Customer told to leave after sipping someone else's drink?

This didn't happen locally but interesting. Policy anywhere? Legal issue everywhere? I can't sip my husband's beer? We always get two different IPAs and switch half way.

http://www.bizjournals.com/louisville/how-to/marketing/2014/05/how-to-permanently-destroy-customer-relationships.html

Apparently, I've been at risk of getting kicked out of many restaurants!

ehhhhhh....I'm thinking we're getting one side of the story here. I can certainly understand this type of "rule" in certain situations...say when it's a mixed party of over the legal age and under the legal age (which doesn't sound like the case here)...but to have a hard and fast rule seems a little absurd. Like I say, I think we're only getting one side of the story and likely edited for popular consumption. Again, just my supposition.

They are either has to be more to the story than was written or whatever state it happened in has some extremely strange laws. It's obviously both people drinking were of age because the one who tasted the other persons drink had his own beer. I'm sure most of us at one time or another have sampled the cocktail or beer that another member of the group had or, heaven forbid Taste of someone else's food! It would be interesting to hear what the whole story about this was.

something here smells fishy...

There's always the possibility that the chain could have been sued in the past over someone giving their drink to a minor and just enacted a blanket policy. There's no mention of a discussion with the manager, or where this might have occurred. I tried to search for states that might have laws against this but didn't come up with anything. I did, though, find that in Utah it's against the law to have a drink in a restaurant while looking at the menu.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/01/31/bo ... get-drink/

When I read the original story I sent an email to the author asking for additional information. I received a reply from him today and as many of us suspected there's more to the story....

Here's his reply:

Hi Mark:

Thanks for your note.

In conversations with my friends it appears that it might have been a case of mistaken identity. The thought is that a patron was ‘shut off’ prior to our arrival and that my friend resembled him and upon seeing him drinking again the server rudely approached him thinking somehow that he was in the know. Still, her approach was unnecessary and very rude and should have been avoided altogether. As far as I know, my state doesn’t have any rules regarding the sharing of drinks in a restaurant (other than with a minor.)

Cheers!


Spider Graham | Chief Creative Technologist | Trainingcraft
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