What are the worst cafe crimes?

[TheLastSherbetLemonInTheJar]

Yes I know that running is a cafe is incredibly hard and many are struggling but I wondered what your cafe/restaurant pet peeves are?

Mine include having only white sugar for coffee and no brown. It’s amazing how often this happens even in very nice cafes so I bought some brown sugar sachets to keep in my bag.

Margarine instead of butter. Of course they should offer margarine but I expect to be able to have butter(Unless I’m in a vegan cafe)

Teapots that drip everywhere.

This doesn’t really affect me but I always feel sorry for people who have coeliac disease when the only cake option is a brownie.

And a particularly petty one. When they remove my favourite item from a menu. I know that they have to change it sometimes but it’s so annoying when you can no longer get something that you’ve been ordering and enjoying regularly.

What are your little cafe/restaurant annoyances?

Dirty toilets
Grubby menus / tables

PG tips
Drippy teapots
Not enough butter with a toasted teacake
rock hard butter so you can’t spread it on said teacake
toasties that haven’t been toasted long enough so it’s just a warm sandwich and the cheese hasn’t melted
cake that’s been sat there for days and is dried out. It’s easy enough to freeze cake and replenish through the week

Yes we are, thinking what we think every day when we get pain in the arse customers.

To be honest, there is so much competition now that most cafes here have really upped their game. I haven't come across any poor food, dirtiness etc for years and I use cafes / coffee shops at least once a week.

Do you have sticky tables? Staff who slam food and drink down in front of people? Teapots that pour more tea on the table than into the cup? Dirty customer areas?

If not, what are you worried about?

99% of the problems people are raising here are basic things around cleanliness and poor quality.

If your place is clean and your turnover shows the business is working well, what's the problem?

I am so late to this thread, but I am in such hearty agreement with this that I am still posting!! They seem to get the tea ready at the start of the order and leave the water cooling while they get all the other drinks, food etc ready 😭
It should be an arrestable offence!

I reckon that scene was copied from my mum who gave a similar lecture in a diner in Detroit in the 1980s.

Sticky tables. Tables that aren't regularly cleared. Gross toilets. Putting your drink in a takeaway cup even though you've asked for it to have in. Closing one section off the shop off 2 hours before they close. I can understand them doing this half an hour before they close,or even an hour,but 2 hours?

I went to a cafe yesterday where the tables were all taken and there were laptop wankers sitting there with empty cups they'd probably been nursing for an hour 🙄