"If you were cooking steak at home and you dropped it on the floor, you'd pick it up, scrape off the dust and put it back on the grill.
If you saw that happen in a restaurant you'd scream and shout, insult the waiter, ask to speak to the manager and threaten to sue."
There's a good chance the difference in reactions is caused by the fact that at home you usually don't have a fridge full of fresh steaks that could all replace the dropped one. The restaurant however *is* expected to have just such a fridge and thus is capable to still serve the desired/expected meal when it ditches the dropped steak. Only the restaurant loses then, instead of the person who was hoping to eat it.
Besides disliking to eat food from someone else's floor, couldn't it be that the way we react in such a situation has evolved out of a sense for economics, in this case scarcity?
Posted by: Dirk Stoop | Nov 28, 2007 at 21:00