The Hilarious, Chaotic Truth About How Waiters Really Eat at Work

The most beautiful phrase a server can hear in the kitchen is “dead food in the window.” The “window” is where the food is placed after the cooks have fired it and before the server carries it to their guests. It’s usually a long stainless steel shelf, often warmed by heat lamps and it’s the bridge where front of house meets back of house, but is hardly ever crossed. 

“Dead food” is a plate that is no longer needed, maybe a mis-order or cooked improperly. Once it’s decreed dead, the food is up for grabs, to be eaten by the server or servers who claim it first. It can be madness. 

Have you ever been to the beach and had a seagull hovering above you waiting for its moment to swoop in and snag a Dorito from your fingers right before you put it in your mouth? Or maybe you’ve seen a lollipop on the sidewalk and it’s covered with a colony of ants desperate to devour that corn syrup and food coloring until there is nothing left but a paper stick. That’s what servers are like when there’s dead food in the window. 

Food everywhere and not a bite to eat — at least not while your manager is watching

Servers are surrounded by food the whole time they’re at work and it’s difficult to not want to eat some of it even when hunger isn’t a factor. It’s just like when you’re holding some bubble wrap and your instincts take over and you pop some of it without even thinking about it. Never has an order of fries made it all the way to the table with the same number of fries that left the kitchen. Somewhere along the way, one of those errant fries finds its way into the gullet of the person carrying the plate. 

If a server works in a restaurant where they are responsible for preparing some of the desserts, like adding the ice cream to the brownie, that ice cream station is the equivalent of a watering hole in the desert. Servers, backwaiters, hosts, dishwashers, and cooks all loiter at that cooler throughout the shift, taking turns stealing a spoonful every now and then. If it’s a Mexican restaurant, they are lingering at the warming drawer for tortilla chips. If it’s a restaurant that offers free bread, you will find everyone at the bread station, constantly consuming carbs. While eating food at the restaurant is pretty normal, most servers will draw the line at eating any food that is left over from a customer. But not all.

The legend of Bus Tub Connie

I worked with one woman we affectionately called Bus Tub Connie. She had the habit of eating food that was not only left over, but that had already been discarded into the bus tub. We’d watch her eyeball the piles of plates looking for a piece of fried okra or a chicken finger. “Connie!” we’d say. “Just ask the cooks for a side of okra.”  None of us would ever consider picking for scraps like she would. 

“What? It’s just a piece of okra, it’s fine,” she’d tell us. Connie didn’t the leftovers because she was hungry; I think she did it because she hated to see food be wasted. I’m not a fan of wasting food either, but I’m also not going to save the world by eating a chicken finger that the kid at Table 108 didn’t want to finish. Germs and cooties scared me away from it, but Connie must have had immunity made of steel because she was always fine and I never knew her to call in sick. 

We’ll always take the cake 

The only other food most servers would consider eating after it’s been to a table is a birthday cake the customers brought into the restaurant. Homemade cake? Absolutely not, because nobody ever knows what someone else’s kitchen looks like. But a cake from a bakery? Yes, please. 

If the customer asks us to slice it (and yes, there will be a slicing fee) and says to keep a slice for ourselves, it’s a true gift. It actually seems kind of rude to ask the server to slice it and not offer them a piece. Servers will happily eat that birthday cake as greedily as a seagull diving into a bag of Nacho Cheese Doritos. When you’re surrounded by food, it’s hard to not eat it.