As noted sometimes the staff can't eat it, heck sometimes you might not want to eat it. That has to happen pretty often.
I worked at a company with a particularly sensitive HR team who would host pizza parties now and then, but they'd only order "weird" pizzas and I guess they liked it, but they were quite miffed when people stopped coming / didn't want to eat some pizza with some kind of fake cheese and unrecognizable veggies.
They were really miffed when my boss ordered our team pizza on their pizza day too, suddenly very concerned about waste...
MarkusWandel · 1h ago
Many years ago, I was on a training course, all typical engineers, and the guy who had organized it, a foodie, had ordered the day's spread from a very expensive and fancy catering place. Skeptical engineers eyeing the spread, which included such things as "cold orange soup"; one of them said "I should have brought my rabbit".
The message was clearly received. Next day and subsequent ones, an equally high quality spread of actual engineer food was tabled. But with no rabbit to eat it up, I think a lot of the first day's spread was wasted.
This was during the pre-2K tech boom years (this dates me!) Really fancy catering at (my) work is a distant memory now.
tmtvl · 14m ago
I don't understand why people will have these stupid preconceptions about food which normally you unlearn during childhood. Complaining about food without tasting it is stupid and childish. Of course if you try something and it doesn't suit your tastes then it's fine to complain, but dismissing something offhand because you aren't familiar with it is rather narrow-minded.
MisterTea · 2h ago
> didn't want to eat some pizza with some kind of fake cheese and unrecognizable veggies.
What I want to know is what ghastly pizza establishment serves fake cheese and what are mystery veggies?
zahlman · 13m ago
> what ghastly pizza establishment serves fake cheese
Most of them, I imagine, in order to accommodate vegan customers. Some advertise it louder than others.
> what are mystery veggies?
There's quite a variety out there. I've seen broccoli, sundried tomato, artichoke, spinach....
duxup · 2h ago
It was from an actually good pizza place that had some wild choices for pizzas.
Inexplicably they didn't order any of the "regular" pizzas from there.
> Then Pharaoh also called for the wise men and the sorcerers, and they also, the magicians of Egypt, did the same with their secret arts. For each one threw down his staff and they turned into serpents. But Aaron’s staff swallowed up their staffs.
- Exodus 7:1-12 (NIV)
Many moons ago I had a girlfriend who worked on an nationally broadcast afternoon show where they often had guest chefs demonstrating dishes, so I would come home from my thankless PhD work to eat Michelin-starred food from a lunchbox. Overall not so bad.
triceratops · 3h ago
Cool story, I upvoted because the downvotes felt a bit harsh. But what does the first part have to do with the second part?
01HNNWZ0MV43FF · 3h ago
"staff" meaning either the crew filming a TV show, or meaning a magical staff
triceratops · 3h ago
I get it now. More staff engineers than I expected in the Bible.
fsckboy · 2h ago
pretty much everything is in the Bible if you look, even automobiles: "and G-d drove Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden in His Fury"
I think the plastic food displays are due to high uncertainty avoidance, so patrons can see exactly what their meal looks like before ordering. Yes you could use real food but the hassle of periodically filling the display case with freshly cooked dishes would be silly.
LeifCarrotson · 2h ago
Some American restaurants have real food displays, too. With a chilled display case and limited airflow (and choosing only meals that keep well - avoiding exhibition of garnishes or salads that wilt in hours), you can put the same dessert on display for days.
At the end, of course, you have to throw it away - it might not be safe for staff to eat by the point it's visibly decomposing from 3 feet away. I find that just knowing the food in the case is destined for the garbage to rankle, especially when I'm simultaneously looking at menu prices and wondering why the meal costs so much; it's interesting to learn that the Japanese make those meal displays out of plastic/wax for the same reason.
jerlam · 1h ago
We should have more picture menus where every single menu item has a actual picture of the food served, instead of the guest trying to imagine the food based on often deceptive and flowery text descriptions.
AlienRobot · 3h ago
There is a similar concept in English culture called "waste".
breppp · 2h ago
Doesn't sound as strong due to the lack of tv captions
Hamuko · 3h ago
Any waste as long as it's not plastic. Plastic's a free-for-all. There's really nothing you can't individually plastic wrap. An apple? Wrap it in plastic. A cookie? Plastic. A plastic straw? You can wrap that too.
wk_end · 3h ago
Quick and very fussy question I'm hoping someone with native-level Japanese could comment on.
My inclination (as a non-native learner) would be to translate 美味しくいただきました as "the staff enjoyed it later". It's both slightly more formal and elegant-sounding than the comparatively coarse "ate", and captures the pleasure implied by 美味しく ("deliciously"). I would expect plain old "ate" if they used 食べました.
Of course, I'm not a professional translator or native speaker! It’s possible I'm over-indexing on the textbook knowledge I have of the language and in practice, to native Japanese eyes and ears, the things I think I'm seeing aren't really there.
zahlman · 9m ago
What you say makes sense for explaining what was meant, but localizers might well simplify this kind of thing (just as they "punch up" other lines) on the basis of the significance of the line in cultural context. Basically, the 美味しく is culturally obligatory here (you'll see similar things in advertising copy), which causes it to lose meaning.
Pooge · 2h ago
English doesn't have rules as clear cut as Japanese's for politeness—especially nuances! I think it's fine to translate it to "ate".
In turn, I'm not a native English speaker, but in the dictionary I searched in, "enjoy" isn't a synonym of "eat", whereas いただく definitely is—albeit a very polite one[1].
It isn't literally, but it takes on this meaning in context. If you "enjoy" ("receive pleasure or satisfaction from; have the use or benefit of" per M-W) food, it's hard to imagine that you did anything else with it (er, let's not explore that here, please).
It's much like how the primary, literal sense of いただく is more like "receive".
AlienRobot · 3h ago
Not Japanese, but I feel if you translated it that way you would risk people reading the article into assuming the sentence could be used in ways that match the sense of "enjoy" in English that could never match the sense of the word used in Japanese, e.g. the staff enjoyed a movie later.
notatoad · 1h ago
this seems to be making its way to western shows as well - when taskmaster has a food based challenge, they often include a reassurance that the food didn't go to waste. and i've seen similar on some youtube shows.
It's the opposite of restaurants, usually they don't let their staff eat leftovers.
zahlman · 3m ago
From what I've seen, it's totally ordinary for "sandwich artists" to prepare lunch for themselves from the ingredients on display.
0cf8612b2e1e · 54m ago
This must be a high end/low end thing. When I worked at a family diner, it was a free for all on the buffet leftovers which could not be recycled for the following day.
spookie · 1h ago
Restaurant staff usually eats before service, no? At least where I'm from.
bravetraveler · 2h ago
Instead: a discount for what you unloaded from the frozen truck last week... and just cooked
butlike · 3h ago
Interesting. Consideration is key; but not above all else. Imagine being one of the staff from the article who felt obligated to finish the food out of some misguided guilt.
stmw · 3h ago
I first thought this was going to be a story about big tech company bureaucracy, where the staff ate all the good ideas.
ChrisArchitect · 3h ago
I wish some of these cooking competition reality shows would declare this kind of thing. One recent competition one "Is It Cake?" constantly trucks out these sort of demonstration items where some true wizard behind the scenes is making a ton of lifelike items that the actual contestants have to guess about just to determine their own order/ranking in the competition. I always wonder what happens to all of the cake from just that portion of the show (and some other segments). The 'Kraft services table' in the back much be epic etc
0cf8612b2e1e · 38m ago
I read an interview from the British Baking Show which said that all of the crew knew to keep a spoon in their pocket so they could sample the dishes at the end.
As noted sometimes the staff can't eat it, heck sometimes you might not want to eat it. That has to happen pretty often.
I worked at a company with a particularly sensitive HR team who would host pizza parties now and then, but they'd only order "weird" pizzas and I guess they liked it, but they were quite miffed when people stopped coming / didn't want to eat some pizza with some kind of fake cheese and unrecognizable veggies.
They were really miffed when my boss ordered our team pizza on their pizza day too, suddenly very concerned about waste...
The message was clearly received. Next day and subsequent ones, an equally high quality spread of actual engineer food was tabled. But with no rabbit to eat it up, I think a lot of the first day's spread was wasted.
This was during the pre-2K tech boom years (this dates me!) Really fancy catering at (my) work is a distant memory now.
What I want to know is what ghastly pizza establishment serves fake cheese and what are mystery veggies?
Most of them, I imagine, in order to accommodate vegan customers. Some advertise it louder than others.
> what are mystery veggies?
There's quite a variety out there. I've seen broccoli, sundried tomato, artichoke, spinach....
Inexplicably they didn't order any of the "regular" pizzas from there.
I had always thought it were a generic phrase!
- Exodus 7:1-12 (NIV)
Many moons ago I had a girlfriend who worked on an nationally broadcast afternoon show where they often had guest chefs demonstrating dishes, so I would come home from my thankless PhD work to eat Michelin-starred food from a lunchbox. Overall not so bad.
https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=plymouth%20fury&ia=images&i...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mottainai
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_model
At the end, of course, you have to throw it away - it might not be safe for staff to eat by the point it's visibly decomposing from 3 feet away. I find that just knowing the food in the case is destined for the garbage to rankle, especially when I'm simultaneously looking at menu prices and wondering why the meal costs so much; it's interesting to learn that the Japanese make those meal displays out of plastic/wax for the same reason.
My inclination (as a non-native learner) would be to translate 美味しくいただきました as "the staff enjoyed it later". It's both slightly more formal and elegant-sounding than the comparatively coarse "ate", and captures the pleasure implied by 美味しく ("deliciously"). I would expect plain old "ate" if they used 食べました.
Of course, I'm not a professional translator or native speaker! It’s possible I'm over-indexing on the textbook knowledge I have of the language and in practice, to native Japanese eyes and ears, the things I think I'm seeing aren't really there.
In turn, I'm not a native English speaker, but in the dictionary I searched in, "enjoy" isn't a synonym of "eat", whereas いただく definitely is—albeit a very polite one[1].
[1]: https://jisho.org/word/%E9%A0%82%E3%81%8F
It isn't literally, but it takes on this meaning in context. If you "enjoy" ("receive pleasure or satisfaction from; have the use or benefit of" per M-W) food, it's hard to imagine that you did anything else with it (er, let's not explore that here, please).
It's much like how the primary, literal sense of いただく is more like "receive".
for example: https://youtu.be/_gNZR5IEsAA?si=x5nvoBzC9Xc4fxFs&t=1674
Same thing, no?