Do restaurants really make staff pay when customers do a runner?

The waiter tells a believable, if outrageous story, and the restaurant chain vehemently denies it. What is the truth?The waiter at the airport restaurant appeared relieved when I finally found him after pacing around to pay the bill last weekend. “I thought you’d done a runner,” he said. What, there are people who do runners in airports, I asked – they can’t get far, surely (I was airside). But he said it happened at least once a day, pointing to a table nearby, whe