bringing dishes back after restaurant/cafe meal

In a fast food place I'd always tidy up after myself.
One thing tough I did a small bit of resteraunt work and I know of people landed messy plates on the counter it would have driven me mad. Firstly because it looks bad to customers coming in and there's already somebody else there to do it. Chances are the boss would snap the head off you of he saw the dirty plates.
I remember talking to a girl who worked in a very good hotel. She hated plate stackers because people didn't clear the plates properly or they were too heavy and when your working in a good hotel your expected to carry the plate in a certain way and if you didn't you could get given out to.
So, I wouldn't do it in a hotel!

Deleted User wrote: »

No way, fast food places are nearly charging as much as restaurants these days. I got ribs and chips in a restaurant with orange juice this week and it cost me €15, I got a meal in KFC and it cost 11



If Mconalds/KFC/Burger King etc want to charge nearly as much as a real restaurant for ****ty fast food then dont expect me to clean after myself. Granted if I get good service and the staff are polite then I will feel guilty and clean up after myself, but I very rarely get polite/good service at these places. Not that I can blame the staff I worked in these places before and hated the job.

does service not also include cleaning up after me?

No! Fast food outlets are not a service restaurant. You are paying eleven euro for a quick, crappy meal. By choice (in general, no you personally btw). Trust me, after ten hours of running from the till, to tables, to the prep area, and back fifty million times, one person acting like a human being and cleaning the mess they have made will cheer you up that little bit to keep going. They are going to clean the tables, mop the floors, change the bins, clean every window in the place, clean the bathrooms, and the whole area behind the counter (which is definitely the procedure in both KFC and McDs, not sure about others), they ARE getting paid to do that.

Honestly, the people working there aren't even getting the price of a meal per hour, and expected to do the work of two or three people. Not your problem, maybe. But if everyone had a helpful attitude towards others in general the world would be much better place.

Ok, it's not your job and there's no obligation at all. It's just nice that some people do try and help others.

I will always bring the plates/cups back in a cafe. Not necessary, but maybe it's because I have worked in food service I know that a little thing like that will cheer up someones day even a little bit, so I like to do it for others.

But in all fairness, if you go to a fast food restaurant and don't clean a tray that you have used, that's pretty bad. I don't know why anyone thinks that is ok. If you were that bothered about the prices/service/other conditions then you wouldn't go there at all.

I realise sometimes the service can be just ****ty, but the majority of people try their best. They don't want to be there any more than you do and no one chooses a job in fast food. There's nothing wrong with it, I just know from experience that it's not something anyone could stick out for a long period of time without going insane, purely because people think they have the right to treat you like crap, because you're below them in a ****ty job.

It's a bad attitude to have, period.

I just feel like I needed to get that out so, again, it isn't at you in general - the post just got me thinking. I am speaking from personal experience and aswell and know how soul destroying it can be, so I always try and have compassion for people stuck where I once was.

[Deleted User] wrote: »

What do you mean by plate stickers?
Not trolling or anything, just genuinely interested

Sorry, I meant stackers!

Yeah, I do get where you are coming from.

Deleted User wrote: »

For sure I know how bad staff get treated, I got treated like total crap when working in fast food. I truly do admire people who can stick out that job long term (I couldn't)

You and me both... I have never been as unhappy in my life as I was in fast food!

In fast food restaurants I would always clean up and get the kids to do the same (8,7 and 4) but, in actual restaurants I don't stack plates or put them anywhere, in fact I can't even think of where you would put plates etc in any of the restaurants we go to.

If we were out for a drink we would put the glasses on the bar before we leave.

In some of the McDonalds in London they have a member of staff on the floor whose job it is to go around collecting and emptying trays. I think a lot of the impetus people feel to tidy away their stuff in McDonalds comes from the fact they try and condition it into you as something that is right and proper to do. Personally I think they can f*ck off, as someone else said above, they can hire more staff.

In a restaurant there are staff for that, so I'd just do stuff like put the cutlery on the plates or put used napkins on plates.

In a cafe, I might bring the cups up to the counter if nobody had come to take them as we were leaving.

In a fast food place, just put all the stuff on the tray and dump it in the bin. Use a napkin to tidy up any spilled sauce or whatever.

Leaving the tray and wrapping and stuff on the table and just walking out is a w@nker thing to do.

I worked in restaurants for years.
If nothing else I appreciate the good will, and if a customer leaves feeling like they've "done a good deed" then result, you want happy customers.

But as the question was asked...whether they're actually helping is another matter... (It's really hit-or-miss)

You can't really expect a customer to understand what systems are in place, so although "helping" may be helpful, it often isn't and a "do nothing" approach is usually best.
Just don't make an unholy mess of the table/floor and the worker will be happy.

For instance, you probably got a baffled look when bringing plates etc. to the counter because that's where the clean stuff goes, not the dirty stuff. The server has to take them, bring then behind the counter which they really shouldn't do, but kind of has to out of politeness. Then go put them in the right place (which might cause a head-ache for the person clearing tables) and go wash their hands before getting back to serving. In total it's more work for them, and you've made them break a few food hygiene rules.

If you do bring it to the right place then this might well be useful, but it might also overload the space for person clearing/sorting dirty stuff and be a head-ache. They'll also be wondering where the hell you were sitting, in case there's a dirty table out there that where a customer might end up.

There's also other points about stacking etc. that have been mentioned and again could go either way (but you'll never be able to predict which). But this post is to long already.

Ultimately, you're going in and paying for a service which always (even in McDonalds) includes some level of table service. just go with it, there's no need to feel guilty

I don't clean up after myself at home, so I'm not going to do it in public either.

If the place is busy they'll likely have someone cleaning anyway. Making the employees work harder cleaning up my crap is going to put the pressure on them to find a better job. So really, I'm doing them a favour.


I'd leave back my glass in a quiet bar if I'm not sitting at the bar.

In a fast food place I would, usually mean binning everything and placing a tray on top.

But cafe's and the like usually don't have anything such area to drop stuff off, so I don't as where every I put it isn't any more convenient than the table.

NiallBoo wrote: »

What if they're happy?

Well then they need some misery in their lives. I want my fast food restaurant servers to have that fake smile that almost begs you not to be a complete **** to them because they're at breaking point.

I don't really see how anyone can do front line sales without going completely mad.