“I have no compunction about filling my pockets with croissants”

November 14, 2018 12:02 AM

Eggs Benedict for later? Or tiny packets of Nutella? Adam Buxton asks Louis Theroux “What about twenty rolls?” While non-guests eating the hotel buffet are less shameful, is there exhilaration in filling ziploc bag and tupperware (or a holdall and trouser pockets) with cheeses and waffles? (where you can, unlike here and here) If you are more buffet and less fine dining, with a nod to a 2008 mumsnet debate, opinions are divided. For: logistics and room service charges make this the only fair option for some; better milk than in your hotel room; excess food left is thrown away or rehashed. Against: “It's all you can eat, not all you can fit in your car.”; moderation and nutrition. Related: other hotel items (slippers: yes, but flatscreen TV: no) and airport lounges with buffet-style food.
posted by Wordshore (47 comments total)

I generally take the free hotel buffet breakfast back to my room to eat while I'm packing and getting ready, which the hotel staff always says is okay, but the coffee cups are so tiny I have to take up two or three. Since they generally don't provide trays it can be a bit of a juggling act. Next time I stay at one of those places I'm bringing my own travel mug.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 12:14 AM on November 14, 2018 [7 favorites]

Wait wait wait- packets of Nutella are a thing? Packets of Nutella are a thing??? I am clearly not living my best life here.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 12:20 AM on November 14, 2018 [15 favorites]

I was so entranced by the teeny, tiny Tabasco sauce bottles I saw on (used) room service trays at the Las Vegas Hilton that I couldn't resist swiping a couple of unopened ones.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 12:33 AM on November 14, 2018 [14 favorites]

I’m just a post house staffer and not actual crew, but when I show up at 11pm on location to pick up exposed mags you’re darn tootin’ I’m gonna snag something tiny and tasty from craft services.
posted by infinitewindow at 12:34 AM on November 14, 2018 [5 favorites]

I filched a tiny heart-shaped container of marmite, and I still have it! Tiny jars of ordinary things and tiny containers of exotic things are bait for me.
posted by batter_my_heart at 12:36 AM on November 14, 2018 [12 favorites]

Soap, certainly.
posted by Literaryhero at 1:47 AM on November 14, 2018 [3 favorites]

Those tiny jam packets are easy to pocket, though in an ideal world I would like to see Marmite at every buffet. Alas, it hasn't quite caught on yet in Japan.
posted by Juso No Thankyou at 2:22 AM on November 14, 2018 [2 favorites]

Packets of Nutella are a thing???

I'll do you one better: individual packets of speculoos spread, as nicked from a hotel in Belgium whilst bicycle touring this summer.
posted by St. Oops at 2:46 AM on November 14, 2018 [9 favorites]

my friend is on the set of the show she's been extraing on right now and is casually filling her giant handbag with minimuffins at my direction
posted by poffin boffin at 4:45 AM on November 14, 2018 [11 favorites]

If bringing down an empty tupperware tucked discreetly in my work briefcase on the way to another work event is wrong, then I don't want to be right.
posted by cendawanita at 4:58 AM on November 14, 2018 [6 favorites]

Obviously, taking food away is ripe for abuse and therefore usually forbidden, but it seems like there are specific exceptions: coffee & tea. Most hotel buffets have disposable cups and lids for the coffee, so that's like a tacit endorsement for taking a beverage to go, right?
posted by Quiscale at 5:55 AM on November 14, 2018 [3 favorites]

I can't help associating the tiny Tabasco bottles with the army, where they are a major form of currency and minor form of religion. Lifting a significant number of them from a buffet would be akin to a heist in terms of value.

They're also notable for the Brits adding them to their rations packs after years of green-eyed enviousness of the Yanks who have had them for ages.
posted by Eleven at 6:04 AM on November 14, 2018 [7 favorites]

Yay, Wordshore post! I clicked on every single link.

Reading all those buffet tales made me understandably want breakfast, which turned out to be two Darth Vader pancakes with a spoonful of IKEA lingonberry jam, an egg, and a slice of cheese. Now I need a morning nap.
posted by 41swans at 6:13 AM on November 14, 2018 [2 favorites]

Now I need a morning nap.

then it will be time for second breakfast!
posted by thelonius at 6:20 AM on November 14, 2018 [7 favorites]

I have no problem stealing Honey Buns from the breakfast buffet. It's my way of sticking it to The Man. I never get to stick it to The Man. The Man probably doesn't care about me sticking it to him anyway, The Man has those Honey Buns factored into his budget analysis, a whole separate line item for Honey Bun theft.
posted by Capt. Renault at 6:30 AM on November 14, 2018 [2 favorites]

The Legoland hotel has a conspicuously posted price list for each of the LEGO sculptures scattered around each room.

I bet the fountain full of loose bricks and children in the lobby needs restocking pretty regularly though...
posted by ook at 6:31 AM on November 14, 2018 [2 favorites]

Reason number #108 I will never run a business that involves putting goods and customers in the same room.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 6:41 AM on November 14, 2018 [2 favorites]

Reason number #108 I will never run a business that involves putting goods and customers in the same room.

That is a ... weird ... coincidence. A MeFite whose anonymity I'll respect messaged me earlier to say that they had accumulated a stash of ... 108! ... small pots of jam from several work conferences recently attended against their will.
posted by Wordshore at 7:00 AM on November 14, 2018 [3 favorites]

I always demand extra bottles of shampoo and conditioner from the front desk, as I have more hair that the average guest (who is apparently a hairless mole rat).
Sometimes a hotel is generous in response, and I have a few extra bottles to carry to the next.
posted by doctornemo at 7:00 AM on November 14, 2018 [2 favorites]

Obviously, taking food away is ripe for abuse and therefore usually forbidden, but it seems like there are specific exceptions: coffee & tea. Most hotel buffets have disposable cups and lids for the coffee, so that's like a tacit endorsement for taking a beverage to go, right?

The natural interpretation is that it's the exception that proves the rule: Hot beverages are the only ones where they provide take-away packaging, so that's all that you may take away.

Though I'd argue anything that's easy to take away is up for grabs. Don't take 5 bananas, but grabbing a banana for later is fine. A plate full of muffins? No, but wrap one in a napkin and eat it later.

My rule of thumb is "if pressed on the matter, could I sit here and eat it out of spite?" As long as I can justify that I would eat it (rather than it's for someone else, or a completely later meal), I have no shame about taking it.
posted by explosion at 7:10 AM on November 14, 2018 [18 favorites]

One of the many reasons why English people carry an unfathomable complex of grudges and grievances is that, for many decades, most accommodation establishments would offer a single tiny glass tumbler of "fresh fruit juice" (which inevitably came from a carton of value saver own-brand supermarket juice) as - and I quote - a "starter". To further rub in the injustice of how inconsequential the paying guest is, these were the same glasses that you used as a five year old in primary school at lunch.

Nowadays, If I am ever presented with such a glass in an establishment, I will repeatedly fill it, and drink from it, then refill it, while staring deep into the eyes and soul of the establishment owner if they are in the vicinity.

Related: for my childhood and beyond, some accommodation in tourist and seaside places would proudly indicate on their signs that they provided Hot and Cold water.
posted by Wordshore at 7:19 AM on November 14, 2018 [12 favorites]

Friend at a convention: "Did you make it to breakfast?"
Me: "Yeah, it's pretty good."
Friend: "What did you have?"
Me: "Well I started with some fruit, then cereal, then ham and cheese, then the full cooked breakfast, them some toast... and I took some of these little cakes and pastries they had back to my room. And some more fruit."
Friend: "... ... ... isn't that like seven breakfasts!?!"

And so the Legend Of The Seven Breakfasts was born.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 7:23 AM on November 14, 2018 [8 favorites]

I once took a complimentary pack of zig-zags. What got me was the B&Bs' logo sticker on every thing.

Even the shower curtain.
posted by clavdivs at 7:24 AM on November 14, 2018 [2 favorites]

the same glasses that you used as a five year old in primary school at lunch

... say it with me... DURALEX!

With that mysterious number on the bottom of the glass, all different, all low.

I found myself drinking water out of one in a cafe just a couple of weeks ago. Still going, and apparently they're more of a worldwide phenomenon than I had realised.
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 7:27 AM on November 14, 2018 [3 favorites]

I don't eat breakfast, but I will fill a travel mug with coffee, and I might grab a piece of fruit for later.

I love the "Can I eat this all right now out of spite if I had to" rule.
posted by mikelieman at 7:31 AM on November 14, 2018 [1 favorite]

the same glasses that you used as a five year old in primary school at lunch

For added authenticity you need the very slightly rough surface texture from all the tiny scratches caused by it being put through an industrial dishwasher a gazillion times.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 7:31 AM on November 14, 2018 [4 favorites]

Most hotel buffets have disposable cups and lids for the coffee, so that's like a tacit endorsement for taking a beverage to go, right?

Protip: other things (Froot Loops, bacon, hash browns, yogurt cups, small apples, real maple syrup) fit into coffee cups, too, and can be concealed by the lids.
posted by uncleozzy at 7:57 AM on November 14, 2018 [17 favorites]

I stayed at a hotel in Switzerland that had the most spectacular breakfast buffet I'd ever seen. Food in Basel was generally simultaneously expensive and not very good, but the buffet was included in the room price, so I'd try to fill up on as much breakfast as possible so I wouldn't need to buy lunch.

One morning I decided I had to try all the different cheeses in the buffet. I think there were eight kinds. That was a sluggish day.
posted by moonmilk at 8:09 AM on November 14, 2018 [6 favorites]

Oh yeah, we stayed in B&Bs and small hotels in a trip in southern Germany and Austria about ten years ago, and the breakfast spreads were off the chain. You've never seen so many varieties of ham, cheese, and bread.
posted by uncleozzy at 8:13 AM on November 14, 2018 [2 favorites]

...the buffet was included in the room price, so I'd try to fill up on as much breakfast as possible so I wouldn't need to buy lunch.

I have an upcoming trip to China. Breakfast (Western and Chinese style) is included. All other meals are not. My plan is to gorge myself at brekkie as much as possible, and sneak some Danishes out for later. While I intend to eat local for lunch and dinner, and I want to be brave, I have to make allowances for certain... uninformed choices I am sure to make.
posted by Capt. Renault at 8:16 AM on November 14, 2018 [1 favorite]

Taking from free buffets is one thing, but when they've made you pay eighteen chuffing euros you have a right, nay, an obligation to leave with as much stuff as you physically can. Because you're never making that price up with what you can eat.
posted by grahamparks at 8:49 AM on November 14, 2018 [5 favorites]

I don't think there is anything wrong with grabbing an extra banana or danish for a mid-morning snack, but if you're bringing supplies with the expressed goal of feeding yourself for the rest of the day, you're clearly abusing the system and screwing it up for the rest of us.

On the other hand, in the U.S. at least, I don't think I've ever encountered any employee at a free hotel breakfast who gave a crap how much food you took.
Any place I've ever been where they would actually monitor your tray are also likely to be already charging you for the privilege of getting an extra bowl of stale cereal, so it seems like this problem has already worked itself out.

To summarize:
Free breakfast - Help yourself. but like your mom told you when you were 5, don't be greedy.
Paid breakfast - There's probably a cafe down the block with better food anyway, so why the hell are you eating in a hotel?
posted by madajb at 8:51 AM on November 14, 2018 [3 favorites]

There's probably a cafe down the block with better food anyway

I've had people use this line on me. It starts well, until they decide there will be probably be an even better café on the next block and we shouldn't just go in the first place we see. Half an hour of traipsing on an empty stomach and many rejected cafés later you end up paying almost as much as the hotel buffet price for an underwhelming croissant and a thimble full of coffee and are hungry for the rest of the day.

*That's* why you always go to the hotel buffet.
posted by grahamparks at 9:17 AM on November 14, 2018 [10 favorites]

My wife does this, but she typically takes packaged food, and at the hotel chain we stay at most often that means terrible muffins and tiny yogurt. I eat a yogurt, but I don't eat 4, and I've never seen anyone in my family eat one of the muffins. They are dry and terrible. They are just something else to dirty the car and eventually throw away. Not even sure why she takes them.
posted by The_Vegetables at 9:18 AM on November 14, 2018 [1 favorite]

If they didn't want me to take some muffins and pastries away with me for later, then they wouldn't provide napkins to hold 'em, I say.
posted by tavella at 9:38 AM on November 14, 2018 [2 favorites]

*That's* why you always go to the hotel buffet.

FYI, the Marriott MARRIOTT brand breakfast buffets are excellent. Freshly cooked eggs.
posted by mikelieman at 10:46 AM on November 14, 2018 [1 favorite]

Napkins to hold them, pfftt. If there's a hot cup, use that. It's basically a Tupperware.
posted by blnkfrnk at 11:30 AM on November 14, 2018 [2 favorites]

I am not a morning person. More than once, my traveling companions have casually carried plates full of breakfast buffet food back to the room for me. Hotels seem to expect this. This is in the USA, at mid-priced hotels where the breakfast rooms are full of unsupervised children wasting the food with gleeful abandon, so I suppose the staff have much bigger irritants.
posted by elizilla at 11:33 AM on November 14, 2018 [2 favorites]

I ran in over-the-road races several years in a row where hundreds of runners would descend on a small-ish town's hotels the night before the race started. I could not have imagined so much fresh fruit, yogurt, granola, etc. walking out of a hotel breakfast at one time. People were taking their snacks for the whole 3-day race. I ate plenty too but didn't take a cooler full along with me and I noticed the staff looking concerned so I tipped pretty well. I don't think it was the type of hotel where the breakfast area ever gets a tip. The breakfast stocker guy there remembered me a full year later, thanked me, and asked what he could get me for breakfast in the morning as soon as I walked in the door. I don't think they minded the 'theft' but they sure appreciated someone noticing it.

I have no problem stealing Honey Buns from the breakfast buffet.

The only places I've ever had Honey Buns (the actual Little Debbie individually packaged ones) were cheap hotels and jail. They have associations for me such that I do not want to steal them.
posted by Clinging to the Wreckage at 12:03 PM on November 14, 2018 [4 favorites]

FYI, the Marriott MARRIOTT brand breakfast buffets are excellent. Freshly cooked eggs.

omg... please come to Asia. That's the most basic of thresholds.
posted by cendawanita at 12:06 PM on November 14, 2018 [6 favorites]

The packets of Nutella and peanut butter we found on the buffet at the Imperial Riding School Renaissance in Vienna was a lifesaver when dealing with a VERY homesick seven year old. You better BELIEVE we stocked up.
posted by theBigRedKittyPurrs at 1:29 PM on November 14, 2018 [2 favorites]

At catered events, leftover food usually goes to waste, so taking leftovers is encouraged. I have a stash of sugar packets in the car for when they forget to give me some for my coffee at the drive-thru. But filling my pockets with sugar packets to save on buying sugar is nope. I have a friend with a bathroom cupboard full of hotel soaps that she doesn't use, hotel coffee packets of very bad, very stale coffee. Leave the coffee, take the cannoli.
posted by theora55 at 3:40 PM on November 14, 2018 [1 favorite]

It really depends on the context and the company but if I'm confident that it's not going to get the workers in any trouble, and especially if it's the kind of place where I suspect half the food goes into the bin at the end of the day... I have very few qualms.

It gets absurd with the corporations who have minifairs and stalls and recruitment events all over my university and they bring a deluge of keychains and branded cloth bags, sample bottles and just ridiculous amounts of low-quality stationey. I see how much just gets junked, and again, have few qualms.

Also, once they had the mini-Tobasco at some fast food brand temporarily, I've not seen them before, although I'm sure they're obtainable. A number were collected by my housemates, and they were appreciated. It was weird, because I'd only seen them in a video of ration packs before. Just an odd flyby of something that probably meant a lot more to other customers.
posted by AnhydrousLove at 8:20 PM on November 14, 2018 [2 favorites]

I always have a hidden ziploc bag my purse and squirrel out a few bagels or something at continental breakfast, especially when I'm going somewhere like a convention where the price of food is ridiculous. I don't feel particularly bad about it.
posted by gloriouslyincandescent at 8:40 PM on November 14, 2018 [2 favorites]

Everybody talking about eating at mid-range hotel breakfast buffets in the US must live in a parallel reality to mine, or they are the scientific opposite of a “super taster.” I occasionally have to hit one because of lethargy and it is always horrifying: “eggs,” sausage or bacon from questionable origins, and—most importantly—eldrich instant food-service coffee that corrodes my very soul.

I will get up an hour early to be able to go to a local coffee place or diner, and I am not really an early-rising kind of person.

It’s clear the author/blogger lady in the one link was grazing on a higher level of chow, but Jebuz Xmas, I glazed over after the third or fourth place she had a mug of green tea and some free-range scones. I know there are people that treasure this kind of thing but to me it’s mystifyingly stultifying.
posted by Gilgamesh's Chauffeur at 6:08 AM on November 15, 2018 [2 favorites]

ha ha am just sitting at a conference, just had to many jour pastries already just out of greed.
coffee break coming up and more to come.
however, as the person who orders the food, I am quite crtitical of people who squirrel away large amounts. I generally don't let on that I noticed but let me tell you never assume staff dont notice or care. It is just not worth confronting the guest unless the item is of true value. But dont assume it is unnoticed.
I have seen people try to hide bottles of wine in their bags, etc. yes it is part of the budget that there is theft. but that does not mean guests are justified to steal.
A lot of the events I run take place in a library, and there theft of books and magazines is an issue and I do discreetly confront people. Recently I confronted a guest and he admitted taking it, and instead of just handing it back, he offered to have a new one sent through his amazon account as he wanted to read the book that evening.
I did not let him get away with it, and he left in a huff after telling me I was a mean bitch.
posted by 15L06 at 2:44 AM on November 16, 2018

I should add this is a non-lending instituional library, meanign books can be read in the library but we have no infra structure for lending books.
posted by 15L06 at 2:47 AM on November 16, 2018