If one's goal is business/life proficiency, maybe. The poster who raised the issue appeared to be a casual visitor (which is completely fair, imagine having to achieve fluency before taking a holiday) - at that stage it's better to make a "close enough" approximation of toilet/menu/fork etc. that gets the point across, than be paralyzed by fear over tones/grammar/mispronunciations/what have you or to give up out of frustration.

In any case, it is not that long ago that plenty of (older) Chinese people who grew up in dialect regions have/had a full career despite questionable Mandarin pronunciation. I really don't see why foreigners would be held to an even higher standard for mixing up a tone here and there - outside of egregious cases it is perfectly understandable in context.