Joe's Diner once again offers free food
Joe's Diner, a San Diego fixture since 1996, once again offers free food; it had temporarily stopped doing that two weeks ago.
Joe's actually is two restaurants. One is a traditional sit-down restaurant, and the other is a standing-room-only free buffet. Whenever he was asked why he gave away free food, Joe said that he wanted people to sample his chef's preparations, and if they liked the free food, he hoped they would patronize his sit-down restaurant.
At first people really liked Joe's free buffet, and many of the people who tried it moved up to Joe's sit-down restaurant. Then problems developed in the free buffet. A few patrons took to spitting into the serving dishes. In response, other patrons were given large spoons to scoop out and dispose of any food containing spittle. (The patrons with the large spoons became known locally as spitbusters.) Joe was not happy about the spitting because it resulted in fewer patrons graduated from the free buffet to the sit-down restaurant, but he kept the free buffet open anyway.
Then some patrons started complaining about the lack of chairs on which to sit while enjoying Joe's free food. Joe's attitude was that people who wanted to sit while eating should patronize his sit-down restaurant. One or two patrons left and vowed never to return to either of Joe's restaurants unless Joe started providing chairs in the free-food area.
The free food was available 24 hours a day, seven days a week until two weeks ago, when Joe discontinued it. The reason for Joe's action is some patrons had taken to urinating into the serving dishes, and the spitbusters were unable to spoon out the contaminated food quickly enough. Recently Joe reopened his free buffet, but with only one serving dish and larger spoons for his spitbusters.
Stanford Wong