When I lived in San Francisco, self-bussing was the norm. Here in Sacramento even the cafe wait staff look at me like I am crazy, unless I’m in a coffee franchise like Starbucks or Peets.
you want me to work for you, pay for everything, and tip you?
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
My boomer mother did this. My boomer father was indifferent.
I do this.
For the record, the only things that get stacked are things that are perfectly stackable, I don’t put a plate on top of a half-eaten cheese steak or leave utensils in the middle.
My dad gets legitimately angry when I do this. Boomers are a different breed
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
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.
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)
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?
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’
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.
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.
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?
You just failed the test
I just lost the game!
I may tidy up. But I don’t stack. I won’t even stack at my house, I hate touching the dirty bottom of a plate.
the server and busser will 100% stack them and grab them by the edges of the plates to keep their hands clean, plates generally arent 100% level surfaces and fully covered in gravy so the issue youre imagining doesnt exist
I don’t understand this. At all. Do you let them seat you at a dirty table? Do you think they don’t wash the bottom of the plate? Are you and everyone you eat with flinging food everywhere and somehow getting food on the bottom of plates from the clean table? Please explain it to me.
When one dirty plate go on top of other dirty plate, bottom of plate get dirty too. OP no like making bottom of plate dirty, so no stack plate.
Except once you’ve stacked it, you don’t have to touch it again because you’re just being nice and not the busser so it still doesn’t make sense. The only people obligated to touch the bottom of the plate after it’s stacked are being paid to do so.
OP have empathy and assume other people not like touch dirty plate bottom, even if get paid for it, so goes out of way to not make plate bottom dirty
As a former waiter, I have a counterpoint:
- I can’t carry that wobbly precarious mess you’ve made, and it’s easier to disassemble and reassemble it because I know how to do this.
Thus, you’ve created work for me.
Thankfully I haven’t been a waiter in - oh look! - 30 years.
I’m a former chef, so I’ve seen what happens when these best intentions go poorly.
Stack neatly and in manageable heights. If you leave utensils and food between the plates: you’re not helping. Scrape remnants on to one plate and leave it at the top of the stack with the utensils.
Also, tip well. At least until we get the radical changes in labor law that would prevent these ratfucking cokehead “Chef”-Owners from paying the dirt wages that makes people live and die by their tips.
Well luckily for you I have restaurant industry experience, so I already know how to stack them the right way.
Yep instead I pass things out of reach, look the waiter in the eyes, comment on how hard they’re working and chat to them. Just treat them like they’re human
I almost never had a table stack their stuff the way I wanted. Just make sure your spot is tidy, easy to grab, and there are no surprises like silverware or a tiny dish wrapped inside a napkin. Definitely don’t stick a paper napkin inside your cup that still has a drink in it. By the time it gets back to the dish station it will have turned into a paste someone has to dig out and will be cursing you!
But I put the cutlery up top, so it’s not wobbly at all.
Wait do people really just stack them with all the cutlery scattered throughout the tower?
Yes they do. Some people are that stupid.
My wife used to wait tables and we generally eat or box everything, so I’m pretty confident she’s right to pre-bus (and even wipe the table a little while waiting for check).
My only personal analogy is bagging groceries; self service shows how typical people have no idea, while an experienced bagger does. I saw a guy literally put eggs in the bottom of their bag. I can’t imagine how terrible their pre-bussing must be.
Plus if you hand me a messy stack, I now have to leave the table with it. If I can arrange food waste and cutlery on my own, I can carry way more
I always prebus. If i don’t know how to stack funny dishes then I leave them in small piles by type with cuttery on the top of what makes sense.
Takes less than 5 seconds for a stack / pickup with a nod to the busser.
Yeah, I originally thought I was being nice until I heard this exact sentiment from another server. I try not to make a ridiculous mess and tip at least 20% for good service
As long as you don’t overstack it. Make a tidy stack that can be carried easily with one hand securely. If you eg put utensils between plates you can cause an accident.
And if there’s any big food waste like bones, put them all in the top plate
My test is mostly how do they treat my visibly disabled husband. Who also is older than me and looks it. I don’t like being treated like I’m his nurse. I understand why they might think daughter so I’m ambivalent towards that. A lot of people are short and snippy with him because he’s harder to understand and that gets me upset.
I usually have a pack of gum and I deliberately start a pattern on how I take pieces out. Usually it’s from left to right, emptying a full row before I move on to the next.
My test is to offer them gum and see where they pick from. Will they recognize a pattern and continue it? Or will they be oblivious?
Either way, it’s not a measure of good or bad. It’s just a fun lil test.
Sometimes I just take a bite out of the entire kit kat bar without breaking it up.
If you leave your cart in a parking space, you’re sub-human
You’re passible if you take it to the corral
But a truly good human will stack the carts into proper rows if the carts are loose in the corral
I do have some caveats for this. As my parents both park in handicap, we’ve noticed that the cart corrals are super far from the handicap spots and I won’t blame someone who already has trouble walking half way down the parking aisle to a corral.
I do tend to take the random carts from the parking lot in to use for shopping when I see them though. No reason to take one of the ones already brought back.
I firmly believe in the validity of the Shopping Cart Test. On a related and depressing note, my little city is overrun with errant shopping carts.
I have a clip from my dashcam floating around somewhere of me stopping, jumping out of my car, then hauling ass to catch someone’s runaway cart moments before it hit a parked car. Honestly one of my proudest moments.
On the opposite end, I once left a cart (on a curb) and it haunted me. To be fair, it was absolutely storming outside and I was chilled to the bone and just wanted to warm up…
- I used to work at a supermarket and preferred returning carts to other tasks, and got paid hourly. When someone returns the cart, they’re doing that hourly work for the store owner for free. Since time is rival, you could be more effective with your altruism than helping store owners.
- You’re depressed because there’s so much homelessness, right?
I push products to the shop floor because some people prefer stacking the shelves to their other work. I’m an altruistic job creator. You’re welcome
Isn’t that just the parable of the broken window? Somebody ultimately needs to clean the dishes and return the cart - they’re not wasted time.
I’m even more altruistic than the lazy shits not wanting to put the cart back since I don’t just not do something, I’m actively doing it to benefit their day.
It’s not benefiting or harming them either way. Their day is spent and their odds of getting paid are the same.
I’m creating more work for them, if everyone just trashed the stores they’d go in we’d have more people working at the stores. I’m a job creator
Apparently I’m a truly good human because my organizational autism trait gets triggered. I’m not even annoyed fixing them. It’s just satisfying to see them in order.
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.
