TubeNet

Thu Jan 3, 8:33 AM ET
HOUMA, La. - A 265-pound man says a restaurant overcharged him for his trips to the buffet, then banned him and a relative because of how much they consumed during their visits.
Ricky Labit, a 6-foot-3 disabled offshore worker, said he had been a regular at the Manchuria Restaurant, eating there as often as three times a week. But on his most recent visit, he said a waitress gave him and his wife's cousin, Michael Borrelli, a bill for $46.40, roughly double the buffet price for two adults.
"She says, 'Y'all fat, and y'all eat too much,'" Labit said.
Labit and Borrelli said they felt discriminated against because of their size.
"I was stunned, that somebody would say something like that. I ain't that fat, I only weigh 277," Borrelli said.
Accountant Thomas Campo, who spoke for the restaurant because the owner's English is limited, said the men were charged an extra $10 each on Dec. 21 because they made a habit of dining exclusively on the more expensive seafood dishes, including crab legs and frog legs.
"We have a lot of big people there," Campo said. "We don't discriminate."
The argument over the bill grew heated, and police were called. The police report states that the disagreement was settled when the restaurant said the bill was a mistake and, to appease Labit, the meal was complimentary.
Labit said he insisted on paying but was told not to come back. He complained that when seafood on the buffet line runs out, the restaurant only grudgingly cooks more. Campo said the proprietress tries to reduce waste of quality food.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080103/ap_ ... buffet_ban

MartyNeilan wrote:["She says, 'Y'all fat, and y'all eat too much,'"

Yep!

Yeah, and I don't go to buffets because they charge way the hell too much for the amount of food I eat. Damned if I'm going to subsidize someone who's fat and eats too much.

MA

It is a buffet...They should expect that some people would know that going in, and have their fill.

i weigh in the area of 245-250 but i'm 6'2". I'm a big guy but in no way does it look like im as heavy as i am. pretty sure that 277 lbs. isn't horrible unless you're 5' nothing.

lol i know the destruction that is Ryans. we take our fraternity there and we DEMOLISH.

I refuse to eat anywhere where they have to employ a "sneeze guard" to protect the food. And I live in Vegas.One reply had it right: It's a buffet, which is just another word for "All-You-Can-Eat". The owners should have seen this coming.

Chuck "6'2" 210lbs who is considered obese by the recent Government Standards"Jackson

At 5'10" and 180 pounds (and 50 years of age), I am one of the littlest guys here. But living in Vietnam, this is considered quite large.

Any man over 5'8" is tall. (It's 5'2" for women.) 165 pounds is considered "getting up there" in weight (for a woman, 125 pounds.) I am considered big and fat.

Fortunately, at my university, we've been getting lots of foreign visitors from American universities (Harvard, San Jose State, Cal State Long Beach). When those guys left last week from a visit, my secretary (finally) asked me how come I am so small.

A buffet owner threw some heavy eaters out of his establishment, as recounted in "Road Food." He told them something along the lines of, "We're not here to slop hogs!"

The owner forced buffet-goers to take starches and vegetables along with the entrees, but this particular crew was caught dumping their filler material into the plants.

Reminds me of the old joke:

The sign on the front of the restaurant said "All You Can Eat for $4.99!"

So, the guy walks in, gets a loaded plate of fried chicken, gobbles it up, and then demands more. The waiter refuses.

"Why not? The sign said 'All You Can Eat for $4.99'"!

The waiter replied, "Yes. That's all you can eat for $4.99. If you want more, it's another $4.99."

Sigh.

This could have been relieved by a sign on the door that says, "This establishment reserves the right to refuse service to anyone." Then, the only reason they would not be able to serve someone is on the basis of race, etc.

A buffet is a method of self-service, primarily to give people a choice of what they want to eat and in what proportions. It is not an "all you can eat" buffet unless it says so, even if it allows customers (up to a point) to return to the buffet line.

My prediction: The restaurant will win, especially since they comped the meal.

Rick "who never really understood the appeal of large quantities of crappy food" Denney

A restaurant with a buffet has to make several business decisions. Among other things, they have to decide whether to offer high-dollar items, whether to dedicate a server to distributing those high-dollar items (does the cost of the item being over-consumed by some individuals justify having a server dedicated to bringing a plate of frog legs to the table of someone who requests it), whether to limit the high-dollar items (all-you-can-eat, except only one plate of frog legs per customer), etc.

Olive Garden does a pretty good job of this on their soup-salad-breadsticks. Of course, they will bring you as much soup as you ask for. But, they way they serve it (I usually have to wait a little while for the first bowl, even - by the time I finish it, the group I'm with is usually finished eating), it is a little awkward to stay there for two hours porking down potato soup.

I don't think this is very much of a legal issue. A lawsuit against a buffet is a big loser.

It is more of an issue of business decisions, and the best way to balance keeping your customers happy and maintaining a profit margin.

Reminds me of this tune (author unknown):
I met this girl - she wasn't to bad. She wasn't too skinny and she wasn't too fat and I just thought I'd ask her out to eat.
It wasn't much later when we arrived at this neat little place on Pompano Drive, "All you can eat for $5,95"
"Hi,I'm your waitress, Gina, I'll help you if I can - she snached that menu out of her hand and said, "Girl, go get yourself a pencil and get ready to write".
"I want three whole chickens over easy - don't even skin "em I like 'em greasy and walk my steak right out here on a leash. I want a wheel barrow full of tater salad, two whole hogs and a blackened mallard and a flat bed truck full of chicken and broccoli quiche."

I wish that we'd gone Dutch. I never have seen a girl that could eat this much.

Well here come the corn bread - she ate the whole pone. She said, "Go get Domino's on the phone - extra large supreme with everything on it. I want a bucket of oysters and a barrel of beer and you better roll that salad bar over here. A big ole rack of ribs - that sounds good, don't it?"

I wish that we'd gone Dutch. I never have seen a girl that could eat this much.

Well she stood up, snorted, burped and coughed. She wiped her mouth off on the table cloth and said, "Clear this mess away. I want dessert."
"I want me some lime sherbet and baked Alaska, a pecan pie the size of Nebraska and meanwhile, I'll suck the gravy stains out of my shirt."

I wish that we'd gone Dutch. I never have seen a girl that could eat this much.
I wish that we'd gone Dutch. I never have seen a girl that could eat this much.

tubatooter1940 wrote:Reminds me of this tune (author unknown):
I met this girl - she wasn't to bad. She wasn't too skinny and she wasn't too fat and I just thought I'd ask her out to eat.
It wasn't much later when we arrived at this neat little place on Pompano Drive, "All you can eat for $5,95"
"Hi,I'm your waitress, Gina, I'll help you if I can - she snached that menu out of her hand and said, "Girl, go get yourself a pencil and get ready to write".
"I want three whole chickens over easy - don't even skin "em I like 'em greasy and walk my steak right out here on a leash. I want a wheel barrow full of tater salad, two whole hogs and a blackened mallard and a flat bed truck full of chicken and broccoli quiche."

I wish that we'd gone Dutch. I never have seen a girl that could eat this much.

Well here come the corn bread - she ate the whole pone. She said, "Go get Domino's on the phone - extra large supreme with everything on it. I want a bucket of oysters and a barrel of beer and you better roll that salad bar over here. A big ole rack of ribs - that sounds good, don't it?"

I wish that we'd gone Dutch. I never have seen a girl that could eat this much.

Well she stood up, snorted, burped and coughed. She wiped her mouth off on the table cloth and said, "Clear this mess away. I want dessert."
"I want me some lime sherbet and baked Alaska, a pecan pie the size of Nebraska and meanwhile, I'll suck the gravy stains out of my shirt."

I wish that we'd gone Dutch. I never have seen a girl that could eat this much.
I wish that we'd gone Dutch. I never have seen a girl that could eat this much.

Must be Mr. Creosote's daughter:

I'd be delighted to hook you up, Wade. I have melody and chords - fairly simple.
I, also NEED more clean funny tunes. P.M. me a phone number if you will, and I'll grab a guitar and sing it at you.
Dennis gray
www.johnreno.com/

For "relatively" clean funny tunes.... an old bluegrass buddy of mine had many, many tunes that were off but not that far. I always wished I had recorded him on these; the one I remember the most was "I got a skeeter on my peter...."



MA

What you probably didn't know about her was that she was bulemic; eating like that and being thin tend to go with bulemia. Plus the psychotic part.

yech.

MA

MaryAnn wrote:What you probably didn't know about her was that she was bulemic; eating like that and being thin tend to go with bulemia. Plus the psychotic part.

yech.

MA

Add in the doctorate in Dance, and it's almost a sure thing.

Unfortunately not a laughing matter - those are pretty sad circumstances.