Mara Vey's pellet: are we seriously doing this at dinner now?

trayreturn · #161 Who closes them, and where do we take them?

I've read the Morrow memo three times. A covered dish at each later gala is a good idea. Who empties it, and how? Please don't answer with the words 'the staff' as though that's a process.

At my place, a guest can close a dish and take it to a bin. At another place, management might tell a waiter to clear it with the plates. The lid doesn't make those the same job.

trayreturn · #163 Who empties it, and how?

Fair question. Have guests dispose of their own pellets in the ordinary bin and let staff collect the empty dishes. I would gladly do that. I was never arguing for making a waiter touch one.

A tray with a lid solves the visible object on the table. The fact that Morrow needed an official memo to permit a small dish at a gala remains absurd.

phasechange · #164

trayreturn · #163 Who empties it, and how?

A tray with a lid solves the visible object on the table.

There it is. The venue adopts a way to keep pellets out of sight at dinner and phasechange announces a win for leaving one beside a wineglass. You could watch someone mop up a spill and call the mop an endorsement of spilling.

You are so desperate for the table to be a referendum on your body that you've forgotten other people sit at it.

ramekin · #165

phasechange · #164 A tray with a lid solves the visible object on the table.

You are so desperate for the table to be a referendum on your body

And you are so attached to calling disgust 'manners' that you keep inventing arguments I didn't make. I said the dish is a good solution in the post directly above yours. Read at the speed you insult.

phasechange · #166 Read at the speed you insult.

Twelve days ago this was a children's fundraiser. Now there are people whose chief contribution to the week has been memorising each other's worst sentence. Mara Vey is probably the only person in this thread with a normal Sunday.

I wish Morrow had published the amount raised in a memo too. That might have attracted four replies instead of a hundred and fifty.

coatcheck · #162 I still think Vey should have asked for the bin first.

The dish fixes my complaint. Put the pellet there, close the lid, let the waiter collect the dish afterward. It's a small accommodation and I think it's a sensible one.

I know perfectly well the skin was sealed. My appetite would still have gone if the pellet appeared beside my glass. The new dish doesn't make the original placement polite. I can accept the fix without applauding what prompted it.

secondhelping · #168

coatcheck · #162 I still think Vey should have asked for the bin first.

The dish fixes my complaint.

ok. that is a real answer. we could have had that on page two if everyone had been given something to put the thing IN.

but i've watched you argue with anyone who said the venue should supply one, and now you get to be the calm sensible person welcoming the solution? nice trick.

coatcheck · #162 Staff should know what they're collecting.

Here's a workable version for anyone still listening: place the covered dish before guests sit down; let the guest put their own pellet in it; tell them where the ordinary bin is; have staff clear an empty dish. Put that in the event brief instead of hoping every dress has a pocket.

I can live with that. I still bring a bag because I don't enjoy being the surprise item in someone else's evening.

coatcheck · #171

coatcheck · #162 Staff should know what they're collecting.

Put that in the event brief

Yes. And tell the people clearing tables what the dish is, and pay them for the extra step. I've worked an event where management solved a guest problem by writing a new duty in a briefing nobody below the floor captain saw.

The dish is a decent piece of equipment. Whether it becomes a decent procedure depends on the people who actually run the room.

table12 · #172

coatcheck · #171 Put that in the event brief

The dish is a decent piece of equipment.

I agree with table12, and I'm tired of being invited into this argument only as a prop for whichever guest wants to win it. At a reception I worked last winter, I spent twenty minutes keeping a guest's beetle hat fed while the guest complained we hadn't found a bin. I could solve both problems. I would have preferred to know about either one beforehand.

A covered dish and an actual briefing would be lovely. Asking the nearest waiter to improvise is not a system.

mod_sable · #170 Further personal attacks or attempts to identify gala staff will close this thread.

I saw #174 before it went. You have been lecturing everybody about consideration for twelve days and then tried to send strangers to question a waiter. What an appalling little performance.

phasechange · #175 tried to send strangers to question a waiter.

Stop trying to make a person who was at work settle your argument. There are no missing facts about that waiter that could make this thread worth the cost to them. I agreed with keeping the pellet off the dinner table; I reported #174 the moment I saw it. One doesn't buy permission for the other.

I came here to say that employees can have preferences. I am leaving with the apparently controversial suggestion that we also get to be left alone.

I thought I was angry about the pellet. I'm angrier that somebody who waited tables had to become evidence for people with every possible means of solving their own problems.

The covered dish is fine. Let it be fine. Maybe next week the guests can argue about their hats and leave the workers out of it.