I’ve been there, losing track of how much I’ve been using my phone and finding that I’m under 5%, and God forbid that I’m without access to the outside world until I can get back to a power outlet. I think everyone with an energy-draining phone has been there. However, what are you supposed to do?

Apparently, people ask restaurants to charge their phones for them? This is actually a thing? Perhaps this trend hasn’t made it to Tucson yet, but Eater wrote about a Facebook post from their Chef of the Year, Brendan McGill, of Hitchcock on Bainbridge Island, Washington, where he discusses the perils of trying to please power-hungry customers:

People waving their dead iPhones at bartenders is becoming epidemic. A service you might provide to a friend or regular has become an expectation – busy service staff who already have plenty to worry about are also expected to juggle a full bar’s dead phones. Folks seem to be taking less responsibility for their personal devices and their respective batteries.

Should we pull a David Meinert and make some groundbreaking policy, say, a $5 menu charge for using our well-stocked electrical charging station? Or do a Canlis and bring guests a charging pack on a platter, with only one to hand out at a time? Alternately, simply decline to charge people’s phones.

The strive to provide excellent service raises the conundrum: if your server is messing around with your phone, they’re not attending to your more dining-related needs, nor those in the rest of their section. The classiest joints seem to be aiming to take the tech out of dining: no photos, no cell phone talking in the dining room.

So, what do we think?

Some places are probably more apt to provide such a service than others (casual bar with an extra outlet in a public area?), but is this really what we expect now from sit-down restaurants? Like McGill mentions, shouldn’t we take some responsibility for ourselves and our battery needs?

This article appears in May 1-7, 2014.

The editor of the Tucson Weekly. I have no idea how I got here.

7 replies on “Wait, Restaurants Are Supposed to Charge Your Phones Now?”

  1. Oh dude, its definitely a thing… Even here in good ol Tuc Town

  3. Restaurants should ban their use, not encourage them by powering them up and disturbing the rest of the people around them

  5. Everyone needs to do what I did. You need to purchase an auxiliary battery, sometime called a lipstick because they are the size of a lipstick that you plug into your phone and it will recharge it. They’re available for about $30 dollars and you’ll find them at Radio shack and drug stores. They can work very well and save you the headache of this dilemma.

  6. Guilty: long ago I began to only frequent establishments where I have access to AC outlets, and free Wi-Fi…

  7. Other than “Burniemak” I can not name names, because I personally did not know them, but have witnessed it on many occasions.

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