Common sense is uncommon in real life

A chef and owner of a restaurant in France has changed the rules of his establishment. Fed up of customers not honouring their bookings, the chef's new rule is that every party booking a table must pay a fine per person not showing up.

- Birjees Hussain

Now a lot of people might argue that the restaurant owner is being unreasonable. But his rationale is that this is a business. For example, when customers make a booking for a party of six people the chef purchases ingredients and then proceeds to make dishes based on those numbers. Then when someone doesn't turn up, those dishes and the money spent buying the ingredients are wasted.

It is a business after all. It would not only be courteous but helpful to the restaurant if the customer called in advance to cancel a booking or to inform the restaurant that the numbers had changed. But, more often than not, patrons turn up one number short.