Or is this CFery?

[SerenDippitty]

DH and I have been staying in a hotel in a northern city for a few days. At breakfast DH saw a lad about 12-13 filling up his water bottle from the orange juice dispenser while his mother stood and watched. She was obviously a bit embarrassed but not enough to say anything!

A breakfast buffet is to help yourself to and sit at the table and eat. Taking extra food out of the breakfast room is theft.

A bottle of oj from a buffet you paid for is definitely not worthy of a cf title or even the time to write a thread

On holiday last year there was a family who brought lunch boxes to breakfast and filled them up with made up rolls, pastries, fruit and drinks for the day at the beach, as well as the full breakfast they were eating. There was also a nespresso machine and they took handfulls of the capsules I can only assume to take home. I could only admire the brazen CFery.

The hotels don't mind. As pp said most items are binned or out out for staff sometimes. So taking a few extra Danish pastries or some bread is fine.

Juice goes off quite quickly and the glasses are always so small so avoid waste.

This hospitality industry has a massive issue with waste food so if people are eating it then good.

Also so many people pay for the breakfast and don't eat it, all balances out. Staff don't care having worked in hotels as well.

Why is it ok to eat loads at the breakfast table but not ok to take something with you to eat later? I've paid for it, I'll decide when I am going to eat it. I don't have a cooked breakfast so if I eg decide to take a cereal bar or apple (or both) with me for later, I will. It's costing the hotel exactly the same, whether I eat it at 8am or 2pm.

The issue is that hotel breakfasts are priced and planned on the basis of what an average person can eat in a single sitting. Fine if (as you say you might do) you split your breakfast so that the total amount you eat is as much as you could have eaten in one sitting, but it gets more dodgy if someone eats their fill at breakfast then takes away food for lunch and dinner as well.

Personally I think breakfast buffets must lead to a ridiculous amount of food waste and I am fairly relaxed about people taking a bit more away as there will be others who under eat. Also the hot food under the lamps usually tastes shit- terrible rubber eggs and chewy bacon. I much prefer the ones where you can get a bit of cereal and fruit or maybe cheese in the buffet then they do hot food to order. And I do love an omelette station.

Orange juice for later? Being brought up wrong? I wouldn’t care when the drink was consumed. And I would do this myself too. If you have paid for the breakfast why does it matter if you have the juice later? The hygiene aspect would be my only concern. But I would think nothing of taking a drink with me that I’ve paid for.

Unless the hotel was absolutely on its last legs and struggling for survival. In that case I wouldn’t avail myself of anything extra.

OP would you have had a problem if he had taken it to drink at the table.

What happens if he started it at the table and then left with some of it still in the bottle.

All hotels i stay in for work in Europe now offer you a coffee or tea to go from the breakfast buffet, I've found this to be the norm in the USA for many years- how is oj any different?

I stayed at a Hilton last week and there were takeaway cups by the coffee machine at breakfast.

I got excited for some CFery but this is meh.

The issue is that hotel breakfasts are priced and planned on the basis of what an average person can eat in a single sitting. Fine if (as you say you might do) you split your breakfast so that the total amount you eat is as much as you could have eaten in one sitting, but it gets more dodgy if someone eats their fill at breakfast then takes away food for lunch and dinner as well

surely it averages out though because not everyone will eat breakfast, or eat much of it.

Watching you see nothing wrong with taking loads extra breakfast products to take away??

But that’s not what happened here is it?

I would only be upset if he was sticking the mouth of the water bottle to the dispenser as that would be unhygienic. My daughter is about to turn 13 - she will now be considered an 'adult' under hotel guidelines, no longer free in our room , needs to pay adult meal prices. She wears size 10 children's clothes and eats like a pigeon so I think it a rip off charging her the same price for food as my 6ft plus husband. In all my hotel visits (and there has been quite a few) I have never seen anyone fill their drink bottle at breakfast. But at 13 that kid's parents are now paying adult prices for him so I would say you go get that bottle of OJ as it is rare that all 13s eat as much as adults.

My very law abiding DF used to let us smuggle out bacon from the hotel breakfast to use as crabbing bait. As others have said it will only get chucked out if not eaten, and you've paid.

Oh get a life. This is really really really not important.

I would love to have seen the police officers interviewing that family about the theft of a couple of bread rolls.

Or the subsequent court appearance on charges of loitering with intent to make a ham sandwich for later.

I can't see the harm in what the OP's CF boy did either. He could have gone up five or six times to refill his glass at the table, and that would have been all right. But filling his water bottle for later is CF-ery? Nah.

What if he'd done a few trips to the orange juice dispenser and filled his glass, then used that to fill the bottle? How do you know that people aren't doing exactly that? If it's a normal size bottle he'd probably only use 3 glasses to fill it and who'd notice him doing three trips in the melee of people going up for their seconds of sausages or eggs?

The police 😅 omg my chest hurts

Many of the juice glasses at hotels are thimble sized so I admire his chutzpah

What if that child had a issue with drinking from glass? Would only drink from his juice bottle etc
Just a different slant.

But, on the point of police, I stayed in a hotel in Belgium that had the full continental breakfast buffet, including cheese and ham, boiled eggs, bread rolls, spreads etc etc etc
There was a sign in the lift, and dotted around the room, saying anything taken out of the dining room constitutes theft and if discovered, the offenders would be immediately ejected from the hotel.

It was a hotel relying solely on coach trips (and very good value too!!!)

A few of the high end hotels I stay in for work leave paper bags out for people to take extra pastries with them, and also offer takeaway coffee.

In my experience, the fancier the hotel, the more relaxed they are about this.

The police thing is total and utter bollocks. Apart from anything else, the amount of food you are entitled to in an all-you-can-eat buffet is a matter of the contract between you and the hotel. If you and the hotel disagree about how much food that is then it is a civil matter between you, not theft! The police would laugh in the hotel’s face.

I don't see the problem either.
Perhaps the lad drinks from his water bottle as it's better for his teeth - most 12-13 year olds will have braces and have to be careful with drinks.
Mum was probably looking uncomfortable due to the stares from the Hyacinth Bouquet types in the hotel.

Lol I always take a banana and apple out with me. I really don’t feel bad at all. Or hungry at 11am.

Tigger they would not have meant criminal theft- what the notice was really saying was “we are making it clear now that your contract with us is only for what you can eat in the premises. If you breach that contract we reserve the right to terminate our contract with you and remove you from the premises”. I don’t know much about Belgian criminal law but I’d bet my house on it not being an offence there either.

Does it matter?

And even if he had taken rolls etc, I’d rather see food consumed than wasted!

Side note: I don’t know you @Cryalot2 and I wasn’t at that hotel but I can guarantee you’re lying!