I’m not sure much has changed in regard to the anecdote you shared. Kitchens are under a lot of pressure to get food out quickly and finish all of an order at the same time.
I worked at a restaurant in the 90s as my very first job, and one day someone dropped a steak on the floor after it was done. I said oh dear, I’ll get another from the fridge. The cooks told me no, just wash it off and serve it, reasoning “If we bring out every else’s meal and they guy who ordered the steak has to wait 10 minutes, he’ll be mad”. My guess was that he would be angrier to know that he was served a steak that had been dropped on our filthy floor and given the choice, would probably prefer to wait for a different one.
In your story, the customer would perceive the service as inferior if their food was late. A cook, knowing that the service isn't really inferior (there was just one little snag), justifies a little action to put appearances back closer to reality.
That last sentence is a study for me. I see it in everybody including myself. Somehow we convince ourselves that our ideal is the normal and the actual reality is an aberation. Then we rationalize little efforts to hide the aberation.
It can be hard to acknowledge the truth about ourselves and accept the consequences. But it is very hard to improve otherwise.
(At the same time we need to be careful of imposing overly severe consequences for mistakes.)
My last boss worked at a sandwich shop in college (Pasadena, CA). One shift he knocked over a 5 gallon bucket of olives, which spilled all over the floor.
He was mortified, but the owner seemed unperturbed. He handed him a broom and a dustpan and told him to get them all back in the bucket.
That reminds me of a story I heard from a friend in the Midwest who worked at a factory assembling frozen Italian dinners. He said that part of his job was to sweep up spilled grated cheese from the floor so they could use it in dinners.
I worked at a restaurant in the 90s as my very first job, and one day someone dropped a steak on the floor after it was done. I said oh dear, I’ll get another from the fridge. The cooks told me no, just wash it off and serve it, reasoning “If we bring out every else’s meal and they guy who ordered the steak has to wait 10 minutes, he’ll be mad”. My guess was that he would be angrier to know that he was served a steak that had been dropped on our filthy floor and given the choice, would probably prefer to wait for a different one.