I was living in Berlin when the first Burger King arrived (about 1979 or so) and even a few years later, Germans just didn’t get with the program - when finished eating, almost nobody took their tray to the garbage bin and emptied it. German employees were constantly scrambling to clear tables for the next guest.
Maybe because we were born and raised with fast food restaurants, most Americans, except for a few obnoxious assholes, take their tray and dump it in the trash and put the tray on the top. Sort of second nature here.
Has it gotten any better in Germany, or other countries, or is this fast food etiquette still a USA thing?
I, in the Netherlands, always bring my tray to garbage bin. I have noticed though that some people don’t and it seems this has become an accepted custom, seince they have people walking around cleaning trays up.
A student of mine who took a trip to the UK, and visited a McDonald’s, used this perceived difference as the basis for a mini-lecture on “Russian mentality” and “Western mentality”. He was very enthusiastic about the fact that Brits bussed their own tables.
I would never fail to take my rubbish to the bin myself, but seeing a table with a tray full of wrappers etc on it is a common thing where I live, particularly at my local KFC.
On the rare occasion that I eat at McDonalds, I put my rubbish in the bin and the tray on the shelf above. I also (not a food related matter) hang unwanted garments back where I found them when I’m clothes shopping. It might just be decades of tidying up after myself.
I usually clear up after myself but there are always attendants clear up after others. I remember someone telling me years ago not to clean up after myself because if everyone did they’d have less employees.
I was at a Burger King in Lisbon last year, and everyone left their trays and garbage on their tables. This was in a food court, though, so I’m not sure if that matters. At a McDonald’s near Lisbon, customers threw away their trash and put away trays.
I think something that makes a difference (based on a guess I took and some polling) is whether people have grown up eating in a cafeteria or not. If you ate at a school’s cafeteria where meals came on trays, you’re used to the notion that “tray” equals “return the tray;” if you ate at home or in a cafeteria where food was brought to the students, you need to learn it.
I’m from Spain; I do bring the tray back, but often people leave them around.
I bring the trays back and clear my garbage as well; this is standard procedure here in Canada, though there are people who don’t.
One fast-food chain in Canada, Wendy’s, formerly did not allow customers to clear away their own garbage. There wasn’t even provision for it: there were garbage cans, but no proper garbage bin with a shelf above for the trays. I remember going there, eating, clearing the remains into my tray and picking up the tray, then looking around in vain for a place to leave it.
It was nasty to arrive at those places and see all the remains of previous meals, and I imagine that they got a lot of complaints. Some time ago they changed and installed normal bins and shelves and now people clean up after themselves there as well.
I was one of those who complained. That’s what comment cards are for.
At food courts here it’s the same. Often the food court owns the trays and all the food vendors around the outside of the food court share them.
In Germany nowadays, most people seem to do, but some don’t.
I do not put the garbage and the tray away either sometimes - because in my experience fast food restaurants aren’t reliable about clearing the trash can and the tray stack away. So, maybe one time in three (I visit a fast food restaurant perhaps once a month) I take my tray to the trash, only to see the trash can full or the tray stack tottering, and then have to put my tray on a free table (where often other patrons in the same case have put theirs) and leave.
Perhaps experience of this unreliablility makes some people not make the effort in the first place.
In the cafeteria where I usually lunch (a state administrative office nearby) people clear away their trays invariably (except for one blind guy who has an arrangement). The difference probably being a clientele that is a) adult and b) composed of regulars, and c) reliable return via a conveyor belt.
That second statement perhaps inadvertently matches the assumption that Burger King were making as they moved into overseas markets, that if they set up a restaurant like back home, people would behave the same. That staff were struggling to cope was probably because the staffing levels were taken from how it worked in America, but a different people expected and responded differently. ‘Fast food etiquette’ is just another part of national differences…only a few days ago, while eating fish & chips on a beach :), I realised that I was automatically making a decision to discard some things (such as bones) onto the pebbles, but others (such as an unwanted piece of fish skin) were getting put back into the paper wrapping.
I think this was customary at the Wendy’s restaurants I visited in the US. Perhaps it was an attempt at appearing a little higher-class than McDonalds restaurants. It worked best when an employee was dedicated to clearing the trays. And I’ve eaten in food courts in malls and airports where I’ve seen someone whose job it is to clear the tables. (Perhaps because they wouldn’t get cleared otherwise.)
I don’t eat at McDonalds, but in other places like small chain-cafes, I usually look around and return the tray to make the job of the servicepersons easier. However, not all cafes have a place to return the trays to. And in some fast food places, an employee is already running around collecting trays, so if I figure “it’s his job” then I leave the tray (don’t want to take his job away).
the IKEA restaurant has signs on the table explaining why people should put their trays away to keep the costs low.
Hijack: Pizza Hut apparently transplanted part of the American culture with the custom of “being seated” - which feels quite ridicuslous in a * fast-food* restaurant! But then, I don’t like greasy pizza hut, anyway- I prefer real Italian cheap restaurants.
Same here. The only time I’ve seen Pizza Hut set up as a fast-food restaurant has been in foot court locations where the only thing available is the personal pan pizzas, and then they are already prepared. Regular Pizza Huts wouldn’t work in fast-food mode, mostly because the pizza takes so long to prepare.
We seem to have a misunderstanding about terms. The Pizza Hut branch I’m thinking of has a take-away window and a restaurant section where people sit down and waitresses serve them.
However, McDonalds and Burger King also have sit-down sections. Okay, they are self-serve, but to my mind Pizza hut does not fall into real “Restaurant” category by having waitresses and waiting 10 minutes until your pizza is ready.
There’s a difference between “Gaststätten” a bit like pubs where the wooden tables are uncovered and the food is simple, and normal Restaurants, where table linens are expected at minimum.
And the only Restaurants that can get away with making customers sit in a certain places* are upwards of 1 star at least, where you pay 20 Euros for the appetizer at least. Certainly not some low-scale imitation like Pizza -Hut.
I’m referring to people waiting their turn to be seated by a waitperson, unlike simply going in and searching for a free table themselves. Exceptions are if a part of the restaurant is not open to the customers because it’s a slow night, or if all tables are reserved and thus you turn to the waiter to ask where there’s a free table; or if you reserved yourself, and ask the waiter where the reserved table is.
I think this is an important point. Here in Sweden eating out for lunch is an extremely common thing and almost every “lunch restaurant” uses trays and expects you to put the tray in the designated place afterwards. Not doing so is very much frowned upon.
I’ve no idea if this happens at school as I didn’t grow up here. I can well imagine that it does though.
This is the misunderstanding. I don’t know where you’re from, or if English is your first language, but to Americans, as far as I know, “being seated” is the same thing as “sitting down”; your remark seemed to imply that Pizza Hut restaurants don’t have tables and chairs. What you are referring to is “waiting to be seated,” or “being shown to your seat.”
Well, I understood what he meant, but then I spent four years working in restaurants. It might well be jargon. I always imagined it was in there with “top” (ie, a six-top is a table of six) as pseudo-jargon that most people were familiar with. Do Americans without restaurant experience differentiate between “being seated” and “seating yourself”, in those terms?
