Picture it: it's 8pm on a Friday in a restaurant, in your home town. THE WORM TURNSThere's a table for six booked for you. Five other parties wanted the table but were told no, because the table was being kept for you. At 8.30pm your table is still empty. The restaurant calls you, pretty much knowing that you won't pick up. You are the third no-show group of the evening. That's 12 seats not filled; seats for which there was a waiting list (it's too late to call the other parties, they've made new plans), and which in a 60-seater, represent 20% of the night's potential turnover. The difference perhaps between profit and loss for the evening.In restaurants which take bookings, this ratio is not unusual. Little wonder that chefs, restaurant owners and waiters hate no-showers with a pathological, ungodly intensity.Everyone understands that things can go wrong, but restaurants know that for every person who suddenly went into premature labour en route to dinner, there are a hundred others who just made another plan. So uncool. Would you expect an airline to keep seats for you on the off-chance that you'll deign to arrive? A cinema? A theatre? I think not. But the worm is turning, and the industry is starting to bite back.It's becoming ever more popular for restaurants to ''review" (aka name and shame) customers who don't pitch up, online. I am biased, having experienced the no-show syndrome too many times to count, but I think this is quite splendid.A more impersonal rating and vetting system is having a better effect, and is being employed in many parts of the world, in ways similar to the Uber taxi customer reviews. The Sydney-based central restaurant reservation system Dimmi allows any of its 2500 member restaurants to inform the others about you, and with this information has banned more than 3000 people from booking at restaurants because of previous no-shows.The Dimmi service isn't just about punishment. Dimmi allows participating restaurants to track and rate customers' dining style, food allergies, birthdays and so on. This helps diners too, if they're generally decent people. But the main boon is that low-life, bottom-feeding no-show types will start finding it difficult to get a table and - who knows - might get in the habit of honouring their bookings.Local services such as Dineplan are starting to help restaurants record no-shows, but a local pooled ''black book" I haven't yet found. With the horrifying rate of no-shows locally, it must surely only be a matter of time. Time to shape up or get used to the idea of McDonald's for your anniversary dinner, no-show people...