You mean like the people who advertise something and then kick people out for doing just that?
Let's get something straight. Society doesn't offer restaurants. Restaurant owners or franchisees (business people) offer restaurants, so they can make money.
Let me repeat that--
The reason I go to a restaurant is to get something to eat. If it looks like adequate fare, reasonably well prepared, in surroundings which give me reason to believe I will not contract a disease from eating there, and the price is right, we strike a deal. Offer to sell me a 16 oz. prime rib with the trimmings and come back with a cheezeburger and we're going to have a problem.
You see, the only contract is when the person there accepts the offer of food for a price.
If the offer is "all you can eat", the semantics generally are accepted to mean all you wish to consume on the premises in a single sitting. Fair enough.
No cheating, no filling up a doggy bag at the buffet and eating for a week, just what you can consume. No binge and purge, keep it down.
All understood.
But when the offer is to feed me all I can eat, that limit should be decided by me, after all, it is all I can eat, not the average person, the average anorexic, nor am I under any obligation to help the restaurant owner profit--that is between them and their business model.
Not "society", it is a business deal, not a social contract.
I live in North Dakota, which is fairly far off the beaten path, loathe cities, and don't even like crowds. I conduct business with a handshake and have an impeccable reputation in that regard. Again, If you don't want to stick with the deal you offered, don't offer it.
If someone is being genuinely disruptive, excessively profane, etc., that is another issue to be dealt with, and cause for removal from the premises. Simply eating "too much"? No.
They didn’t kick them out for “doing just that” they kicked them out for being rude and lowering the value of the restaurant for other customers.
Hey you finally said something right. Yes, restaurants exist to make money. And when you have customers that not only eat more than they spend but ALSO engage in behavior which discourages other customers these guys are inhibiting your ability to make money. So out they go.
But then you go wrong. The generally accepted semantics of “all you can eat” include “within reason, and without inhibiting other patrons ability to do the same”. 5 bowls a visit really isn’t within reason, and regularly emptying serving trays before other patrons get a chance to sample from them inhibits other patrons.
No both you and the restaurant get to decide. Because, as you said, they exist to make money, and if leaving the decision all up to you costs them money we’re now going against the very reason the place exists.
It IS society, it IS a social contract. In a society we understand that businesses exist to make money and if our patronage costs them money they can decide they don’t want it anymore. That’s part of the social contract of living in a capitalist society, the knowledge that all these business deals are voluntary in BOTH directions.
They WERE being generally disruptive. Read the article. It wasn’t just about them eating too much, they also felt the need to race other patrons to new food and take it all before anybody else got some. They broke social contracts, both with the restaurant AND with other patrons. So now they’re banned, that’s how society deals with people that aren’t potty trained, we kick them out.