I Thought Justice Scalia Had the Quote of the Day
I was wrong.
IHOP will stop carding customers for pancakes
Mass. outlet wanted to stop dine-and-dashers, headquarters apologizes
John Russo has been a victim of identity theft. So when he was asked to fork over a photo ID just to be seated at an IHOP pancake restaurant, he flipped.
“You want my license? I’m going for pancakes, I’m not buying the Hope diamond,’ and they refused to seat us,” Russo said, recounting his experience this week at the Quincy IHOP.
The restaurant now has agreed to reverse the policy of requiring customers to turn over their driver’s licenses before they can order — a rule that was enacted to discourage “dine and dash” thefts.
He said the security guard who asked for his license had forty others in his mitt already. For pancakes.
We’re doomed.
Fun | Mr. Bingley | 
November 29, 2006 12:59 pm
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If they’re concerned about “dine and dash”, perhaps the staff could stop disappearing at various times during the day. Almost every time I’ve been to IHOP, I’ve had to wait 10-15 minutes to find my waiter/waitress to get a check after I’ve finished my meal. About the only thing you can do that will annoy me more than that is to ignore me, altogether. That’s happened, too … at IHOP.
All your pancakes are belong to us!
IHOP is NOT THAT good of a joint to pull something like that. I can pick out a half-dozen local places that are better than IHOP. (and they don’t hold your license hostage!)
Alright, I spent six months prosecuting misdemeanors, and in that time I ran across exactly ONE dine-and-dash case (out of probably hundreds of petit thefts, 95+% of which were shoplifting). Can this really be such a major problem?
Now the only thing IHOP turns over is pancakes.
Am I the only one willing to consider the possibility that maybe the restaurant really did have a bad problem with deadbeats?
Can we save a wee bit of derision for them? I’m pretty sure the folks running the restaurant knew that taking licenses was not going to make people happy. Probably not a pleasant experience.
Probably also sucked knowing that a certain number of diners you just waited on were going to stiff you. Maybe it happened every day, or once a week. Must be nice going to work looking forward to that.
Plus, this isn’t some REGIONAL pancake provider, or even national. It’s the INTERNATIONAL source of pancakes, so who are we to question?
Oh, and f-ck waffles.
Why don’t they just take the cash when they take the order, or is that too simplistic for the average fast-food supplier?