This is such a odd story. I’ve changed my mind many times and eaten my take out at one of their plastic tables. Maybe it’s blazing hot and I want to cool off before getting back in the car. Or I remember another errand before I can go home and eat. Nobody has ever even looked at me for eating the meal I just paid for at the table. Why should they care whether I eat that burger in my car or at one of their tables? It’s just a burger in a sack and a soda.
In some municipalities food to be eaten in the restaurant has a different sales tax than food for takeout. Maybe it’s that kind of a deal, otherwise, I got nothin’.
Because the waitress insisted only dine in customers could sit at their tables. So Gladys said fine, I’ll eat here then instead of taking it home.
I’ve even called in pizza orders before and then decided to eat inside. Just because it’s hot and I need time to cool off before getting back into a hot car. You have to be careful in Arkansas in August when it’s 102 outside. That’s dangerous heat if you’ve been out running errands for a hour or so. Eating at the table is not a big deal. I just take my pizza box and soda to a table and eat from the box. I don’t ask them for a plate or anything.
Yes. For Pizza I always call ahead and arrange a take out. Maybe from some store where I’m shopping. But, if I get over to the restaurant and feel a little light headed or just feeling over whelmed by the heat then I’ll decide to eat inside and cool off. Twenty minutes in the AC makes a new man out of me.
Or sometimes I’ll get to the restaurant and remember I still need to pick up my prescriptions. I don’t want my fresh, steaming hot pizza sitting in the car while I make that extra trip to the pharmacy. I’ll eat at a table and then go run that last errand.
I’m only talking about burger and pizza places. Usually they don’t even have waitresses. You pay and pick up your meal at the counter and then you can either go out to the car or eat at a table. It’s totally up to the customer.
The wait staff may see it as screwing them out of a tip. They still have to bus the table.
Another reason I have done this is when I ordered a huge meal with the intention of taking home leftovers. Lots less hassle compared to moving it from a plate.
I would only do that at a casual dining place though. I can see a more upscale place wanting to maintain a classier atmosphere than the guy at the next table eating out of a foam clamshell.
The cashiers will also occasionally mis-hear or mis-key the order. Carrying the bag to the table is really not a problem.
She wasn’t going to sit down and eat. She was just sitting to wait for the food to be ready. She was told people waiting for takeout were only permitted to stand.
I’m amazed a fast food worker even noticed Aretha had sat down. Fast food workers usually ignore customers unless they are directly spoken too. They are just there to take the money at the register and make sure your food gets in the bag.
I haven’t eaten dine-in at McDonalds in a long time. Do they still put your boxed burger, boxed fries and soda on a tray? It’s really no different than take out except they don’t shove it into a paper bag.
I eat at Sonic quite often and they don’t even serve car side on a tray anymore. They bring a bag out to your car. You can eat it there or take it home. They could care less.
I’ve done this, but, of course, only rarely. Also, I’ve had fast food restaurants make the mistake themselves, giving me food in a bag when I had said I was planning to eat there. I just shrugged and went to a table anyway.
A sensible restaurant manager wouldn’t make a thing out of it, especially if it’s just a one-time event, something that only happens on rare occasions. Sure, if there was an organized conspiracy by people to bypass a sales tax, then he has to get tough, but if someone just does this the once, who cares?
Also, I’ve sat at tables LOTS of times to wait for my “to go” order to be ready. Why stand around and be bored when you can sit and be comfortable and be bored? If a manager snarled at me for sitting at a table while my order is prepared, I’d be on the phone to their corporate headquarters right then and there, and make a formal complaint, naming names.
(For balance, I also fill out feedback forms when service is particularly good, for instance when a counter clerk is more than usually polite, or cheerful, or funny, or is helpful.)
I’ve never had a restaurant employee tell me I can’t sit at one of their tables while waiting for takeout. The issue about eating takeout in the restaurant has never come up with me, but I would be surprised if anyone were to object.
Note that a representative for Johnny Rocket’s has apologized and said that the owner has clarified takeout policy with the employee, who was described as “new and very young.”
It sounds like a case of overzealousness and bad training. Employees should not try to enforce rules that don’t exist, and should not look for ways to piss off customers with trivial nonsense. A restaurant server is not a hall monitor.
I’ve always been annoyed when people have done this when I’ve worked restaurants. My most recent restaurant job was a “everyone do what needs to be done” situation, so when you walk in to place a to-go order you’re actually stopping a server from doing whatever they were doing so they can take your order, ring you up, give you change, send the order to the kitchen- instead of a bigger place that would have a hostess taking care of all walk-ins.
Then they sit down (and wait to have their order brought to them at the table), eat in, leaving a table I’ve got to bus, making the table unavailable to someone else, and they don’t leave a tip.
Annoying . . . but I’ve never worked in a restaurant that had a policy against it. We’d just chalk it up to another instance of rudeness- just one of many that any food service worker sees in any given shift. Annoying, but not at all noteworthy.
And that’s not even what this was!!! She was sitting to wait for her order. She only said she’d stay and eat at the table when she was told the tables were for dine-in customers only.
Johnny Rockets isn’t really a fast food place. It’s not very many steps above fast food, but it’s not fast food. It’s kind of on a level with Denny’s, it’s just that its primary focus is to be a burger joint. They have waitstaff in cute 50s-ish outfits who would come to your table and take your order, waitstaff who you’d normally tip.
Being a few steps up from fast food, their customer service can usually be expected to be quite a bit better than a fast food place. So, yeah, this was a really bad employee making a really dumb choice.
I often pick up take out for meetings of 20 people back at the conference room. That means I do tip since it’s as much work to bag as bus, and I will sit while I wait. When they tell me what I owe, I usually say (with a polite and friendly manner) “that’s a big order. Does it come with a free cup of coffee while I wait?” (As a flunky I’ve already fulfilled my quota of being pushed around for the day.)
But regardless of my wants, which of these would a restaurant manager want to present: a herd of people milling around the lobby, or people seated at tables?
I think that Aretha’s situation was just strange. Certainly from her telling of the story, there does not appear to be a valid reason for the request.
To the original question though, when ordering take-out at Chinese restaurant, I have been asked not to sit and wait at one of the dining tables, but instead in one of the out-of-the-way booths. I assume that they did not like the impression that it gave to prospective diners.
Also, in Paris (and I imagine in other large cities), there is often a “table” fee or a “patio” fee for dining-in at cafes. They are quite good at enforcing this. Does Johnny Rockets charge more for a table?
And finally, Bill Door already mentioned the sales tax issue which exists in different municipalities. It could have been just overzealous enforcement.
I'm not sure why people seem to be comparing this situation to a McDonald's or pizza place where the difference in take out or eat in is whether your food gets put in a bag or on a tray, you have to find your own seat and if all the tables are full you end up standing there with your tray waiting for one to open up.Johnny Rockets has waitstaff, and like any other inexpensive sitdown restaurant there is sometimes a line of people waiting to be seated,and people are usually seated based on how many tables each server already has. Does anyone expect to order takeout from Red Lobster or Outback or Denny's and sit at a table while they wait for it?
In this case, it wouldn't have caused any problems for her to sit down while she waited, but I'm fairly sure a) there actually was a rule against it (owners/managers always throw the workers under the bus) b) the management was not inclined to allow low-level employees to make judgment calls like "when is it OK for someone waiting for takeout to sit at a table and when is it not"this and c) the retraining consisted of "call the manager in the future".
I think people who are not familiar with Johnny Rockets look at the article, see the graphic describing “The Original Hamburger” and the reference in the article to a food court, and they just assume it’s a fast food place.
I don’t think people are intentionally equating Johnny Rockets with McDonalds. It’s just people who don’t know what Johnny Rockets is, and they’re putting an image together based on the article.
I think lots of people would sit while waiting provided the restaurant isn’t very full.
I think most 70-somethings would feel justified doing so.
Now, sitting to eat their take-out order would be different. But she only wanted to sit while she was waiting.
