"Skip the Stuff" is Stupid

 New York City has passed a "Skip the Stuff" bill. This bill is aimed at reducing plastic waste associated with carryout food orders. Restaurants and delivery services will be fined for putting items like condiments and utensils in carryout orders that are not requested by the customers. 

This is a law written by and pushed by people who have never worked in a restaurant. They don't even have a clue about how the carryout food business operates. The people involved in passing this environmentally friendly, yet human being hostile bill don't know anything about the average carryout consumer.

I can tell without looking at a picture, that this bill was crafted by a group of guilt-ridden white liberal activists with the appropriate number of minorities included to make it look right. I can also tell you that there is a pattern in condiment and carryout utensil needs requested by customers that can be defined by racial and socio-economic characteristics. 

In 1975 I ran a Waffle House at the Golfair Boulevard exit on I-95 in Jacksonville, Florida for a couple of months while trying to train a new manager. About 30% of our business was carryout. On weekends, the percentage was even higher. This was at the height of the CB radio craze. People would get carryout orders and then sit in their cars in the parking lot and talk to their friends in the parking lot on their CB radios. Before leaving, they would throw the trash from their orders out onto the pavement. I ran the only Waffle House that had an employee whose job it was to spend two or three hours every morning cleaning the parking lot. No customer ever came back inside and said, "You gave me too many napkins." or "Here's that extra straw back."

In over fifty (50) years in the restaurant business, absolutely NOBODY ever called and told me "You gave me too many condiments." That's no one, no person, zero, zilch, nada, the null set, not a soul. By now even the slow among you can get the picture. However, I had more calls than I can count about not enough condiments or not enough utensils. 

The "Skip the Stuff" bill is a jobs program. To prevent being fined, restaurants will have to hire someone just to take care of the condiment situation. This will require an increase in prices to reduce the amount of condiments and utensils being distributed.

This is a typical government decision. It attacks a problem that only a few dumbasses in the government can imagine exists. The same government that banned everything but takeout during COVID, now wants to destroy takeout. Gilbert's Law says, "There is nothing in your life so small that the government doesn't want to control it."

If the government believes that carryout orders all contain the straws that will break the camel's back, why not just put a $1 "environmental charge" on straws? Why not treat straws like tires? When you buy tires, they make you pay a disposal fee. Why won't the government tax straws?  Because the demographics of straw users are the same as those of the swing voters that keep liberals in power. 

Why doesn't New York City just ban takeout orders? Why doesn't the city fight crime as boldly as they fight straws and extra ketchup? See paragraph above!

Are extra condiments evil? I just checked the drawer in our kitchen where I keep extra condiments. There are 8 packs of BBQ sauce, 5 packs of ketchup, 6 packs of teriyaki sauce and a couple of plastic spoons. I don't have to open a new bottle of sauce if all I need is enough for one sandwich. If I lived in New York City, the police would be staking out the house.  Memo to self: Pick up a couple of straws at Cookout.