You know those signs in restaurants that say, "Restrooms are for paying customers only?"  They're DEAD SERIOUS.

Back in October, Patricia Barnes of Erin, Tennessee went to a restaurant called the Flood Zone and used their bathroom.  The restaurant has a sign up that says the restrooms are for customers only, and non-customers have to pay $5 to use them. 

A few days later, she got a letter from the restaurant.  Turns out they'd called the SHERIFF'S DEPARTMENT on her for violating their bathroom policy, and asked the sheriff to run her license plate.  He did.  So they tracked her down and asked for $5.

This is just coming out now, after the local NBC station heard about it and got involved.

Patricia says she feels VIOLATED that the sheriff's department gave up her info like that.  The sheriff's department says they were within their rights to look up her plate, because they were investigating it as a possible THEFT.

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