Have you ever eaten off someone’s discarded room service tray? Have you ever walked down a hotel hallway to see someone’s leftover breakfast, lunch, dinner or midnight snack just sitting there, calling your name to take just a little nibble? No one will see, right? What do you do?
Although tempted by a tray peppered with assorted cheese, crackers, fruit and other snacks sitting in the hallway near my room at the Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers over the weekend I just walked on by. If you’re wondering, yes, that Catholic guilt of wasting food pinched me.
Do Extreme Budget Traveler’s Eat Food from Discarded Room Service Trays?
I did wonder if it was in an extreme budget traveler’s strategy to eat food from room service trays sitting in hallways, especially if it looks as though nothing has been touched. But if you did take something off the tray, is it considered stealing? I mean, it’s already paid for and obviously the guest doesn’t want it.
Maybe it’s not stealing but maybe eating off a discarded room service tray is just wrong. As in the gross sense.
Forgive Me, Have I Sinned?
I do have a confession. Although I have never eaten food off of another guest’s tray, I have eaten off a stranger’s leftover dinner. In a restaurant. Oh, I wasn’t alone and it wasn’t recently.
It was during a summer in Yellowstone (1990s). I was young and didn’t know any better. I was also broke (although working in Yellowstone was amazing, it didn’t necessarily pay the best considering room and food were deducted from my paychecks) hungry and with a few friends.
I don’t recall the specifics (my memory isn’t the greatest these days) but I believe we were in West Yellowstone getting ready to order pizza when the patrons sitting at the next table left. Sitting on their table was a perfect basket of garlic sticks and a friend and I looked at each other, grabbed the basket and munched on the buttery sticks while our other friends looked on mortified.
So yeah, it was a little tacky but was it stealing?
Is this Tacky?
Speaking of tacky, during the same hotel stay I saw a room service tray with a balled up diaper sitting next to the dinner plate. YUCK! Who does that? Maybe someone who doesn’t want strangers eating off their discarded room service tray?
