How gross are menus compared to, say, doorknobs, railings, or chairs? There are a lot of things we touch in a restaurant, and I want to know why menus, specifically, are what’s gross.
It's probably more about how visible gross stuff can be on a menu because you're holding it up in a reading position and staring at it for a few minutes.
That said, menus spend a lot of time on the table, some of that while food and drink is being consumed - apps/drinks are ordered and people continue to ponder their meal choices as they munch. The drinks splatter, the food drips sauce and grease, etc.
Because of the visibility factor, you're confronted with this information far more than you would be for a doorknob or chair. That's going to cause some to consider the menu more gross than those other features.
Finally, tables and chairs and doorknobs and railings all get cleaned from time to time, with tables and chairs often wiped down between guests. Paper menus don't take well to being wiped down with water or cleaning solutions. You can laminate, but laminated menus tend to be associated with cheaper / lower class establishments.
At a place with a continuously changing menu this is less of a factor as menus are reprinted often, sometimes daily. When the menu is static, paper menus might stick around for a while, accumulating residue and getting more visibly dirty over time.
It's a regular part of waitstaff sidework to go through the menus and clean the laminated kind or discard messy, crumpled, or otherwise unpresentable paper. Many servers will even notice as they're collecting them from a table and toss the bad ones immediately. Apart from basic pride, messiness reflects badly on the whole restaurant and affects their tips!
