I’m not talking taking an excessive amount of ketchup packets (which I don’t consider stealing if you intend to use them eventually but if you want to comment feel free too) I’m talking at actual sit-down restaurants where they keep a full bottle of ketchup at the table, taking those.
I never did because I didn’t see the point of taking someone’s half-used glass bottle of ketchup I could just buy for $3 and get it fresh, but my mom in the 90s would take those small bottles of Tabasco and put them in her purse on occasion. I never understood why because it would happen a couple of times a year and we almost always still had that last pilfered bottle of Tabasco. And she didn’t steal anything else so I have no idea why Tabasco was such a precious commodity, and if I asked her about it today she just denies it.
Similarly I had a friend in college who whenever we ate at someplace with actual silverware (well, more like cheapmetalware) if we were taking a lot of food to go he would just put the silverwear in the takeout box with the food, with the bad justification of “Hey what if we get home and all our silverwear is dirty how will we eat it then?”
As a kid we didn’t have good steak knifes at home, which was weird as we had steak often. But I got fed up with using the regular knife and one day at the restaurant I carried out 3 of them. When I got home I added them to the silverware in the drawer. When asked I say I added them to our ‘doggie bag’ as we had steak and needed those knifes, which my parents let go. Then I found it was my parents go to knifes, which I also enjoyed (as I got 3, being a smart kid and all). Eventually they upped their game and got their own set, but I happily used those restaurant knives for many years after.
No moral issues on that one as it actually taught my parents something and I’m happy about that as they often abstain from things to make their life easier, that and that is a better use of those knives than the restaurant would ever have, unless a doctor would have preformed a emergency tracheaomity or something like that.
I knew a rather strange woman who went to a specific restaurant once a month. The place was okay, the food wasn’t bad, but I didn’t understand why it was such a big thing to her.
Years later I learned from a guy she was dating that there was an ulterior motive. The women’s restroom had complimentary feminine hygiene items, and she would fill her purse. Once a month.
I’m ashamed to admit I’ve taken many a cocktail / beer glass back in my wilder days. One time my then bf and I each took home 6 Stella pint glasses each, but that was part of a “drink one, keep the glass” deal, I guess because they were phasing Stella out of their menu.
When my brother was a teen and working as asst. mgr. at Jack in the Box, he came home with an excellent, restaurant quality kitchen knife. Looking back, I can’t believe that not only did no one chide him for his thievery but my mother loved that knife and used it for the rest of her life.
When we my best friend and I were 7 or 8, we used to go to Sambos (I know) with her Dad for breakfast where he, or sometimes we, would take a spoon or fork out of which the Dad would make silverware jewelry to sell at the swap meet.
In the '70s, my grandmother had a collection of ashtrays which she’d taken from various restaurants and bars – she primarily took ones that had the place’s name printed on them; I think that she considered them to be “souvenirs.” Even weirder is that my grandmother didn’t smoke; my late grandfather did, but she was taking ashtrays even after he had passed away.
She also had a bunch of little beer glasses that she had “borrowed” from local bars.
Denny’s was a regular stop after punk shows in Hollywood for me a the group I hung out with. One guy would alway stick a full stainless creamer in his pants before leaving. Once outside he would chug it and leave the empty creamer on top of a newspaper rack near the front door. Weird.
In high school I had a friend who took the entire spring loaded napkin dispenser out of a McDonald’s, the kind that are inset into the counter, more than once. Had one in his car, one in his room. Still has at least one of them all these years later.
Interesting thread. I’ve limited my ‘liberation’ of restaurant items to Taco Bell Diablo sauce packets (large numbers taken here, if they had a large supply), and those tiny tiny tiny one serving tabasco bottles, as they both travelled well in the car to spice up drive thru breakfast sandwiches. My folks would have frowned on me liberating cutlery or glassware beyond that, though. Dad taught me how useful the single shot tabasco bottles were.
Years ago I noticed some cute ashtrays in a restaurant in St Martin. They had the logo for a Trinidadian beer, Carib. When paying my tab, I asked the server if I could buy one of the ashtrays. She laughed, and told me to take one. I told her I could never do that and she grabbed one and stuck it under my shirt, laughing the whole time.
My daughter dropped a bottle of the restaurant’s seasoning salt in her purse. She paid her bill when it came and we left. She called me a bit later and asked if a restaurant can charge her for the seasoning salt she thought she got for free. $6 was added to her bill for the seasoning. I said sure they could, the option would have had you arrested for stealing the stuff.
My wife and I were staying in a room at a small hotel near the Washington coast. Many of the electrical outlets in the room did not work, the owners showed up and fixed the problem. For the trouble, they gave us a couple tokens for free drinks in their bar. I went to the bar and got a couple neat shots of some better whiskeys and asked that they be served in the Glencairn glasses they had. While getting ready to leave the next morning, I slipped the glasses into my duffle bag. I now have a collection of about 20 Glencairns, I paid for all the others.
Mrs. Charming and Rested stole some Guiness glasses on St. Patrick’s Day once because the Irish bar charged an enormous unwarranted (in her opinion) cover charge. She felt like she deserved them. My mother also worked at a restaurant once and wound up with some forks in her apron that never got returned. She claimed it was an accident but for years afterward, she would consistently use those forks and admitted they were her favorites. It’s been well over 30 years since she worked there and she still has them and uses them.
Back when I was in high school, I worked for a drive-thru that had a Coke promotion - in essence you got to keep the glass, a very nice fountain-style number. I “liberated” a case of glasses at the end of the promotion. My mother used them for iced tea glasses for decades before they all finally broke.
If anybody asks, the ice scoop in my freezer only looks like the scoop Wynn Resort in Las Vegas uses in their fancier suites. Honest.
Growing up, we had a couple of forks and knives, and a salt shaker that my mom stole from her college dining hall. Actually she passed them down to me when I went off to college, and I still have them.
I went to the infamous Bar Rescue Piratz Tavern on one of their last nights open. We were already at the good bar across the street for a friend’s birthday and decided to go in to Piratz for shits and giggles. They brought us water with our drinks in black plastic cups with their logo on it. They were going out of business in like two days so on the way out I took three or four of those cups. They weren’t going to need them. Still have at least two of them.
Back in high school I knew a girl whose brother was a cutter. They had locked up all the knives in the house except for butter knives, but he was still cutting. Eventually they figured out he was swiping steak knives from restaurants when the family would go out for dinner.
We had a nice stainless steel water pitcher that my father stole from his college dining hall when he was a student. I wonder what ever happened to it…
