Yes, people are pros at getting their meals comped. I saw one family at three different restaurants near my home pull the same stunt. Even though I alerted management to their previous activities, they were too concerned with making the customer happy and losing their own jobs to do anything but comp the meal.
There was an incident when I first started at Mythos that nearly ended my career there. I was on the pizza station and a family of 10 came in at the end of the night. They ordered a cheese pizza with an extra plate to be split by two of their children. I just grabbed two plates off the stack and sent the pizza out...apparantly the bottom plate had something on it. What did I do? Immediately throw a brand new pizza in. What did the family do? Yell, complain and threaten management till they got their whole table comped. That's 10 people's meals, where the other 9 had absolutely nothing wrong with their meals. Mind you the pizza never touched the bottom plate, and I sent out a brand new pizza with two spotlessly clean plates. I heard about that from various managers for days. I don't know, maybe it's my common sense, but wouldn't a discount, that pizza being comped, free deserts, etc be more reasonable?
I also love the few times when I've had a dish come back with a hair in it...only to turn out it is a long blonde hair or a short curly red one. I have short brown hair...when no one in the kitchen or the current front of the house staff fits that description, but someone else at the table does...well, I call that suspicious.
Anyhoo, as far as the Margaritaville incident...when I hear things like that (crazy, off the wall things in food) I'm always suspicious. On the same hand, the guy's only asking for 50000 (I'd ask for a whole lot more), and the food service industry has the highest drug, alcohol and suicide rates of an yindustry, so who knows?
