Do you help wait staff clear plates when they go out to eat? Etiquette expert Laura Windsor says guests should NEVER do this…
An etiquette expert told her TikTok followers that helping wait staff clear plates is actually bad manners.
Laura Windsor posted a video showing a customer serving food in a restaurant, with the caption that it is “inelegant.”
She continued, “You might as well take them into the kitchen and load the dishwasher.
An etiquette expert has told her TikTok followers that helping wait staff clear plates is actually bad manners
‘A restaurant is all about being able to relax and enjoy yourself, without feeling like you have to help the service.’
Laura even went so far as to say that it is “not polite” and “disgusting” to “take someone else’s job and do it for them.”
Some of her followers disagreed, with one commenter saying: ‘I used to work in hospitality. I was always grateful for people who tried to help out a little.’
Laura Windsor (above) posted a video of plates being stacked by a customer in a restaurant, captioning it as “inelegant.”
Another disgruntled viewer said: ‘Luckily my mum raised me well – piling up a few plates has never detracted from a dinner party’.
And ‘CJ’ claimed that ‘it’s actually inelegant to sit there and watch them struggle instead of doing something that lasts two seconds and will help them’.
User ‘PixelBitBot’, meanwhile, was clearly irritated by Laura’s guidelines, writing: ‘No one has the right to actively ask people not to do something that helps someone else because they find it ‘inelegant.’
But Laura didn’t take the criticism lying down and replied that it had nothing to do with law, but with ‘the roles you play’. She ended her answer with: ‘Do you ever do other people’s work?’
In another video, Laura notes that it’s rude to blow on your food. “Just wait until the food cools down,” she says.
In the same clip, she adds that you should keep pace with the other guests, “so that you’re all done at about the same time.”
For more from Laura visit www.tiktok.com/@laurawindsoretiquette.
