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The debate this column fueled last week concerning the standard baseline tip isn't the sort of thing most servers spend much time considering: We'd all like our patrons to leave us lots and lots of money, thanks.
But that doesn't mean there aren't service issues upon which front-of-the-housers may never agree. I'm thinking here of doggie bagging, a practice that I've seen pit close friends against one another. The contentious question is who does the boxing.
At the white tablecloth restaurants where I've worked, it's understood that the task of wrapping a guest's half-eaten food in foil – ideally sculpted into a graceful swan – falls to the server (although since foie gras and lobster tail make for notoriously bad leftovers, many diners opt to have the vestiges of their five-star meals scraped straight into the trash.)
That's not always the case at slightly more casual restaurants, where many servers routinely plop Styrofoam boxes onto their guests' tables. As a veteran of fancy dining rooms, I always figured those servers were lazy. Turns out, they're looking out for their guests' interests.
Really? Because I can assure you that a server's hands haven't been in nearly as many suspect places as the hands belonging to the cook who patted your steak with salt and squeezed it to check its doneness. Yet many guests apparently feel a little proprietary about the food that lands on their table, and are no more thrilled by the prospect of a server neatly packaging "their" meal in a box than they'd be if a stranger opened their refrigerator and dipped a finger in the mayo.
What do you think? Do you prefer when the server whisks your food away and returns it in a box? Or would you rather handle the messy job yourself?
| The server. | |
|---|---|
| The customer. |
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9-08-2009 @12:03PM amanda said... I never had a problem with a server packing food for me until my server at an otherwise fantastic Chicago restaurant (Uncommon Ground) gave me my remaining half of a hamburger without the veritable mountain of sweet potato fries that were also untouched on my plate.
It was a truly disappointing moment when I opened up the container for lunch the following day and found that half the meal was missing. If you've ever seen the John Cusack movie "Better Off Dead", I felt like the newspaper delivery boy who followed him around demanding his two dollars. It still boggles my mind that a server would do that.
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9-08-2009 @12:27PM MM said... It's not a matter of not trusting the servers hands, but more about deciding what to keep and what can be left behind, a decision no one is more qualified to make than the one who'll be eating it the next day.
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9-08-2009 @12:28PM emily said... As a server AND a customer often, I really prefer to box my own food. As a server I always offer to box my guests food, but I will not argue if they want to do it. As a customer, I realize many servers will simply scrape everything together and I am very specific about things being separated. I always insist on boxing things myself. I also don't like it when my food is taken away from my table to be packaged - who knows what is going on in the kitchen - I have seen plenty of servers not handle this well - once someone threw away a to go box accidentally and dug it up out of the trash.
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9-08-2009 @2:57PM dr.ellen said... I don't have a problem boxing my own leftovers. I always thought the servers did this for their own protection. 10+ years ago a server at my favorite italian restaurant was boxing my leftovers and somehow they ended up on the floor. Against my protests, the manager made her box an entire new meal for me and (though I can't be sure)I was very concerned that this was taken out of her pay. I have been very happy to put my own leftovers away ever since.
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9-08-2009 @3:23PM A_Str8 said... After I spent some time working in restaurants, I decided that I would always box my own food. Yes, the cook's hands/habits can be just as diry or even dirtier than the servers, but at least the kitchen staff useually has cleanliness guidelines.
When servers are boxing meals, it's more like anything goes. Servers might use their hands on your food, they might drop your food, I've seen other people reach in and grab food to eat, etc.
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9-11-2009 @5:34PM Sarah said... I prefer to box my own. I am picky about what I might want to take home - for example, say the vegetables were not cooked enough or tasteless - I'd leave those behind.
And like others mentioned sometimes your box comes back missing whole parts of the meal! Or worse, everything dumped in a big pile :-(
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