I’d never do it in a high-class restaurant, but that’s not usually a problem because they’re waiting to bus your plates as soon as you’re done.
Most of the places I go (low- to mid-price local family places), we tend to do the same thing. We are careful to size the dishes so that it’s a stable stack, and put the trash and flatware on top. I think at least two of us have worked in table service jobs at some point.
It doesn’t seem to bother the staff any, in fact we’ve gotten an occasional indication of appreciation.
I sometimes move things over to the edge of the table if they are in the way. Now that I think of it, this is a sign of annoyance that things have not been taken care of. But I never thought ot it that way until now.
I can definitely see Elbows’ point, and will be careful not to do it again except when necessary.
It’s wrong because it drives your wife crazy. If my partner were doing something he didn’t have to do, and it was driving me crazy, I’d be really pissed if he didn’t stop. Now, dining out isn’t quite the event it used to be, but it’s still an event. Maybe you dress up a little, you watch your manners, you speak in an “indoor” voice, and you don’t have to worry about cooking or cleaning up the mess. So in this sense dining out is still an occasion, it’s still something a notch or two up from the ordinary. And your wife has a right to enjoy it without her husband becoming part of the wait staff.
Two questions:
Are you really trying to be helpful, or is this thinly-disguised OCD?
I do this pretty much everywhere I go. I waited tables for years, and I used to love it when this happened. I should note that elbows isn’t exactly wrong; doing this may cause the manager to foof at the server about pre-bus (the restaurant term for clearing of empty plates)…but if they weren’t complaining about that, they’d be complaining about something else. They’re restaurant managers; it’s what they do. Best to let them do it about something that actually makes the server’s life easier.
My daughter used to be a server, and she always stacks our plates when we eat out. If my husband and I are dining together, we rarely finish eating at the same time, so the first one done usually sets the dishes aside, just to get them out of the way.
I’ve never noticed a server’s reaction either way.
I’ll help stack dishes if the table is full. At a lot of mid priced restaurants, a table of 4 will be crowded if each person has a drink, plus a water glass, a main course plate, and a side plate. It will be even more crowded if there is still the before dinner bread or nacho chips in the center of the table. At nicer places where you don’t have that amount of clutter, I won’t start stacking dishes.
Maybe your wife was raised with more formal table manners, where it is improper to stack dishes at your table. So was I. It’s just ingrained–I wouldn’t stack dishes unless I’m at a particularly hectic pizza place or diner, where things are very casual. Aside from the manners aspect, for me, it’s not about thinking I’m too good to bus my own table, it’s about respecting someone else’s job and their competence. I appreciate good service.
I also waited tables for a number of years, everywhere from pizza places to formal restaurants where each table had a four-person squad doing practically everything but chewing for the customer. Good servers take pride in looking after customers and making the meal a special experience.
So strictly speaking, your wife is right. You could just leave the plates alone, and make her happy. Or you could torment her further by pointing out that if she had perfect manners, she would have pretended not to notice your table-clearing shenanigans. Don’t expect a happy ending, though.
Why would anyone take a question about restaurant etiquette and answer it as if the rudeness/politeness were towards the server/busser? As a former busboy, I can say that I wouldn’t care either way if you stacked your own dishes. It’s not a problem for me either way.
However, as a restaurant diner, if you did that at a table I was eating at, I would consider you boorish and uncivilized. It’s just Not Done. Doubly so if I had explicitly told you, multiple times, that it drove me crazy. I mean, it’s one of the primary rules of dining etiquette. When one is done with their meal, to signal that they are done, they position their knife and fork on the upper right rim of the plate. When EVERYONE at the table is done dining, the waitstaff or host will clear the table in one fell swoop.
Why would “nicer places” have less clutter? Some of the better places I’ve been at have had pretty small tables. Or do you mean that the more expensive restaurants have more attentive service? Because that hasn’t been my (consistent) experience either.
Indeed. A proper restaurant supplies no less than three salad forks - one for lettuce, one for tomatoes, one for croutons and miscellaneous. Anything less is philistine.
I don’t push my plate away “for the waiter”, I do it for my arms!
As for the OP’s question, it depends on the specific place. Not busing in McD: rude. Busing in a white-linens restaurant: rude. There’s a whole spectrum in between.
My husband leaves used tissues on his plate at restaurants. He contends that it’s polite, because no one has to touch them - they get scraped off with the food remnants. I think it’s disgusting and that he should stick his garbage in his pocket until he can dispose of it properly. Bussers and former bussers, any opinions?
I don’t think it’s rude as much as gross. He may be right, I don’t have to touch it, but it still makes him look like a heathen. Ew, no one wants to see that.
Again, the busboy is not the person to whom this is rude. It’s rude to your fellow diners to put your used bodily fluid rags on their dining table while they are at the dining table.
As a former busser, I couldn’t care less. It all goes in the trash.
The etiquette I was raised with would say that your arms shouldn’t be on the table in the first place, and so moving the plate is rude too! I’m a little less strict on that, but I still generally only keep my arms on the very edge of the table, so the plates don’t have to be pushed back very far anyways.
I would never dream of stacking plates at the table, no matter what restaurant we are in (OK, the trays and items at Tim Hortons and McDonald’s get stacked, but only as we are getting up to bring them to the garbage bin). I’d be bothered by it if someone else at the table started doing it, and I’d probably even find it odd if I saw a customer stack plates at another table entirely! It makes me think of slop buckets, and I don’t want to see that in a restaurant!
If the table is big or awkward for the waiter or waitress to clear, I’ll pick up plates or glasses and hand them over to him/her, but only at the time that they are actually at the table and clearing, in order to avoid making them reach in front of people. As a matter of balance and convenience to the waiter/waitress, I let them choose the order in which they want to pick items up, especially if they are using a tray.
Speaking of trays, I also get annoyed at staff that plonk their trays onto the table in order to clear and stack/scrape plates. Hold it in one hand, pick things up with the other and learn to stack a tray already!
As another aside, I once nearly got fired from a high end dining room (golf club) because I refused to scrape food into slop buckets stored on side tables in the dining room (the buckets were often only a couple of feet from customers during large events like weddings!). I stacked my tray (with leftovers scraped onto one plate), and finished the scraping in the kitchen. The hostess accused me of undermining her; I simply told her that her way of doing things was disgusting, my method did not cause any delay in my service, and if she wanted, we can talk to the manager about it. That never happened, but the manager did politely ask me not to annoy the hostess, since they needed me to work in that dining room!
