How exactly is it news worth when a couple of fattys are banned from a buffet they gorge at 3 or 4 times a week?

If I were that buffet owner I'd do the same thing.

You go now! You here four hour!

Oh you velly fat man! No shrimps for you! You eat flie lice. No more shrimps!

It's the typical tragedy of the commons effect. No incremental cost, so there's huge overconsumption.

See [en.wikipedia.org]

We used to go to a mother's day buffet, nice spread, lots of good stuff, including crab legs. One year, we sat next to a table of 8 or 9 huge people. Adults over 400lbs, kids in proportion. They were coming back to the table with plates literally a foot deep in crab legs.

Next year, no crab legs.

Good for the buffet owner. I would have done the same thing. These people are clearly taking advantage of a buffet and the business owners are perfectly within their right to post signs indicating that people are not to gorge themselves.

"I only weigh 277." What? What!?
Unless he's some sort of professional athlete or under 10% bodyfat, that IS indeed fat.

He's not that fat? Maybe if he was 6'8 277 pounds would be healthy. Aren't buffets generally the beacon for serious food hounds? Don't they KNOW that people go there specifically to chow down for an hour and a half on multiple plates of food? I haven't willingly gone to a buffet in years - the last time I went, it was out of courtesy to someone who picked it, and I felt sick for the rest of the day because there was nothing remotely healthy there to eat, and the people who picked the place remarked how much I wasn't eating and took offense in it.

Quick, somebody call Lionel Hutz. This is the most blatant case of false advertising since the Neverending Story.

@rockosolido:

you beat me! I was going to say the same thing!

I think that this is hilarious and hopefully it will start a new trend in this world to get rid of the McFattys. 277 is not fat???

Why does it seem that half the posts on the Gawker blogs this week involve Louisiana somehow?

I love my state.

Does the owner of the place have a restriction on how much patrons can eat? If not I could see their point. I

I once went to an Asian buffet (with lots of seafood) and noticed that there were signs everywhere stating that each patron had a two-hour time limit from the time stamped on their receipts and it was strictly enforced. It never occurred to me that something like that would even be necessary (Who would stay that long?). When I asked the dining room hostess (enforcer), she said that people would come for lunch and stay until dinner, even bringing books to read in between. Incredible! I guess there's just no end to peoples' nerve.

@anomaly69: Well for one usually restaurants want their customers coming back often. Buffets hardly ever lose money anyhow, it'd be hard to even guess if one was losing money on a particular customers ( body mass is not necissarly a good indicator).

I'm only 350 lbs, prac'tly a ballerina!

@kamel5547: You're right, body mass is not a good indicator. However, if he was 190 when he started frequenting the joint 5 months ago, I'm with the owner.

Plus, this is america. I'm sure when the guy had a heart attack he would have sued the buffet for not making him stop eating.

I have a coworker who is close to 400 lbs and he only eats at buffets. Every day. I'm waiting for this to happen to him.

Apparently the fact he ended up with diabetes hasn't clicked yet.

Actually, this would be my argument as the buffet owner:

If I'm a bartender and someone is over the limit, I'm cutting them off.

Now, I'm a restraunt owner and this guy is obviously over the limit. I'm cutting his ass off before he dies in my buffet.

Remember way back when people were sane, and if an establishment insulted you, you spoke up by taking your patronage elsewhere?

Everyone is so quick to get offended at every little thing. We're a nation of sissies, with feelings more fragile than a butterfly's wings.

The article says these were men, too bad they are whining like little spoiled girls. They should act like men, tell the restaurant to kiss off, and go eat somewhere else. (and refuse to pay any more than the advertised price, btw)

It wastes a lot of time and energy to go getting all whiny to the media.

If they advertise all you can eat buffet, that's false advertising.

If you're in the buffet business, and can't handle people coming back to get more food. Get out of the buffet business. Face it, most buffets lure people in with the expectation that most people will only eat one plate. If the business only wants you to eat one plate, then say so.

@Wheels17: Ha! I worked at a restaurant back in the day that had a Sunday breakfast buffet. When they took away the crab legs because they were too expensive, people refused to pay the bill. "I'm not payin' if there's no crab legs!"

dear fatties:

guess what? you are too fat.

signed,

the world

p.s. stink stink stink -- stink stink stink -- joker got away! hey!

"I ain't that fat, I only weigh 277"

I LOL'ed hard at that.

@m4ximusprim3: LOL! I think you're absolutely right :)

254 is the ideal weight for someone who is 7 feet tall. You may not be fat, but you sure aren't skinny, and this decision was made on eating habits, not weight. They wouldn't do this to someone who was 400 lbs if they ate 1/2 a plate of food per visit. Also, you may not be fat, but I've never seen a healthy buffet, so at 3 times a week for 8 months, you probably aren't healthy either.

@m4ximusprim3: I like that.

I just know as the restaurant owner I would cringe in fear seeing these two Jabba's slithering up to my restaurant to gorge themselves and make my other customers ill.

I think, comments about body weight and considerations of buffet-goer motives aside, the issue here is a simple bait and switch. The buffet listed one price per person for (ostensibly) 'all you can eat' buffet service. True, the restaurant owner is free to set limits or pricing tiers, however it must be clear and up front to the customer. To charge them double after the fact because the manager feels taken advantage of is not right, and most likely illegal. A more appropriate response might have been to bill them the correct price but then ask them to not return. Is that legal? Are there discrimination issues? Possibly, I'm not arguing that. The important point here is that the restaurant offered something at one price, then after the fact changed the deal, that's a no-no.
Also, 277 is not necessarily overweight, and considering his previous work was offshore work, he's probably a big guy. Many offshore jobs are intense and the people that do that work *are* of the 6'5" muscle bound variety, and those guys do eat a lot. Anyway, his weight is irrelevant in this instance.

I don't see anything wrong with the buffet cutting off people they see as abusing the buffet. It's a bad business relationship. Of course they could have done it a lot more politely. But I'm glad they didn't, since then we'd never have gone blubbering to the media with the 'I'm not fat, I'm only 277 pounds!' bit.

The restaurant is certainly able to ban whoever they like, so banning them for eating too much isn't an issue. Doubling the bill certainly isn't something that should be within their power (false advertising, breach of the contract implied by signs/prices, I'm sure there's something illegal there).

I've noticed that many buffets no longer advertise as "all you can eat", but instead "all you care to eat".

The former phrase is apparently interpreted as some sort of challenge by some.

@jtheletter: She said he looked like he had a baby in his belly. He was fat fat fat fat fat fat fat fat fat fat fat fat fat fat fat fat fat fat fat fat fat fat fat fat fat fat fat fat fat fat fat fat fat fat fat fat fat fat fat fat fat fat fat fat

If there is an "all You Can Eat" sign, then that's what it means. I think it's understood that a buffet is an "All You Can Eat" situation unless otherwise noted.

We have an "all You Can Eat" Sushi bar in the neighborhood, but they make it very plain, you can have as much sushi as you want BUT you must eat all the rice. I've seen people cut the rice in half and then complain that they can't get anymore.

Plus as regulars thy should have been warned before the rules got changed on them.

@unklegwar:
I second that. People are so quick to turn stuff like this into a huge ordeal. It's getting a bit ridiculous.

@AdmiralNelson: Bingo. Nobody goes to a buffet and gets a small salad with oil and vinegar and a bowl of soup. If you have a buffet, expect the fatties and expect them to eat accordingly.

Gotta love fat people, the last group you can discriminate against and no one cares.

Can I kick out Indians for smelling like curry? Can I kick out ghettofied black people for scaring off white customers? Each group could negatively effect my bottom line, but we cannot discriminate against them.

Until we can discriminate against anyone for possible negative effects on our business, we shouldn't be able to discriminate against fat people.

This is nothing new. They aren't the first people to get kicked out for repeated overindulgence. I vaguely recall some big eater losing a lawsuit he filed against a restaurant in Wisconsin or Illinois for getting cut off.

@anomaly69: First, OK, you immediately come across as an asshole with that judgmental bit of namecalling.

Second, when you are advertised price X and charged price Y, that's FRAUD. You cannot raise the price after the customer accepts the sale offer at the advertised price.

Third, need new shoes for that high horse you're on for acting like how other people look is justification to screw them over? We'll laugh at you when you're charged $10 a shoe and the blacksmith demands $15/shoe or he'll call the cops.

Being black, or Indian or doesn't come with risk of death or diseases like diabetes. Fat people need to realize that fat is more than just visually unappealing. It's unhealthy and definitely worth discriminating against.

@Bancho: And you're an asshole asshole asshole asshole asshole asshole asshole asshole asshole asshole asshole asshole asshole asshole asshole asshole asshole asshole asshole asshole asshole asshole asshole asshole.

@dandd: No kidding. Watch me get called names for standing up for people. I bet someone will accuse ME of being part of that group with no justification, too. Because that somehow makes it OK.

No, it's not OK.

@Bancho: Uh, what? "(x) people need to realize that (x) is more than (pick offensive phrase here), it's (justification) and definitely worth discriminating against"?

W. T. F.

@unklegwar: Funny you should say that considering you're on a site where the advice is often "shop elsewhere, and go to the press to shame the establishment that tried to defraud you".

@GothamGal: Actually, it isn't always, there are a lot of other factors -- height for one.

@Bancho:

Sorry Bancho, I believe in freedom of choice. If someone wants to be fat, then that is their choice.

Being black doesn't come with the risk of death or disease? Ever heard of sickle cell or high blood pressure? Your race does determine several health risks.

@Buran: Perhaps, but you won't catch me devouring my way to death at a buffet. You know if one of these guys keeled over dead with a stick of butter lodged in their ventricle people would be up in arms about the evil restaurant owner killing them. The whiners should just find another buffet to glom onto. I'm pretty sure the buffets aren't in cahoots maintaining a blacklist the way casinos do.

The other thing here is the people rushing to defend fat. People need to learn to not eat so much. I'm sick of seeing handicapped parking places basically turned into "parking for fat people".

BTW, the guy in the article, the one who was whining, was FAT. He wasn't some tall muscular bodybuilder. He was FAT.

@dandd: You are right about freedom of choice. So many people just make so many bad choices.

I have yet to see a buffet that has food worth more than a few pennies. I don't care that they serve steak, or crab legs. That stuff is NOTHING compared to the utter bottom bin SHIT they serve at the rest of the buffet.

I do NOT believe this company is losing money on these two guys, even eating there three times a week.

What idiot opens a place like this then gets upset when people DO WHAT THEY'RE TOLD? He's serving bad food at [usually] high prices and then gets upset when someon likes the place enough to keep coming back. Brilliant.

Hey, I know some people from Homa. I'll give them a ring. Or forget about it, I'm too lazy.

277?! Really? This is where I make a joke about how fat he must be.

There is a point where you eat too much. I don't think they were complaining about them just getting one or two plates, these men were probably loading up on the food. Ever been to a Ryan's a dinner time? You'll see some scary crap you just won't believe... Men, women, and children all shoving disgusting buffet food down into their maw... Nasty.

I think its a bit funny all of these people saying this is ok because the customer was fat.

Image the out cry on this board if it was a cell phone company giving unlimited text messages for $x / month then turned around and changed the customers that used it the most double, without telling them ahead of time.