[wideawake]

To summarize: the restaurant manager should ignore a career's worth of lived experience in the business and just take this random individual's word for it.

I'm not sold on that argument.

Effectively you're arguing that the restaurant manager should not be given the benefit of the doubt for knowing his own business, but that the walletless diner should be given the benefit of the doubt.

I'm not sure why the choice of the diner over the restauranteur is inherently more compelling.

[Romulus]

To summarize: the restaurant manager should ignore a career's worth of lived experience in the business and just take this random individual's word for it.

All the evidence indicates just this. Everyone would have been better off if he had.