grungy by any means. They sat three tables from the door, which is not uncommon (but it was obvious why they chose the spot) so it offered no reasons to be sceptical about anything. Anyway, they were very polite and said thank you etc. Then came the end of their meal, I was in the kitchen while this was unfolding so my pops filled me in on the details. They quietly got up, three guys walked out while one strutted as if he was going to pay. As he got to the front counter, he smiled, grabbed a handful of fortune cookies and made a run towards the door. With one guy holding the door, it definitely looked like a planned escape route. My old man, with the way our counter is setup, required him to run backwards, around the counter and then straight for the door. By the time he got to the door, the punks were around the corner bursting at a speed as if they were running for the Olympics. By the time my old man made it around the first corner, he still saw the punks and that was when a Good Samaritan offered his help in chasing them down. However, this was all done in vain. The ironic thing was, the Samaritan was walking past these kids to my restaurant to get some food and he knew something was up since when did kids run so unusually fast? He didn’t think anything of it, had he of known, he would stopped one of the punks. The chase was called off as the kids were long gone by now, even had they been caught, 4 vs. 2, the numbers aren’t so promising.
We had never come in contact with such a situation before so we were pondering filing a report with the local police station which was situated a few stores down but after weighing in the cost/benefit, we decided to drop the idea. The restaurant was starting to fill up and orders were piling in, we figured if we had to deal with the authorities, it would consume too much time. I’m not so sure if this was a passive stance, our rationale was, having an officer come into the restaurant during our rush hour would probably not offer a very appetizing experience for our customers. I suppose I could file a report now but honestly, I don’t know what good would it accomplish? We run a successful business and is $50 that big of a deal? In the grand scheme of things, is it the principle or money? We can’t really recognize these kids, they all look the same. LOL Say if they did get caught, would that possibly incite more anger in them that they might possibly return for revenge? What they did was indeed wrong and that we can all agree on. I highly doubt they will return again unless they have no shame. What I’m getting at is, what is the mindset of these kids? Do they do something like this for fun? Is it premeditated? Is there no longer a concept of right or wrong? Regardless of the profession, things like this take place everywhere, department stores, grocery stores, convenience stores, banks, restaurants etc.
Should our laws be more stringent in dealing with petty crimes? Or is this the way our society is? It is better to teach than punish? I know in Southeast Asia, i.e. Singapore, you get fined for spitting on the street, if you get caught in vandalizing, you go to jail. Now is that too severe? Is there a happy medium? Is it better to live in fear knowing the extreme consequences or is it better living free and just dealing with such issues?
Sorry, long rant, it pissed me off at the time but now it's not really that important. There are way more important things to deal with.