A Word about Stacking Dishes

A guest asked me today, "Does this bother you?"  She was pointing at her husband.
I opened my mouth to say, A little, with that annoying habit of asking for sauces and things one at a time, but I'm willing to let it go if he leaves me a good tip, but I realized in time that she probably didn't mean her husband.  "Does what bother you?" I asked.
"My husband read somewhere that waiters don't like it if we do this for them."  She moved her pointer finger from her husband to the edge of the table, where a small stack of used dishes lay.

Ahhhh.  That.

"Not at all," I replied, "at least not here."  I can't speak for other restaurants.  What I didn't say, and feel the need to elaborate here, is that there are qualifications to this reassurance.

Generally, I don't mind when a guest stacks plates for me.  It does three awesome things.
1. It lets me know that the guest has finished using those dishes so I can pre-bus them.  It helps me avoid that awkward feeling when I ask a guest, "Are you all set with this dish?" and the guest looks at me like I'm speaking Martian.
2. It clears the table up a little bit for when I bring more food, more drinks, etc., to the table.  This way, I have room to place things without having to juggle plates between my tray and the table.
3. Most importantly, it expedites the pre-busing process.  I am able to remove the stacked dishes from the table faster, and then clear them faster before sending them to dish.

However, there are occasions when nothing bothers me MORE than a guest stacking dishes for me.
1. Do not stack dishes for me INTO MY HANDS.  I am not a party clown.  My job is to bring you tasty food so that you don't have to cook it, NOT to entertain you by wildly balancing a high, precarious stack of plates, bowls, forks, knives, and glasses so that you can laugh like animals when the mess comes crashing down on my head. 
2. Do not stack dishes for me ONTO MY TRAY.  It's all right if you're trying to help and set them up on the table - consolidating there is not a problem, because I can rearrange them onto my tray however I see fit.  However, since I am going to have to carry the tray of dishes back to dish, I need to ensure the tray is properly balanced.  If you're stacking them all haphazardly onto my tray, I end up with a slightly less troublesome version of problem #1 (see above).
3. Do not stack dishes in a clearly illogical fashion.  It's not funny.  Seriously.  I've had guests arrange their dishes like this, and then laugh when they told me "we helped you!":
Four glasses, set rim to rim.  Above the glasses, a large round plate.  Above the plate, three more glasses.  On top of the glasses, another three large plates, several forks and knives, a few napkins, and who knows what kind of seafood.  On top of that mixture, a bowl, and in the bowl, leftover dessert.  It was the Leaning Tower of Accident-Waiting-to-Happen.
Often, guests will unwittingly stack dishes in hazardous ways, and genuinely believe they were helping.  How can you be so blind, so inexperienced, so utterly short-circuited as to think that putting large plates on top of smaller bowls is HELPFUL and LOGICAL?

So, yes, usually your stacking of the dishes is helpful to me.  So long as you follow the simple, common sense-based rules laid out above. 

P.S.
Sometimes, for fun, I imagine my guests trying to carry the dishes back for me, the way they've stacked them.  It's like watching Looney Toons in my head.  Minus the anvil flattening them.
Maybe in the next daydream...