Food ‘hoovering’ in lounge

Dropped into the Brussels Star Alliance Business lounge (The Loft) last week for some breakfast before my flight and saw the most extreme example of food hoovering I have ever encountered. The lounge has a very nice central food area with a good selection of fruit, pastries, cold meats etc as well as a bar. The man concerned had a good sized Tupperware type box which had separate internal compartments and he was filling each of them with fruit, ham, cheese and biscuits. By the time he had finished he had a good sized lunch !

I no longer feel guilty about slipping an extra chocolate bar into my bag for my daughter.

There won’t be any food hoovering soon. We will all be banned from the BA lounges unless we are travelling on a full-fare First Class fare!!

I simply don’t understand people who seem to think it’s acceptable to ‘remove’ lounge food in such a manner – in my view it’s stealing.

I remember the old BMI lounge at EDI which always had a big bowl of ‘quality street’ type individually wrapped chocolates and also Walkers shortbreads – I regularly saw suited businessmen filling their briefcases with chocolates and biscuits………. used to piss me right off.

I think this kind of greedy, selfish behaviour should be clamped down upon by lounge staff & offenders banned from using the lounge.

BA have been known to take Gold cards away when passengers were filling water bottles with any sort of alcohol…

When I was dieting, I would ask for a doggy bag of healthy food – I was never refused… and would often hand my own Tupperware to the kitchen staff….

Whilst I admit to taking chocolates, I don’t think I would have the chutzpah to walk around the buffet filling a plastic box……

9 times out of 10, ask the staff for food to go and they say yes…..

When I lived in Dublin, I well remember the theft of a grand piano from a major city hotel. A team of fellas walked in wearing brown coats and simply walked out with the piano – nobody challenged them!!

TominScotland – I remember well the number of people who had expensive cars stolen in London during the 1980’s by two men who had a fake recovery truck. They simply drove up, hitched some Porsche or BMW to their Land Rover and drove off, there were reports that the police had on a couple of occasions held up traffic for them while they were at work !

Whilst i have not seen this in a lounge – food hoovering at the breakfast buffet in hotels never ceases to amaze me. It seems to be the normal thing to do and avoid buying lunch.
Staying at the Cove Rotana last year where the vast majority of guests were Russion or German, we were amazed to see ‘hoovering’ taken to another level. A party of 4 on the next table brought large bags to breakfast and after loading them with fruit, pastries wrapped in napkins they then made sandwiches from the cold buffet and filled old water bottles with juice. As we were only on a 3 night stay using Rotana points and therefore paying for breakfast we complained to the manager, who agreed it was wrong but there was nothing they could do.
I left clutching my banana which i had not managed to eat still feeling guilty.
Fast forward to lunchtime by the pool – same party of four decided the ‘stolen’ picnic was now too warm to eat – dumped the food in a waste bin and went to the pool bar for lunch.
was this greed or just the fact its there we must take it