Amanda Kelley, junior elementary education major, eats her cereal every morning with a spoon.

Not with one from her own set of silverware, but with one of the many she has taken from dining halls and restaurants.

Dining halls and fast food restaurants offer “complimentary items” like napkins, straws, plastic cups, silverware, ketchup packets and more, to their customers.

Ken Whitney, assistant director and university chef for residential dining, said he doesn’t catch a large amount of students helping themselves to the “complimentary items” in residence halls.

“There’s always some pilferage with any business, but I don’t see a lot here,” Whitney said. “But there’s a difference between taking a few forks versus 10 to 20 glasses. We frown on that.”

Lisa Cannella, cashier manager at Shelley’s restaurant, 901 Lucinda Ave., said she witnesses customers taking forks and stacks of napkins frequently, But the biggest problem she deals with is customers filling up the complimentary water cups with soft drinks.

“I catch customers filling up our water cups with pop and trying to drink it really fast so we won’t notice,” Cannella said. “We have the right to charge them for that, so we just tell them they have to pay for that pop they just drank when we see them doing it.”

To prevent the pilferage of these napkins and forks, among other things, the dining halls and some restaurants enforce policies.

Whitney said dining halls have to enforce policies for the all-you-can-eat buffets primarily because students don’t always know the meaning of all-you-can-eat.

“Some students try to take more than the one ice cream or piece of fruit they get with the purchase of their meal, so we have to tell them to put it back or throw it away if the seal is broken,” Whitney said. “Students just don’t understand that it’s all-you-can-eat in the dining halls, not back in their dorm rooms.”

While students grab at many of the “complimentary items” offered to them, it is the dining halls and restaurants that lose money because of it.

Some money is built into the budget for pilferage, but if it is excessive, dining halls have to increase their prices to make up the difference, Whitney said.

Cannella agreed some money is lost, but added the cost is indifferent because “complimentary items” are needed and expected of customers.

Students and customers take advantage of these “complimentary items” because they consider them essentially “free” items.

“Anything ‘free’ is great,” Kelley said. “And no matter what it is, people are going to take advantage of it because it’s ‘free.'”