DEAR ABBY: I was recently in the bakery section of our neighborhood grocery store. A woman came rushing in carrying a cake that had been at least three-fourths eaten and made a scene, saying the cake was terrible and demanding that she be given a new one. To stop the scene, the store manager gave her a new one, even though she had managed to eat most of the "terrible" cake.
The next night, my husband and I went to dinner at a nice steak house. The couple sitting next to us ate almost their entire dinner before complaining to the manager that the steaks were awful and demanding their meals for free.
Has this become acceptable? If something is wrong with the food, shouldn't management be told after the first bite? It looks to me like these people are looking for a free ride. -- OFFENDED IN KANSAS
DEAR OFFENDED: It certainly appears that way. The most effective way to demonstrate that an item of food is inedible is to not eat it. In situations like this, the restaurant manager will sometimes offer as an accommodation a free dessert rather than write off the entire meal. As to what happened at the grocery, if the complainer was a good customer, then what the manager did was a wise public relations gesture.