I was at a restaurant a while back and looked over at the hostess' iPad. It had my Twitter avatar on it. I never told them my Twitter handle, but it is associated with the email I used. Do public musings count as telling someone something?

Maybe the next restaurant you (the personal you) go to will look up your email address, find this post and just serve you food.

The defense is that it's to make the experience better, the reaction is that it won't...

I didn't say I don't want them to read them. I said I don't want them to provide me evidence that they read them.

I saw you enter your apartment, it's public information. But I bet you'd feel pretty unsafe hearing that.

Hint: It starts with an N and rhymes with arsonist.

It's a strategy chosen over others and in many cases it works, in others, not so much.

Aside from telling the host that you're celebrating your birthday or an anniversary when you make the reservation and getting a special dessert for the occasion, have you ever been at a restaurant where such dots were collected, connected and acted upon?

I haven't, and I've been to 1 & 2 star restaurants.

Anyone in service-oriented business is or ought to be familiar with the general concepts. I have a whiteboard next to my desk with the names and ages of people's kids.

And for those worried about the creepiness of it all, privacy and discretion are also core concepts of service/hospitality when done well.

It's so standard that it's actually part of the training at that universally-known 0 michelin star italian travesty, the olive garden. When I worked there we called it "surprise and delight" because I'm sure if we called it collecting the dots we had to pay Danny Meyer. We were taught to observe our guests and even ask some questions in order to gather intel and then confer w the MoD in order to brainstorm ways to make the guest's visit special. We didn't have the resources to do things like the Pequod's scene from The Bear but what we could do we took great pride in doing. Our store was in the area where a soup called stellini is available. It's basically a chicken noodle soup w little pasta stars, spinach and meatballs, derived from a Pittsburgh-area specialty called wedding soup. Idk who in an olive garden in another state let slip that their large party was from Pittsburgh but the GM from that store called us and we overnighted a bunch of stellini to that restaurant (at corporate's expense, of course) just so they could have the same experience at this other store that they do at home.