My gf went to the Pirate game last night as a work-sponsored event. This morning I asked her about her trash. Turns out they were in a private box area with its own bar, so my question was moot. I asked her who won, and she happily told me we had a home run, but she wasn’t 100% certain who won, only that the Penquins had lost (they were watching the Pen’s game on someone’s device).
That story makes me think of this great Miller commercial from a couple years ago: Miller HIgh Life Commercial Skybox - YouTube
I’ve only “enjoyed” a skybox a couple times, but in each case it was a fine way to have all the hassle of parking and downtown traffic without actually experiencing a baseball game.
You are not supposed to stack your plates for bussing at a sit-down restaurant. It’s not polite and sends a bad message to the staff. Do you see people (other than your wife) doing this? I didn’t think so.
Also, I’ve had decades of experience with the restaurant industry and I’ve never seen a server or busser gathering dirty silverware in a glass.
It’s just not done. Doing this makes the establishment look like they can’t get around to cleaning tables.
I need to take you out to eat around here, then. As I said, I’ve done this for a long time at multiple restaurants, and the waitstaff are all very appreciative. Now, maybe they all meet at the bar after work and make fun of me and complain, but in person they thank me for helping them.
I think it depends on the type of sit-down restaurant. I suspect if you’re eating at a high-end restaurant, perhaps one with three Michelin stars, they will not expect you to stack the plates but at a more casual restaurant (Olive Garden, for example), they might appreciate it.
Yeah, if there are chargers on the table, I’m not stacking plates and such. I’m talking about family-owned restaurants, or mid-level chains like Olive Garden.
For the life of me, I can’t understand how anyone could argue in favor of throwing one’s trash on the floor or the ground and just leaving it there. I can believe people would do it – because obviously they do – but how can you argue that throwing trash on the floor is the right thing to do? Pick up after yourselves, people!
I positively, absolutely never litter. This is something I am fanatical about.
I toss it myself, always. If I got a water bottle and their is no recycling bin, I generally take it home to recycle
When camping or hiking I always taught my kids to carry out one bag of trash that was not theirs. I have slacked off on that since but do clean up my immediate area better than what it was when I arrived.
In my case as a kid I was was told that that is just what you did when you go to a baseball game: you leave you garbage neatly under your seat for them to sweep away. It was what everyone did.
Just WHO told you that? You carry it in (from the concession stand, your car, or wherever), you should take it out. I’ve spent a lot of time cleaning up venues and I never advised anyone who asked that they should just throw their trash down and leave it for me. And I certainly didn’t care how “neatly” they left it under their seats. A half-full open container of beer or soda was several extra steps for me and could be a big mess.
I don’t care how people try to justify this type of behavior. It is inconsiderate and discourteous to both other patrons and the people who have to clean up. If everyone took out their trash and containers, we wouldn’t need to have a clean-up crew at all.
That’s what I think too, but you could see it as not littering. Littering would be randomly leaving trash where it shouldn’t be, but there’s a precedent set that leaving trash in a venue is where it should be.
I say this because one time my friend, who is the most law-abiding straight-laced careful person said she leaves it there because it creates jobs for the people who come in and clean. I’m still not able to do it but the fact that someone so responsible had an argument for it did turn my head a little.
This is the most arm-bending argument I can imagine. To be consistent, we need to make sure to throw litter around public parks (so we can keep the city’s municipal workers employed), trash up the rest stops on the interstate (so we ensure full employment for state highway department workers), and leave our garbage in national parks (to help keep the park rangers on their toes).
Your friend may be law-abiding and straight-laced, but she is a jerk. She was not raised right. I don’t care how “responsible” she is, she is totally wrong.
This is my last post on this subject, as I’m depressed and ready to give up on other people actually exhibiting care and consideration.
If I Carry in, I Carry out. I practice what I preach & I don’t give a damn who wants to bitch about it.
I stack dirty plates in restaurants as if I have to wash them myself afterward.
I don’t believe that throwing money around entitles anyone to be a Pig.
Holds true for every forum on the board.
It’s amazing to me that some people actually think that movie theaters, stadiums, and other businesses open to the public hire people to do nothing but pick up the customers’ trash. :smack:
Employees have many jobs to do, and picking up after customers is just more task in an already overloaded day. As I work at the discount store, I marvel at how many customers must have struggled in Kindergarten, since they never learned to put things away where they found them, or wait their turn.
Unless you have eaten a 5-course meal at your seat, you can take you trash to whichever trash can you pass on your way out without a major hassle.
She’s not a jerk, she’s actually a wonderful caring person. And a democratic socialist 
Theaters aren’t equivalent to parks or public areas where there isn’t an expecation that people will leave their trash.
As I said, I can’t do it either*, but her perspective from someone responsible and caring made me think about the other side.
- With the exception of random dropped popcorn kernels. Do you pick all of those up too?
Have you ever worked in a theater? I have. Theaters are equivalent to parks or public areas, because the expectation is that people will put their trash in the receptacles. As already pointed out, slobs leaving trash behind do not result in more jobs for people, they only result in more work for people who already have other duties. Have you not seen the announcements that play before movies asking people to put their trash in the trashcans?
There’s probably an age factor here.
When I was a kid in the 1960s theaters had janitors. And no trash cans in the public spaces. That was also pretty typical at professional sports stadiums.
Some time in the 1980s that changed. You were now expected (by management) to bus your own dishes. Saved them a bunch of money. This pretty well tracked with the rise, not of ecological consciousness, but of fast food and the whole self-serve concept.
Somebody who came of age in the late 80s or later can’t imagine what life was like back when there were lots more service workers and the expectations of retail service were much higher.
That’s funny, because I, too, was a kid in the 60s and in the theaters we were expected to take our trash to the trash cans conveniently located by the exit doors. And the theaters didn’t “have janitors”. They had an outside cleaning service come in for a couple of hours a day either after it closed for the night or early in the morning before it opened.
There were no professional stadiums where I lived, but the school stadiums and the stadium for the local semi-pro baseball team certainly had ample trash receptacles, and you were expected to put your trash there, not leave it scattered around. The “Keep America Beautiful” campaign started in the early 50s and was all over TV, newspapers and magazines throughout the 60s. You would have had to live under a rock to not know that littering was not considered normal or acceptable behavior anywhere.