Being surrounded by hot food and other guests is unavoidable in a restaurant dining area, that’s kinda the point of the space. Yes actually hot food can be spilled onto a customer by a different customer walking through the dining area for any reason at all, not exclusive to this scenario. I’m not concerned at all with who was “meant” to do the work, as long as the employee in question still gets paid the end result is the same. It’s weird behavior for sure, but not necessarily harmful or malicious.