Maybe you can't substantiate it - have you tried moving a student with a business back home?  or, for that matter, from home to college?  In every case, I've had to have them visit the businell first, and the message they get is different from the message they get if they've already checked in.

Did he tell the manager to "mind the store" before he left?

This reminds me of a guy on MTS2, I think it was, who said he couldn't understand why in the Sims 2, they had their post box on a pole in front of their house.  He had never seen that before and he said whoever puts their post box on a pole in front of their house?  You're supposed to have a slot in the front door for letters.  Well, it turned out that he wasn't from the US, and I kind of wondered since he called it a post box and not a mail box.  After several people pointed out that having a mail box on a post in front of the house near the street was common in rural areas of the US, he said he was from the UK, where they usually have mail slots in the front door.  It just shows that people are often quick to criticize things they aren't familiar with and forget that people do things differently in different parts of the world or even different parts of the same country.  Doesn't mean one way is right and the others are wrong.

I don't think you needed the fire alarm alone, you needed the extinguisher!