The Dishes are Not TO GO

This is one of the more bizarre things that I have observed at buffets and it has happened several times in the past few months at different buffets. People are taking the dishes out the door.

I want to make a new buffet rule out of this but it is so absurd that it would be just to weird to include. People are actually taking plates of food with them when they leave in the plates. Now, this is wrong on two counts:

1. You are not supposed to take food out when you leave.
and
2. The plates are supposed to remain in the restaurant.

I am not talking about foam or disposable plates. I am talking about china dishes - plates and bowls. I have also seen drinking glasses go out the door. It is so bizarre. The first time that I saw this someone had a plate full of ice cream. They took it to their table from the dessert bar, put on their coat, and with their family walked out the door to leave while holding the plate and eating the ice cream - oh yes, the silverware has accompanied the dishes too. This is a new twist on "take out".

Another time I watched a full glass of soda travel out the door openly in someone's hand. And the topper was a plate of food - out the door. What are people thinking? Never would it occur to any rational person that the china plates and bowls, drinking glasses, and silverware are meant to be taken out of the restaurant. Are people so acclimated to fast food that they think that like the paper wrapper around the cheeseburger from McDonald's, the dinnerware at the buffet is there to go out too? There is no reasonable explanation.

And this results in higher prices for the rest of us. The restaurant expects a certain amount of breakage but for the dinnerware to be carried out the door?

This is a strange world - and it is getting stranger every day!