Fed2 Star - the newsletter for the space trading game Federation 2

The weekly newsletter for Fed2
by ibgames

EARTHDATE: October 14, 2012

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REAL LIFE NEWS: WHEN ALL YOU CAN EAT DOESN’T REALLY MEAN ALL

by Hazed

Speaking of smartphones with cellular data plans leads me to consider the thorny issue of caps on “unlimited” broadband deals. In the UK, many ISPs who have gained customers by offering an all-you-can-download option are now having to impose limits, to prevent the downloading of massive HD movies from clogging up the pipes.

Of course, this problem isn’t just applicable to the digital world. Restaurants who offer all-you-can-eat buffets has always been at risk from people undertaking monstrous pig-outs. Usually it’s just considered a cost of doing business, and so long as the greedy-guts only visit occasionally the losses caused by their appetites can be swallowed up (so to speak) by the profits from all the more reasonable customers.

But sometimes customers take advantage - like a couple of frequent visitors to a Mongolian barbecue restaurant in Brighton, on England’s south coast. For two years, a couple of 26-year-olds visited Gobi’s restaurant every couple of weeks to partake of their “repeat as many times as you wish” offer for a set price of just £12, but finally the restaurant owner decided enough was enough.

He claimed that George Dalmon and Andy Miles only ever drank water, never left a tip, and ate more than their fair share - so he banned them from the restaurant. He said, “They spoil everything. We are supposed to be a buffet, but they eat everything out of the bowls before people can get there. We just can’t keep doing this. We are not a charity. We are a business. It’s our restaurant and we can tell people not to come back if we don’t want them to.”

Maybe he should amend the wording of the offer to “all you can eat... within reason!”

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-sussex-19817457

For a fictional take on this situation: http://simpsons.wikia.com/wiki/The_Frying_Dutchman

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