False beliefs about restaurants
Mar. 29th, 2013 10:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ratatosk_ljbackup[from a sticky note -- I might post this elsewhere eventually, perhaps with edits]
I wanted to try to make a list of wrong assumptions about restaurants, and food in general, that I have seen people make. This is partly inspired by the famous list of falsehoods programmers believe about names. These mostly apply equally to manufacturers and restaurants, but I'm not always going to be precise about which.
- Restaurants actually change customers' behavior by displaying signs, or messages on menus, asking customers to disclose food allergies.
- Restaurants displaying those signs are actually capable of comprehending or accommodating dietary restrictions, and in fact even intend to do so if asked.
- People with dietary restrictions are always comforted by those signs.
- People with dietary restrictions ordinarily reveal these to waitstaff.
- Telling a restaurant something about your dietary restrictions is always helpful.
- Restaurant employees will always behave calmly, rationally, and intelligently when people with dietary restrictions ask them questions.
- All dietary restrictions are equally easy to convey in words.
- All dietary restrictions have equivalent complexity.
- Restaurants will be able to answer all questions about their food.
- Restaurants will answer all questions truthfully.
- Restaurants are motivated to be helpful.
- All restaurant employees speak English.
- Restaurant employees communicate perfectly with one another (e.g. waiters conveying orders to cooks).
- Waitstaff who are nice to you will also be good about dealing with the dietary restrictions of people you bring with you.
- The average person's threshold for calling a restaurant "nice" or "fancy" corresponds to the threshold where a restaurant can be expected to deal with dietary restrictions competently.
- The same dish will be the same under all circumstances.
- No one ever changes their recipes or cooking processes.
- Restaurants never change their menus.
- Familiar food from your own culture is simple; "exotic" food is more complicated.
- Modifying a recipe to accommodate one sort of dietary restriction never makes it worse for any other restriction.
- Coming up with suggested substitutions that are actual improvements is trivial for waitstaff.
- There is a one-to-one correspondence between number of items on an ingredient list and number of distinct ingredients in the food it applies to (e.g. "mushroom stock" always contains only mushrooms).
- Words in ingredient lists always mean the same thing, and are never vague or catch-all categories (e.g. "spices", "modified food starch").
- Government regulation of ingredient disclosure is designed to benefit all people with dietary restrictions equally.
- There are precise, uniform legal standards applying to the disclosure of ingredients of food in restaurants.
- Big businesses have an above average quality of ingredient disclosure compared to small businesses.
- Big businesses are uniformly and positively incentivized to disclose ingredients.
- It is very rare for big businesses to keep ingredient details as trade secrets.
- If ingredient details aren't trade secrets, average customer service people answering phones and email will actually have access to those details.
- People with dietary restrictions ordinarily select food on a basis of absolute certainty of safety, rather than a realistic, best-effort management of risk.
- Even if people with dietary restrictions actually are managing risk, they still maintain the same risk tolerance under all circumstances.
- Talking to waitstaff about dietary restrictions is emotionally neutral.
- Okay, it's at least comparably stressful under all circumstances, and people with dietary restrictions always enter restaurants with the same initial amount of stress tolerance, every time.
- Fine, but at least it always helps to have your friends there. [Not pursuing this further -- too tempting to pick on people.]
Here's a more positive approach -- widely held beliefs that are in fact true:
- Food allergies can be of varying severity.
- Food allergies can be pretty severe, and bad reactions can require hospitalization.
- People can be allergic to more than one thing.
- There are a variety of things people might be allergic to, and you will sometimes meet people with allergies you've never encountered before.
- Some restaurants are better than others about accommodating dietary restrictions.
I wanted to try to make a list of wrong assumptions about restaurants, and food in general, that I have seen people make. This is partly inspired by the famous list of falsehoods programmers believe about names. These mostly apply equally to manufacturers and restaurants, but I'm not always going to be precise about which.
- Restaurants actually change customers' behavior by displaying signs, or messages on menus, asking customers to disclose food allergies.
- Restaurants displaying those signs are actually capable of comprehending or accommodating dietary restrictions, and in fact even intend to do so if asked.
- People with dietary restrictions are always comforted by those signs.
- People with dietary restrictions ordinarily reveal these to waitstaff.
- Telling a restaurant something about your dietary restrictions is always helpful.
- Restaurant employees will always behave calmly, rationally, and intelligently when people with dietary restrictions ask them questions.
- All dietary restrictions are equally easy to convey in words.
- All dietary restrictions have equivalent complexity.
- Restaurants will be able to answer all questions about their food.
- Restaurants will answer all questions truthfully.
- Restaurants are motivated to be helpful.
- All restaurant employees speak English.
- Restaurant employees communicate perfectly with one another (e.g. waiters conveying orders to cooks).
- Waitstaff who are nice to you will also be good about dealing with the dietary restrictions of people you bring with you.
- The average person's threshold for calling a restaurant "nice" or "fancy" corresponds to the threshold where a restaurant can be expected to deal with dietary restrictions competently.
- The same dish will be the same under all circumstances.
- No one ever changes their recipes or cooking processes.
- Restaurants never change their menus.
- Familiar food from your own culture is simple; "exotic" food is more complicated.
- Modifying a recipe to accommodate one sort of dietary restriction never makes it worse for any other restriction.
- Coming up with suggested substitutions that are actual improvements is trivial for waitstaff.
- There is a one-to-one correspondence between number of items on an ingredient list and number of distinct ingredients in the food it applies to (e.g. "mushroom stock" always contains only mushrooms).
- Words in ingredient lists always mean the same thing, and are never vague or catch-all categories (e.g. "spices", "modified food starch").
- Government regulation of ingredient disclosure is designed to benefit all people with dietary restrictions equally.
- There are precise, uniform legal standards applying to the disclosure of ingredients of food in restaurants.
- Big businesses have an above average quality of ingredient disclosure compared to small businesses.
- Big businesses are uniformly and positively incentivized to disclose ingredients.
- It is very rare for big businesses to keep ingredient details as trade secrets.
- If ingredient details aren't trade secrets, average customer service people answering phones and email will actually have access to those details.
- People with dietary restrictions ordinarily select food on a basis of absolute certainty of safety, rather than a realistic, best-effort management of risk.
- Even if people with dietary restrictions actually are managing risk, they still maintain the same risk tolerance under all circumstances.
- Talking to waitstaff about dietary restrictions is emotionally neutral.
- Okay, it's at least comparably stressful under all circumstances, and people with dietary restrictions always enter restaurants with the same initial amount of stress tolerance, every time.
- Fine, but at least it always helps to have your friends there. [Not pursuing this further -- too tempting to pick on people.]
Here's a more positive approach -- widely held beliefs that are in fact true:
- Food allergies can be of varying severity.
- Food allergies can be pretty severe, and bad reactions can require hospitalization.
- People can be allergic to more than one thing.
- There are a variety of things people might be allergic to, and you will sometimes meet people with allergies you've never encountered before.
- Some restaurants are better than others about accommodating dietary restrictions.
