When you were a kid did you believe that if you went to a restaurant and you couldn’t pay the bill that you will be forced to go back into the kitchen and wash dishes? was that ever real? Did you know someone who had to go back and wash dishes??

41 comments

  1. I was told that if I made a huge mess in the restaurant, I would be forced to clean it up.

  2. I believed a lot of things I was told as a child. This was one of them even though no one I know of has ever had to it.

  4. No, but I believed check-in and check-out time in a hotel meant you had to vacate your room for several hours midday, even across a multi-day stay.  

  5. No. I never thought about that because I didn’t think anyone would go to a restaurant and eat a whole meal without knowing if they had enough money to pay for it. The prices are usually on the menu.

  8. It was a very old timey thing. There were times when labor was exchanged for a sandwich. People absolutely did things like that. [my parents grew up poor in the depression and grandparents were orphaned were on the street as young teens in the 1910s].

  9. While I definitely grew up aware of this trope, I can’t say I ever thought much of it in regard to whether or not it was actually true.

  13. This hasn’t been the case for like 70 years. The only reason most people remember that is because it’s a trope in old cartoons.

  15. I figured that it was an old trope and most restaurants would have the person arrested.

    These days, I might try to make that sort of arrangement beforehand. (Do some work, get something that would have needed to be thrown out at the end of the night, more likely to work at a stand-alone restaurant than a chain.)

  16. My dad always said that as a joke when we went out to eat as a family. He’d ask the server if he’d take some off if I went back there to do the washing

  17. I was never told this. I thought they lock you inside the restaurant and beat you🤣

  18. I grew up in a small town where everybody knew everybody. When we were teens, one night we screwed up and didn’t have enough to pay at Pizza Hut. The waitress took what we had had and let us go. We returned the next day with a large tip for her and an apology. We were her favorite customers after that.

  19. My dad used to joke that would happen. A big part of why I believed it was my dad met my mom when he worked as a waiter in Hawaii.

  21. I was offered a free meal once to do dishes. Their dishwasher walked out. Ended up working there for a while in high school

  24. I truly believe that if I sufficiently misbehaved in a restaurant, my parents/grandparents would make me go in the back and wash dishes. I mean, they would find me some dishes to wash, somewhere, if it took knocking on doors the whole way home.

  25. Not only did I believe that, but I also believed that eating pizza crust would make your hair curly and swallowing gum would cause your pants to fall down. I was a very gullible child.

  31. I never thought of it as something you had to do but it was something you could do if you didn’t have money for food.

    The idea comes from back in the day when people could offer to work in exchange for food and a place to stay. If you read some of the books from the beating writers you see this come up. On The Road by Jack Kerouac is pretty good. You really could show up somewhere and be like hey these are skills I have and looking for work for food and a place to stay. People would give people temporary jobs to help them out. There is some truth to it in the past.

  32. I’ve worked in restaurants for a long time. I’ve had people that couldn’t pay, but never make them wash dishes. These days, it’s typically someone who assumes we take Apple Pay when we don’t, and they get a look of sheer terror on their face, until I tell them we can take a credit card number over the phone and they call their parents (it’s mostly teenagers that do this). If they are an adult, how we handle it depends on the person. We had an older woman who clearly had some sort of mental decline that came in, ordered out most expensive entree, and didn’t have payment. We just told her to come back the next day, fully expecting to just eat the cost. She did come back the next day, but wanted to sit and order the same entree again. We had to turn her away.

  33. I worked at a 24 hour diner and these bratty teens came in and only had 10 bucks for a 18 dollar order. My manager asked for their parents phone number and one of them laughed and refused. My manager lifted him out of his chair, back slapped him across the face, and then physically threw him out the front door.

    Needless to say, that type of thing would never, ever happen nowadays. And neither would a restaurant forcing kids to do dishes in the back. We are just a much more cautious and litigious society nowadays.

  37. Yes, I absolutely did believe it. I always wondered what happened if the night ended before you washed enough dishes if they would make you come back.

  38. I thought you got to clean dishes, if you were lucky. Most likely they’d call the cops and you’d get put in jail.

  39. As someone who actually *did* wash dishes at a restaurant, I can tell you it’s a hell of a lot better job than being the host. 

  40. I never heard of this in my life and I guess I just assumed if you didn’t pay then you’d get banned or something. Yet again, my parents also never told me the interior car light being on at night was illegal either, they told me we would die in an accident if I turned it on because it was blinding.

  41. Yes, I believed this. Technically does still happen, but it’s much much rarer nowadays.

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