My wife and I do this, but I’ve always wondered whether I’m actually helping or just creating a different kind of inconvenience by not organizing them in a beneficial way.
It’s helpful! But don’t put trash inside the cups - this can be annoying to empty
you want me to work for you, pay for everything, and tip you?
you do you, but if im just chilling talking after i eat, it feels like nothing to me - just something to do with my hands that doesnt feel like work at all and is massively helpful to someone
I do the clean up thing just because I don’t like having a bunch of shit in front of me all spread out. I think it’s years of having to clean up my stations and desks so I can actually function so it’s just habitual. We should be taking into consideration that this might not be helpful at all to the worker if these other comments are to be believed.
At a time when the tipping options are 18%, 20% or 25%.
It’s fun to have a friend who’s been a waiter for 30 years, he just openly narrates the service and how good/bad they’re doing (usually “look at how hard they have to scramble because you assholes came in late”)
If they’re accepting new tables, you’re not late. They can change the time they stop taking tables.
We have a group that can be a dozen people easily, but sometimes it’s like a clown car of people wandering in after we sit down, so they have to drag more tables and more tables in, reorder the tickets, etc. Last time 16.
That’s still acceptable, but you should tip very well for accommodating a group like that if it’s close to closing.
I stack the plates to make room when boxing up food. It gets stacked in the way I would want to carry with the largest and cleanest ln bottom for stability and forks/utentils on top. Don’t generally do more than 3 plates in a stack because they might want to rearrange.
This and the shopping cart thing share the theme of consuming with less cost to the business owner, but with no actual difference (or making it worse) for the employees. Their boss will use all of their time no matter how much work they do. You aren’t saving them work; you’re saving the boss’ money.
If you decline to go into a business near closing, then you’re my kind of people. If you tip highly you’re my kind of people. If you order clearly, concisely, and politely you’re my kind of people.
But while you’re pushing Sisyphus’ boulder up the hill, he just has to go find another boulder.
So if the carts stack up outside, the cart guy has to go outside in the rain, slush, whatever. If they don’t, he can stay inside for longer.
It gives him more time to dick around doing nothing.
Waiters also get some waiting around time. If they don’t, they have to run everywhere. Why wouldn’t you want them to have more breathing room?
That’s assuming the boss won’t give the employees shit for not able to finish enough work in a day.
Anecdotally that was my experience when I worked at a restaurant and later a grocery store. They had no idea how much total work there was; they’d just keep us working.
You just failed the test
I just lost the game!
The definition of bigotry is someone who’s behavior is a function of what they know about you. If people change their behavior to treat me better or worse because they learn (for example) that I’m gay then I don’t want them at all.
Ok… so someone finds out you’re gay. Figures to themselves you’re probably having it hard, with all the LGBTQ+ hate thats going around, and are making sure to treat you nicer because of it -> bigots.
and are making sure to treat you nicer because of it
That’s a bad thing
If I could trust that this is the reason behind a person’s behavior then we wouldn’t be having this conversation. But there are so many potentially malicious reasons to be extra sugary sweet to someone different. Plus it’s infantalizing to be “treated nicer” like I’m not a kid. I don’t want everyone to change their tone I just want to participate and have fun. If political issues were bothering me then I’d go to a political group that centers my lgbt-ness, that’s my choice
Not the guy you’re responding to, but…
maybe let some things slide that would irk them otherwise
As a non-straight person, I don’t want yesmen either. If I’m being an idiot, I want my friends to tell me nicely that I’m doing the stupid, I don’t want them to ignore it because “oh she’s gay, I don’t want to hurt her feelings”.
No it’s not.
From the Oxford dictionary:
obstinate or unreasonable attachment to a belief, opinion, or faction, in particular prejudice against a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular group.
From the Collins dictionary:
Bigotry is the possession or expression of strong, unreasonable prejudices or opinions.
From vocabulary.com:
A bigot is someone who doesn’t tolerate people of different backgrounds or opinions. Someone who tells a racist joke might be labeled a bigot. A bigot can also be someone who refuses to accept other ideas, as in politics.
My dad gets legitimately angry when I do this. Boomers are a different breed
My dad gets legitimately angry when I do this
I think it has to do with “putting the waiters out of their job”. Like, when you do a part of the job for them consistently, the restaurant manager will eventually notice that and realize they can do with a little bit less staff. So they hire fewer waiters, which means potential waiters face a tougher job market.
And for anybody saying “that little bit of support can’t make the difference between more and less staff”, yes, it can. Consider that a restaurant manager might have already decided to fire a waiter that’s a bit less performant (because they struggle to keep up) but decided to keep them anyways, just in case. Now they see that people do a part of the work, and that might just give them the idea that maybe, they could do with fewer waiters, and there’s that one lazy guy who can’t keep up anyway …
I don’t think it’s an age thing, more of an empathy test. I’ve been a dishwasher, maybe that’s why I tidy up.
I’ve owned a restaurant, and once you’ve done that, you’ve been the dishwasher, janitor, toilet plunger, punching bag, robbery victim, etc.
After all that, you tend to lose that sense that some jobs are below you. You just see it as work that has to be done, and you’re standing there, so it might as well be you, so get it done.
That’s bizarre to me.
edit: you just unlocked a memory of my mum bollocking me as a kid for doing it. It’s so bizarre why?
Too many people see life as a zero-sum game with a one-dimensional ranking. To them, success is defined as the number of people of people you’re better than. Worse, many people go by pass/fail,as in “they’re one of the good ones” (popular with bigots everywhere)
Yeah, my boomer uncle told me it was low class after he watched me do it. When I was a waitress at the time. Fuck him and that mentality - I do it to this day and make into 6 figures
Just wanted to put in a counter for what a lot of people are saying in here, if you’re looking for a “perfect-clone friend” right out the gate then prepared to be lonely as your tests fail… not because they’re horrible people, but because they’re a different person with different experiences.
The person litters (like @tiramichu@sh.itjust.works suggested)? Probably see’s their entire family litter constantly and never gets comments or maybe even once got reprimanded for saying not to litter to an elder. Just ask them not to when they’re in your vehicle, take into account their reaction and maybe have a conversation about it? (personal experience, just let me friend know it was lame and he stopped doing it. But now his vehicle is a roaming trashcan so I guess take what you can get)
You can be friends with people who are different or were raised differently than you, it’s actually super beneficial! Now if it’s a constant argument or it’s turned into a negative experience every time and communication isn’t working… it might be useful to move on for everyone’s sake at that point.
This comment section is a nice mix of “I’m a waiter, please don’t do this, you’re making my job harder” and “I always do this to make the waiters’ lives easier”
Checking in at 23 hours - I count one comment to this effect, but even there the caveat is ‘but only if you do it wrong’
My ex wife always refused to put her shit in the bin at McD’s on the basis that someone was paid to do it.
No. Someone was paid to wipe the table down, not pick up your shit.
Nice job getting away from that.
That was the sole reason given for the divorce.
No they are paid to keep it all clean, including throwing it way :p
Still ill mannered tho
If that’s the case, then why make the bins available for the public to use?
For good mannered people xD
You’d fail my test if I learn you have tests for people.
Maybe it’s just a matter of phrasing, but the idea that I could be kind to our server all night, tip well, generally hit it out of the park, but be disproportionately judged for failing to do this one small thing because it’s your personal test? Sets my social anxiety off enough that if I knew that were on your mind I’d probably just say we’re not compatible.
Obviously, keep an eye out for shitty people, and don’t put up with bad behaviour, but also judge people as people, wholistically.
It says the word ‘test’ in the post title, but if it helps I don’t think you need to take it so literally.
This isn’t necessarily “setting up” specific situations for people, but more like how people respond in normal everyday situations which you might consider to be either red flag or green flag behaviour.
For me, an example is littering. I’m not so sociopathic that I’d create some trash just to test someone, but if trash happens and they throw it on the ground, it’s a bad personality indicator.
Yeah, what you’re saying makes sense. I like “bad personality indicator” as an alternative, since it conveys to me it’s one of many indicators you might process, maybe not even consciously. I’ve just had rather negative experiences being “tested” and hearing that world applied to any kind of casual social interaction gets my hackles all the way up.
My family would get upset if you did that or if the server came by and offered to take the empty plate away. Why yes one of them is named karen. How did you guess?
If it’s a self service place, I tend to look around if there is a place to keep the dishes (kinda like SubWay has).
Otherwise, I don’t stack. Waiters can have different ways of taking the dishes and those ways are usually based on all the dishes being random-access. I’d rather do nothing, than stack it the wrong way.What do you do with your shopping cart when you are done? Do you just leave it to fend for itself in the sea of the parking lot? Or do you do the right thing and bring it back inside or to the cart corral.
The REAL REAL sign though? When someone brings a cart from the parking lot into the store to shop with, ultra move.
This has to be in the top 5 most US things.
I like to stay in the chaotic neutral category. I get my cart from the parking lot, but return it exactly where i found it. Even if it was in the middle of the lot. 😝
When I was a server I hated when people stacked their own plates. First off, I found it performative. Secondly it messed with my system. Thirdly it usually produced a 20lb pile of dishes covered in queso, half eaten burritos, and guacamole that was impossible to carry.
Yeah man. I don’t stack anything, not because I don’t want to help, but I don’t want to mess with your system. Waiting isn’t as easy as it seems and I absolutely have no idea how to do it, so I don’t want to interfere. I prefer to sit awkwardly and pretend that me leaning back as much as I can to make more space is equally helpful.
This. Heard the same from a waiter friend a while back. Since then, I do nutsack
Nutsack is preferable.
Huh, me mum was a waitress at one point and taught me to stack for politeness, I didn’t realize it was a preference thing. Now I’m not sure what to do.
I’ll still keep ordering the queso though, that shit’s delicious.
offer them the plates so they don’t have to reach or move around the table and help them stack them when they’re there… pause your conversations and ensure they spend as little time sorting your dishes as possible, and then both they can get back to what they’re doing and you can continue your conversations in private
especially true when there are plates, bowls, and cups of all shapes
exception being it’s okay to pile cutlery on a single plate because that’s always going on the top and if not it’s easy to tip off all at once to restack
But people who put napkins in cups can go to hell, and that includes servers.
Sincerely,
Dish
P.S. Scrape your damn plates servers.
bussed tables for years; what are you doing clearing tables as a server?
I liked it when people stacked their shit up, it shaves a few seconds off me doing it before I dumped it in a tub.
As far as food issues - well yeah if they’re some kids acting like cretins pouring shit all over that’s a problem but what’s that got fuck all to do with the stack?
I find your hate performative to be honest.
Okay, fair enough. How about putting eventual food, that has not been eaten, on the top plate (and in general making sure the plate is not completely dirty)
