The Secret Turns of Phrases Used by Waiting Staff

There's hot behind, which is what you call when you're walking behind others so they don't step back into a tray of hot food. 86 is actually used for other situations - if some one's been 86, they've been sacked to a bit of a youth ism. One theory thinks it is from the prohibition era, when the maximum capacity in a restaurant was 85. And so the 80 sixth customer would be turned away. It reminds me of seventeenth century slang, naval slang, where some one down among the dead men had passed out drunk on the floor of the pub. That's all a bit grim. But at lots and lots of codes, as you might expect,

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