Was this acceptable cafe behaviour or a big faux pas??

[AHardDaysWrite]

We're having lunch in a busy cafe (me, DH, two dcs). We ordered a main meal each plus two sides of chips to share. All the chips were soon polished off. On the next table was a woman and her son. She ordered chips for him, but when they arrived he only ate a couple and refused the rest. They left soon afterwards. My DS wanted more chips, so I gave him the (largely untouched) portion from that table. DH was aghast but my reasoning was that the waiter was only going to bin them anyway - why waste food? Was I BU?

That's all kinds of wrong. Big faux pas. Huge.

You don't know why the child left them though. Maybe he didn't want them as he was starting to feel unwell (i.e D&V bug brewing)?
I wouldn't have risked it to be honest, but then I am a worrier.
Also I bet the café owner would not be too impressed either.

Crikey, if they were hardly touched then no harm taking them. They would have probably ended up in the bin anyway.

I would have taken them and eaten them no problem.

I have just run this past DH. He just said 'pissy fingers in the chip bowl'.

furlined hilarious

I would love to do it but would feel too embarrassed.

My mum worked in a hotel in late 80s. Leftovers were taken off people's
plates, microwaved and served up as a new dish. This included veg, soup, all sorts. Think veg if a bit saucy was washed too. Reckon that can't happen now but you don't want to chance it !

I don't really see it as a big deal personally. "Breathed" on them? The people serving them to you probably breathed on them loads anyway

Never understood the food from skips thing.Surely they don't have a skip for the nice clean food and then another skip for food that's gone bad/wascovered in maggots/general waste including people's snotty tissues etc. Or do they?

Totally up to you. If you felt comfortable doing it then why not? Where to people get off telling you it's totally unacceptable? Unlikely to catch anything from a few chips. Everything you touch outside your own home has been touched, breathed on, maybe even spat on by someone else's dirty paws. But if you thought about that all the time you'd never go out or do anything. Luckily we are a pretty tough species. Yanbu.

I don't get the logic of "but they'd been touched". Well, yes, a little bit - I'm not sure you really paw all over chips just to eat a couple. But also, what happens when you order any food in a cafe? If you order a sandwich someone's touched it to make it. If you eat from a buffet you don't know who's put their hands in the food. Obviously I would never eat leftovers that had been in contact with someone's mouth, like a sandwich. But seriously, how germy do you think chips are?

Well the food is usually still packaged when they throw it into the skips, Stealth - so wouldn't be likely to get massively contaminated with bogeys.

But seriously, how germy do you think chips are? This all depends on the personal hygiene of the previous owner of the second hand chips.

Its about timing stealth. Hanging round at the end of the day and then quickly retrieving food that has just come out of the store.

Yes, but do you wash the packs first?> Would you want to eat a sandwich from a cardboard sleeve that was nesteld up against a dirty nappy?

I wouldn't have taken them, aside from the fact it's pretty minging, I like my food hot and by the time they'd left I imagine the chips would have been stone cold.

Un

Mmmm. Stone cold pre-owned chips.

It's not the risk of picking up a virus/ germs/ whatever.

It's the actual going over to tbe table and helping yourself because you think ' why not' then demonstrating to your kids that anything goes.

It was a terrible example to your children.

ah thank you Brian! Yes I can see that, so grabbing stuff from the top
I accept I have bin/germ isues. But seriously eating stuff from skips has become quite fashionable (not talking about people who have no choice btw :() and yet here we have a thread of people ewwwing at some little boy breath germs.
I wouldn't have done it. But not because there was another human being within the vicinity of the chips.

Going off thread slightly but this reminds me of a story I heard. Not a joke.

A woman walked into a café on a horrible rainy day and ordered a coffee and a Kit Kat. The café was crowded so she sat down at a table opposite a man and opened the Kit Kat and ate one finger of it and had a drink of her coffee. He reached over and snapped off a piece and ate it. Outraged she pulled it back snapped off another piece and ate. He did the same until it was finished.

The woman finished her coffee and told the man how rude he was and stalked out.

Whilst outside she reached into her coat pocket and.........pulled out the Kit-Kat she had bought.