A Little Girl Dirtied A Restaurant's Linen Napkins... So The Owner Fined Her Family €16
An Italian restaurant has come under fire for adding a €16 surcharge to a family’s bill after their little 20-month-old daughter dirtied linen napkins and the tablecloth during a meal.
The family, from Rome, went to the Baja Sardinia eatery near Arzachena, on Sardinia’s Emerald Coast, during their vacation last month.
Stunned dad Alession Desidera said everything was fine, until he was presented with the cheque.
He was outraged to find he was being asked to pay an extra €15.90 (£11.70) to cover the cost of dry-cleaning the linen.
Desidera said the charge was “totally unreasonable.”
Restaurant owner Giuseppe Di Natale has, however, defended the additional fee.
“We don’t normally charge people like this but the tablecloth and napkins are linen and the charge just covers the expense of dry-cleaning them,” The Local reports him as saying.
“It wasn’t just sauce on the table cloth - there was traces of pen too,” he added.
Desidera accepted that the linen had been soiled by his infant.
But he claimed that the waiter had actually brought her the pens that had caused the damage.
“My daughter was drawing on paper but some of it must have soaked through to the table cloth,” he added.
After reluctantly settling up, he reported the incident to police - and is also complaining to a range of consumer rights associations.
(Stock image by VISUM/REX)
