The next time you visit your
favorite restaurant and stack your empty plates as a courtesy to your server, you might want to think twice. A new debate has surfaced on TikTok about what to do after finishing your meal, and servers are rattling off all the reasons why you shouldn’t be stacking your plates.
The stacking shade began when TikTok user @smishsmofh uploaded a short clip of themselves and a fellow food-service worker placing their plates and other trash on top of one another. In her caption, she made it clear that the plate stacking was done as a sort of inside joke.
“Two girls who work in food service cleaning up our mess (they hate it when we do this),” she wrote.
People in the food service industry (and a few customers) quickly fired back in the comments. Some revealed that they’re all for stacking, while others shared that they would prefer that customers not play Jenga with their plates and utensils.
“I appreciate when people do this. Why would literally any server hate their tables doing this ?” one person asked.
“One time a lady got mad at me for doing this while i was doing just bc the bottom of the plate gets dorty… but it feels wrong leaving them!!” another person chimed in.
Regardless of the general consensus on plate stacking, there are a number of helpful tips scattered throughout the comments.
“Rule is there’s a stack of all plates and the utensils on top of that. Then another plate with just the trash bc it’s hard to fish out all the garbage,” one user revealed.
“Put sauce cups and utensils all on one plate at the top, it’s harder to stack when there’s utensils on every plate,” another TikToker added.
We’re certainly taking notes!