From my experience working in catering, getting stuff as it’s ready rather than all at once is more work for the wait staff but less work for the kitchen, as they don’t have to worry about timing a load of different dishes to all be ready at the same time.
That makes way more sense. Just give me bags until I’m done bagging, and then add the 25¢ (or whatever) to my bill.
I shop in some towns that charge for bags, but mostly at the kind of place where it’s all going to fit into one bag. So they ask me, “do you want a bag?” That makes sense, either i brought my own or i didn’t.
Or you left your bags in the car like I invariably do. For a while I would just buy some more reusable bags in the store, but now that I have more than I need I just have them put the items right back in the cart. Then I bag everything when I get out to my vehicle.
My big challenge is getting them back out to the car after bringing in a load. If they’re in the car, it’s not a problem to take some into the store with me (or just put stuff back in the cart loose and bag once I get to the car).
I’m in California, so they’re only allowed to offer paper bags. I’m mildly aggravated by losing the reusable plastic which were great for things like wastebasket liners or when cleaning the litterbox, but there are workarounds.
I am bothered by how few stores have paper bags without handles. Sure, the handles are great for human convenience in carrying, and I do like that part. However, they’re not exactly rambunctious-kitten friendly. At least once, I’ve had to catch a freaked-out kitten rocketing around the place and remove a grocery bag handle from around her neck. It’s a very good thing for kittens they can make it on cute. If they had to be bright, they’d be in big trouble (bonus points for her being orange).
More than once, I’ve run back out to the car to retrieve the reusable bags, as I’d rather do that than pay the ten cents or whatever for the store bags.
I’ve never lived where reusable bags are something even 5% of shoppers bother with.
How do the customers behind you in line react to that delay when you notice you have to go out to your car with your order half-scanned?
I’ve only run out to the car to fetch the bags before I got to the registers.
but my issues with paper bags:
no handle–bulky to carry any distance
with handle–doesn’t have the tensile strength of plastic, and don’t let them get wet
Both valid points, and I do recognize that handles can be a good thing, and that I’m in a definite minority when it comes to safety of young, still rather foolish pets.
I have a carry-all in my car that I use to lug groceries in the house. I throw my reusable bags in that when I put my groceries away and the whole thing goes back in my trunk. Saves having to play hide and seek with the bags when I need to take them out at the store.
I would find it disconcerting because, even though you are being polite, you are shifting the decision making to me, and I don’t want that responsibility.
The handles on the paper bags my supermarket uses sometimes just pop off after I’ve used them a few times. I’d think it would be easy to pull them off intentionally. It use a pair of scissors and snip them off.
I discovered that i can buy a box of wastebasket lining bags very cheaply. And they are less likely to have a small hole that random stuff falls through.
Isn’t the point of an appetiser to give the kitchen time to prepare the main course?
When we have lunch from a table d’hôte menu and only have two courses, my wife will often have a starter as her main with a dessert, while I have a starter and main. It’s reasonable to ask my wife if she wants to wait for my main or have her starter straight away.
That’s about the only situation where it makes sense - where some are having the appetizer as a main and others are having both an appetizer and a main. Possibly if someone want the cheese fries from the appetizer menu and skipping the ordinary fries as a side.
Which also means I’m not going to tell the server " I don’t care , whatever is easiest for you". In one situation, I want it when everyone else gets their main, in the other, I want it when I would get the side.
Is it really an appetizer if it’s served with the meal?
When I’ve done this in the past, it has been more of an OCD thing. There is just a bunch of clutter on the table, and that won’t do. I suppose if some manager saw it and decided it was a sign of slow bus service, well, they wouldn’t be wrong. But me stacking the dishes is not me commenting on anything except my unstoppable drive to simplify my environment. If it bugs the staff, then they can be quicker about clearing up.
Here’s one that’s cringe-worthy. We have an activities director who organizes trips, sometimes to restaurants. Now, this is tough on most any waitstaff, and they usually give us their most experienced server who can juggle odd requests and multiple credit cards without issue. But this one time, we all went to a fairly nice place and people ordered salads or soups as a first course. The old geezer across from me ordered a green salad, and when it arrived she tells the server “I only eat iceberg lettuce! This salad has other greens in it! Give it to some other customer!” It didn’t occur to you to ask about what was in the salad before it arrived? I felt like crawling under the table.
Is she now known as Diarrhea Debbie?
Odd question?
It is listed as such on the menu, but they are often quite substantial. No restaurant, in my experience, has objected to serving what they list as an appetiser as a main course.
I think that misses the point. You might expect that appetizers would proceed the mains, and if somebody orders an app and ONLY an app, I can’t see any restaurant telling the customer, “You must eat it before we bring out the mains everybody else at your table ordered.” Some people, however, like to have an app to share with the table along with their mains, and for the server to ask “with the mains or before?” seems to understand that and give them some choice.