There's a small Greek hole-in-the-wall takeout place just off main street in Santa Barbara. It's not a very comfortable place. I'm six foot three, and I had to stretch to communicate with the purveyor over the very tall counter. How do shorter people do it?

Right in plain sight when you walk in the door is a big sign reading "We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone." What's the point of this sign? To remind your customers that they should behave? I understand that the place is just around the corner from a big stretch of bars, and it probably gets pretty rowdy in there on Friday and Saturday nights.

But let's say for every three hundred people that enter the place to get food, one of them is going to be a rambunctious drunk and cause trouble. Is this sign going to have any effect in preventing them from being loud and obnoxious? And when they do act up, does the sign help in getting them to shut up? (Purveyor: "Hey, hey, hey!" [points to sign])

Of course you have the right to refuse me service if I act out of line in your establishment. That's an implicit fact at just about every business open to the public. But posting a sign does little more than make the other 299 people who aren't misbehaving feel like children.