When it comes to dining out, customers can come up with the most outrageous and unexpected excuses for sending their meals back. We’re talking about explanations that will make you scratch your head and laugh in disbelief!
When it comes to dining out, customers can come up with the most outrageous and unexpected excuses for sending their meals back. We’re talking about explanations that will make you scratch your head and laugh in disbelief!
Once had someone return a burger saying there was a bug in it. Her kid interrupted with “But mommy, you told me to put that there.”
I had the most smug look as she left shamed.
I worked at an Italian restaurant as a waitress for a short time as the customers sucked. This lady (in her 40s) ordered a Hawaiian Pizza and pitched a fit saying how we got her order wrong. I asked her what was wrong with it and she said it wasn’t a Hawaiian Pizza and the toppings were wrong. I looked at it and it had diced tomatoes, pineapples, and ham. Exactly what the menu stated. Showing her this, she said, “What are you talking about! These are yellow! Pineapples are orange!”. Confused, I got my manager and he tried explaining that pineapples are quite yellow. Not orange. But if she didn’t like it, she can order something else in the house. She got mad and said no that she wanted this but with the right pineapples. She started explaining what they looked like. I said “Wait, do you mean ORANGES?” as she completely described oranges. She said “NO, PINEAPPLES!” and started describing oranges again. At this point, I take my phone out, Google oranges and pineapples and show her. She points at the oranges and yells at the top of her lungs “YES, THOSE I want those”. My manager told her we do not have those and she can either pick something else or eat what she has. She left.
A woman orders fries for her and her friend after church. I bring fries, “Oh, these are too cold… we want new fries”. I go make the fries myself, cook them longer than normal and immediately serve them after taking them out of the fryer. They were steaming still. The woman looks at it, touches it, and I sh*t you not she says “Oh, these are ICE COLD”. Exact words. Had to get the manager to deal with it.
We once had a guest who sent her salad back to the kitchen because the dressing was “too salty”. While the waitress (who was also the owner) was in the kitchen getting her another salad, she went to the grocery store next door and got her own salad dressing. She then wanted the cost of the salad dressing taken off her bill. The owner of course said no.
She never even asked for another type of dressing, she just left and bought another one. If she had asked, then the owner could have appeased her in some way. We made all of our own dressings and I could have whipped her up something that she liked. I’ve done it before. Besides the fact that she got a store-bought dressing that was LOADED with salt.
When her salad came out the second time she complained that the spinach wasn’t cleaned of all the veins and stems properly. She ate the whole salad.
She complained about the selection of soft drinks that we had and how ridiculous it was that we didn’t have Coke.
And she wasn’t very quiet about it all either.
When I was younger, I was a cook for a really popular Denny’s. It was basically the cult spot to go to. Wedding? Dennys after. Proms? Denny’s after. You get the idea.
At the time I had bright pink hair, something to keep in mind.
Now, it’s tapering down a bit, it’s around 1 or so, so it’s before the bar rush, so my other cook for the shift took a break leaving just me.
One of the waitresses come back saying that one of her customers found a hair in her french toast. I saw the plate. Everything had been eaten aside from two little pieces, with long black hair between them.
Now, I made her a new order. French toast, bacon, and hashbrowns and brought it back to the table. As I put it down, I said, “Here is your remade order. I would like to point out that your waitress has short blond hair..” I removed my hat, “I have pink hair. And you have long black hair. Conveniently the same color as the hair you found. Next time you want free food, go to a fcking soup kitchen.”
And went back to my line.
My night manager and GM were both huge stoners at the time and thought the whole thing was hilarious.
Before I was a chef I worked a year at a state fair in an “Orient Express” booth. A woman ordered a plate of sweet and sour chicken, and 10 minutes later came back with every fried chicken chunk broken open, chicken consumed, and demanded a refund saying there was no chicken in the breading.
I was working at Dairy Queen, not necessarily a chef, but I made some dmn good Blizzards. Anyways, this lady comes through the drive-through screaming that she wanted a small Oreo Blizzard. No big deal. When I handed it out, she jabbed at it with her spoon and looked at it like it was a dead mouse. She stated, “The Oreos are too pulverized, I want another.” B*tch, the Oreos come pre-shredded. They cost us $.25 to make, so I make her another one. Mixing it for about half a second leaving massive chunks of Oreo on top and barely mixed in. I hand it out and she said it looks perfect. Her ulterior motive? She wanted the ‘mistake’ for free. She asked, “Well what are you going to do with that other one? Can I have it since you can’t give it to another customer?” I said, “I’m sorry, the Oreos are too pulverized.” And threw it away right in front of her.
As a waiter I had a lady complain that her pasta was too soft, so I had it remade, but then it was too chewy, so I asked her if there was something else she’d like instead of the pasta. So she ordered lasagna. Yup.
It was so awkward because by this time everyone else at her table was done eating.
When I was a kid I worked as the shift manager at a Haagen-Daaz dip shop. It was on one of the busiest streets in town and in the summer we would have lines out the door all day. Most of our customers during these periods were tourists, this is important because we were never really worried about losing their repeat business. One gentleman ordered an elaborate quadruple scoop banana split with oodles of everything, I obliged and whipped up the f*cking S.S.Diabeetus of banana splits complete with sprinkle-covered spires of whip cream delicately drizzled with hot fudge and caramel. This thing had Oreo bits, brownie crumbles, and Heath bar chunks I’m talking the f*cking works! Anyway after I’ve completed this culinary masterpiece it turns out that with all those goodies my creation was almost $15 and the dude was not having it. I pointed to the huge board behind me displaying the prices of all of these delicious items this man had purchased and told him I would get in trouble if I gave any more than a ten per cent discount but he just refused to pay so right there in the middle of a scorching hot summer day in an ice cream shop full of tourists and their kids I held up this magnificent work of art, enough frozen goodness for at least three people and offered it up for sale for three dollars. Needless to say some dude with his kids right behind the original customer grabbed it right up and shared it with his family. The dude was livid so I explained that he ordered a custom sundae the way HE wanted it and I sold it as a second-hand sundae that may not have been the way the purchaser wanted it. All in all the whole thing costs the company pennies and the look on this a**hole’s face was priceless.
All right, server here, this happened to me last night. I work at a restaurant where we offer a grilled 2 lb. lobster for $60. Hefty enough, but you can also get it stuffed with crab meat and bread crumbs for an additional $10. So, a woman at my table last night inquired about the additional price and goes “Ah, well I’d love to get the stuffing, but I’m not going to run up the bill that much.” I told her I completely understood, smiled, and ordered the simply grilled lobster.
As it turns out, the kitchen made a mistake and prepared the lobster with the additional stuffing anyways. I brought it down to her and explained to her that there would be NO additional charge since it was the kitchen’s mistake, and to enjoy!
She eats the ENTIRE lobster and then waves me over. “Yeahhh, I know this had the stuffing and everything, but that’s just not what I ordered and I’d like them to remake it for me. I’m just not very full because it was mostly bread crumbs.” I told her politely that it was exactly the same amount of meat, just with bread crumbs and crab added, and she said then that it seemed like we had removed a lot of the lobster to fill with bread crumbs. At this point, my manager came over and assured her this was not the case. Still, she demanded that we make her another. She started making a real fuss about how “this wasn’t what she ordered” and that the enhanced version of the dish left her hungry.
Needless to say, the kitchen was pissed. We remade it, didn’t charge her for the second one, and even tried to comp her dessert to keep the b*tch happy. And what did she do after we kissed this much a**? Stiffed me on a $140 tab, making sure to write on the bill “The service was HORRIBLE” because I think she picked up on our disgust at her lack of tact.
Fun times.
Stealing this story from a server friend of mine. A horrible woman comes in and orders the mussels. After my friend brings the plate out, the woman claims that the kitchen stole the meat out of the shells. My friend tries to explain that live mussels are placed in the pan, so it is not possible that there are more shells than meat pieces. The woman then spreads out the shells and meat on the tablecloth to prove her point. Discovered she was wrong and stormed out. The awkward part was that the woman was at a table with 3 other friends who were mortified and paid for the meal with a HUGE tip.
I once heard an old man getting pretty flustered and really irritated because he said he wanted 8 french fries and apparently he got 11.
I was slumming it, cooking brunches at a tennis club because I needed the extra cash. Same customer, two different incidents.
The first time, this woman sent back bacon because it was “too salty”. I warmed the same strips back up and sent it out to her again, it was “much better”. She came in the next weekend and sent back her fresh fruit crepes because they were “too sweet”. Rewarmed the plate and sent it back out, she said it was “great”.
Once upon a time, I worked at Pizza Hut.
Customer: “I would like a Meat Lover’s pizza with no meat.”
At that time, that would mean she’d only have sauce and cheese. And this pizza would cost more. A more expensive cheese pizza.
Us: “Here’s your cheese pizza ma’am.”
Her: “I didn’t want a cheese pizza! I wanted a Meat Lover’s pizza!”
She did this many times.
I’ve had my fair share of “I read the menu wrong and want this dinner for the price I thought it was” or “this wasn’t that great but I pretty much ate most of it already” but the most memorable was this couple when I first started serving. They both ordered chicken alfredo and I stopped at their table multiple times to make sure everything is okay. After 30+ minutes, I head over again to see if they’re ready for dessert or their check. The guy tells me they shouldn’t have to pay for their meals because “look at them.” They ate all the chicken and most of the pasta, and claimed the “sauce on the pasta looked gross” (Alfredo sauce looks like thick mashed potatoes when cold so obviously after them picking in it for 30 minutes and it getting cold would do that). I told my manager they wanted it free (which I got written up for), and surprise, they got it free.
When I worked at a restaurant in Cincinnati, Ohio throughout high school, I got to see some interesting things.
I worked at a family-owned restaurant like Moes Mexican food. It was a Tex-Mex place that was good food for 10-dollar meals or whatever. Anyway, this guy got a Taco Salad, so a lettuce base, meat, onions, beans, tomatoes, the dressing and cheese. Then you added whatever you wanted on top for the extras. Well, it was a really hot day in the summer and this guy got take-out, very standard order at the beginning of my shift (I made the food). So towards the end of my shift, I get a complaint, I’m like What the F, I didn’t think I had messed up. The manager says for this guy to come back in and we were going to access what we did wrong, and if we messed up refund this guy. He shows up with the taco salad that had been sitting in his car for hours, the time on the receipt was close to 4 hours old. The lettuce was soggy, the cheese melted, and the container it was in was watery.
This d*uche had this thing obviously sitting in his car for hours. He expected us to refund his money and give him a free fresh salad. We say “Uh, No” It was his own fault, if he had taken it anywhere and eaten it within an hour or anything it would have been perfectly fine. He proceeds to throw a temper tantrum (mind you this is a 35ish year old man). He finally concedes to us not giving him free food, walks towards the door with his gross salad, says in a loud voice for the whole dining room to hear “Trashcans full!” opens his salad and dumps it on the floor and walks out like he ‘got us back’.
What a d*ck that guy was. Trashcan was like half full too.
One time the owner made a meal wrong for a customer. Usually, we replace all incorrectly made orders. This big woman had eaten almost all of her meal and found a tiny onion. She got a meal so you got multiple dishes and brought them all back even though there was only an onion in the almost finished salad. She wanted everything replaced in to-go containers. The owner said no, and she THREW THE FOOD AT HIM. He was on the register and now covered in food. He stood there, looking at her, and said “Happy?” She stormed out.
I was eating at the restaurant at the Four Seasons Hotel in Maui and a nasty old woman sent her lamb chops back (probably a $90 meal) because there wasn’t salt on the table.
She got the entire refund after b*tching to the manager for 45 minutes because the tables didn’t have salt and pepper on them. The food itself wasn’t even the issue I think.
“Sir, there are teeth in my food!”
“Wow. Are you serious? Ok, I’ll come to check it out…….. Sir, those are onions.”
“Well… It’s weird, can I order something else?”
When I was working in a kitchen a woman said her soup was “too hot” and she’d “burnt her mouth.” Of course, she’d already finished the soup.
The soup was never microwaved in that kitchen.
So the chef, being the nice guy he is, gave her some sorbet to cool down her mouth.
She was a rude person.
I used to work at a zoo snack bar. We had some of those ice cream carts that had wheels and we would roll them out to different areas of the park and then stay there for the remainder of the day. On this particular day, I was stationed at the “playground” one of the worst places to be because children would run rampant throughout the park while their parents sat around on benches chatting with friends, or just weren’t really paying attention to what their children were doing. I’d have hundreds of kids come up to me on a daily basis and BEG for ice cream, but of course, I couldn’t just give it to them. I’d always ask if they had any money, and they never did, and I’d tell them to go ask their parents for some if they wanted money (not my problem).
On this particular day, it was exceptionally hot, and one kid had a hardcore temper tantrum when I told him I couldn’t just give him ice cream. Like FULL BLOWN, on the floor crying and screaming and I’m just like what the f and continue to help other customers around his howling body sprawled on the ground. The brat finally pulls himself together and goes to find his mother. About 15 minutes later bratty and his mom stroll over to the cart, the child sniffling and happy that he persuaded his mother to ice cream and they start checking out the selections. We had about 15 different ice cream options, all with prices clearly marked. The kid picks out the most expensive option and the mom is all like “Whatever you want sweet baby”. I hand her the $3.50 ice cream and she unwraps it and hands it to him. He immediately started drooling and slobbering all over it, and it was a day that was hot as h*ll so it started melting quickly. She asks me how much it is and I tell her, gesturing towards the clearly marked sign. She starts screaming at me about how she’s not paying that much and I’m just like, “Sorry ma’am, there’s nothing I can do, he’s already started eating it”. She’s like flipping out at me and finally gives me the money- all in change, mostly pennies and nickels.
Then, she asks for napkins. F*ck me. The park wouldn’t let us hand out napkins because too many people littered and the amount that it cost daily to clean up all the napkins in the park was too much for the park to afford (or so they said). Regardless, not my problem. I politely explain why we don’t have napkins and apologize for the inconvenience and this woman literally flips a sh*t. She grabs the now disgusting drippy ice cream from her son’s mouth (starting another temper tantrum, this time with better reason), literally throws it at me, and reaches into my tip jar and pulls out $3.50. She stomped away with her hysterical son and I had to try and wipe the ice cream off my shirt with LEAVES from a nearby tree, and was forced to sit at my stand for the rest of the day unable to do anything about it.
When I was a kid my family owned several pizza places. I didn’t hang around them much because I was fairly young, but my older sisters worked at the big one doing waitressing and cashiering.
My sister told me that one night the well-dressed father of a large family that had ordered several large pizzas tried to get out of paying for the pizzas because the pizza didn’t have sauce/cheese/ingredients all the way to the edge. The family had eaten the entire pizzas except for the crusts. My sister refused to refund his money, he threw a huge fit and reduced my sister to tears, he kept yelling and demanded to see the owner (my dad).
Dad came out, saw my sister sobbing, got the story from one of the cooks, didn’t say a word, just slammed the guy’s head through the wall and well into the store next door. Guy had to be taken away on a stretcher. The staff and a couple of customers told the cops the customer had tried to hit my sister so Dad didn’t get arrested.
Writing this out it sounds like we were trailer trash but we weren’t. Dad didn’t get physical often but when he did he played for keeps.
I once had a customer that had just had a haircut order food, eat 90% of what was on his plate, and then send it back because it had hair in it. His own hair, from his stupid haircut. I refused to replace the meal and told him if he wants to try skipping out on his bill he can discuss it with the police. Anyone who tries to send a meal back after eating nearly all of it can just f*ck off. I got out of food service entirely because I got sick of a**hole customers like that.
I was working in Customer Service at a Food Lion. A woman comes in with 80/20 ground beef her husband bought 2 days prior. When I asked what was the problem she told me that her husband had bought “bad” meat. When I asked her if it was spoiled or had a problem, she said that the beef was pink.
That was just one of the days that I got written up for laughing at a customer to their face.
Used to work for a sandwich restaurant where you filled out your order on a paper bag and wrote your name on it, and when it was done we would call out your name and you would come pick it up. The sandwich-making process took about 5 minutes, so most people would go and fill up their drinks and sit down to wait, but not a few special snowflakes.
They would come in, order, walk to the end of the prep line and just grab the sandwiches that were there as the actual owners of the said sandwich were approaching, sit down and begin to eat it. The sandwich thieves would then get very flustered that the sandwich was nothing like they ordered and push angrily to the front of the line to yell and complain, while the people whose sandwiches had been taken begin to do the same and we have to make a ton of replacement sandwiches because a group of a**h*les don’t understand the concept that if they didn’t fill out the bag for that sandwich and if their name isn’t on it, it’s not theirs.
I had one guy send back his pizza because it didn’t look like the picture of a pizza he had on his phone. The picture had nothing to do with our restaurant or compared to anything we offered. He walked it back to the kitchen himself, told us it was overdone (honestly, I would have said it was closer to UNDER done), and shoved the picture at us. We did end up trying to make something similar to what he requested, but if he wouldn’t have been such a j*ck*ss, we would have been much more willing to accommodate.
Not a Chef, but when I was a waiter I had this one guy ask for his steak “bleu.” I brought him the steak and about three minutes later he calls me back and tells me that the steak might not be rare enough.
In case you guys are unfamiliar with the term “bleu” basically means it’s so rare that it’s still cold on the inside. Any rarer and the steak would have been completely raw.
As a server, a trio of ladies ordered a pork sandwich and two cheeseburgers. Normal right? Nope, they were on the Atkins diet so they wanted no buns, no cheese, no toppings of any sort. So I bring out three plates, two with just patties and one with a pile of pork. “What is this? This is NOT what I ordered!” Well, ma’am, that’s a pork sandwich minus the onions, coleslaw, cheese, bun, and fries. Not really sure what they were expecting.
Restaurant owner here.
A table of 3 ordered a fish stew.
It takes 45 minutes to make one because it’s all made on the spot, and it says so on the menu, and I always make a point of saying “That’s gonna take at least 40 minutes to make, are you willing to wait that long?”. They say they’re sure they want the fish stew. Alright, no problem, I transmitted the order to the kitchen, gave them some bread and tuna fish paste and stuff to get them going, and got them their beers and wine.
15 minutes after I leave, the lady waves me over and asks if the fish stew is gonna take much longer. I tell her at least another 25 minutes. She asks if there’s no way of making it cook faster. There isn’t. She says that other places that she knows never take that long for their fish stew and starts spewing names of well-known restaurants in Lisbon. I tell her I understand but that there was nothing I can do and I did ask if they were willing to wait. She says it’s a disgrace and that we should be ashamed of our service, then asks for more wine.
So, when the fish stew is finally ready, I bring it over, and ask them if they need anything else, they tell me no and I promptly f*ck off to tend to other tables. 5 minutes later I come back to check if they like it and if they need anything else. They say everything is OK. I go away again. About 5 minutes later, they wave me over again and tell me there are 2 dead flies in their stew. I look over and there are in fact 2 dead flies in their stew. An odd occurrence, because my mother runs the kitchen and she’s a f*cking hygiene maniac.
I apologize profusely, of course, ask her if she wants the complaints book, or if she’d like to order something else. She says she’d like the complaints book and to talk to the manager. I’m the owner, so I put up with her and apologize like a btch, and tell her that of course, there will be no charge.
She fills out the complaint on the complaint book and goes to the bathroom. As I’m clearing her table, I find a zip-loc bag with 3 dead flies beneath her chair. I wait until she comes back from the bathroom, and tell her
“I found this near your chair. If you ever come back to this restaurant again, we will not serve you. In fact, I will spread the word about you and there is no place in this area where you will get away with this trick again. Now f*ck off.”
She goes away, saying it wasn’t hers and that she’s gonna call health inspectors to come and shut us down.
Got a sh*tty pic of her off security camera footage and sent it around to other restaurant owners in the area.
Assistant manager at a burrito place. During our annual town festival, it got packed. I’m talking, more in one day than we normally do in a month, kinda thing. We had a guy complain about the wait. There were 30 chairs in the place, and easily twice as many people waiting for meals, we still had a line running out of the door. It was so packed, that we were just yelling for names, handing you your order, and politely explaining that we were breaking the fire code, and we needed the customers to head outside to the tables set up for the festival. It was “oh my god!” packed. I can not stress how crazy it was.
So, the dude is complaining about the wait, our cashier girl tells him we are working on it. He gets it, and then immediately asks for it to be remade. He says with the wait, he knows it’s cold. Okay. So, we make it a priority, we rush it out in a few seconds, and he goes to stand in the window, and eat. Whatever, I don’t have time to argue with him. He’s back complaining about how he wants another burrito, this one is wrong. I go out, and he’s telling me it’s wrong. Not how or why, it’s just wrong. The owner comes flying out of the kitchen pulls the register open, and pulls out a $20. Walks over, pulls the half-eaten $7 burrito out of the guy’s hands, hands him the bill, and tells him to get the heck out. It was pretty nice. That day I learned, that if you are a big enough problem, my boss would literally pay you to go away.
Once had a guy order a grade 9 Wagyu scotch fillet medium rare. This steak we sold for $63 (I think, it was rather expensive). He got the steak and cut it into tiny pieces because it was slightly under MR. Really massive d*ck move, because usually if someone says their steak is undercooked you just chuck it back on the grill for a few seconds to get it to the right done-ness. So yeah, we get this $60~ dollar steak back in pieces and have to cook another for this jerk. We make another one, no worries. He does the exact same thing. Cuts it into tiny pieces, and says it’s undercooked. This guy has now wasted $120 worth of food. The whole kitchen is f*cking livid. He then orders pasta, which I make and sends out. The guy eats the entire thing, says it was sh*t and then when he goes to pay he said to the waitress “Just charge me for a bowl of chips, it’s ok, the boss will understand because we’re friends.” I don’t know if the waitress did or not, and I’m not sure what the boss thought about it either, because he was out for the night. Thinking of that story really pisses me off.
Did a rather large takeout order for a family. Maybe 65-75 bucks. They didn’t tip which sucks but it is takeout. They come back 4 days later with the salad, probably the cheapest thing in the order, and complained that it wasn’t fresh. It looks like they left it sitting on the dashboard.
The bartender comes and gets me out of the kitchen. She’s a sweet girl whose job was to look pretty and serve drinks. She doesn’t really have the mean side you need to deal with ripoffs.
They want a full refund and give m the receipt. You know how when you rip the receipt from a register the teeth leave the jagged edge? That was gone. They had used something to cut the date and time I made their food off.
I look at the receipt and I ask where the rest of the food was and if they wanted a full refund. Before they could even answer, I told them that I had personally made their food 4 days ago and that they had already pulled a similar trick like this before. They denied it but I just told them not to come back if they don’t like my food.
There was a family who the wait staff knew well, they had at least twice in the past ordered, eaten then disappeared in the bathroom until the bussers cleared the table thinking they were gone. They would then demand a refund, as they hadn’t finished eating because the WHOLE FAMILY decided they had to take a raging piss.
The first time I saw the family, I had several servers and the manager tell me this story, point out the table, and tell me not to buss it until a manager gave the ok. As I kept an eye on the table, I watched them eat, get up, and disappear. Time began to pass. I saw the husband come out of the bathroom with the son, and quickly disappear pushing his son back into the bathroom in a rush. They must have been in there for 30 minutes. Obviously, we never bussed the table, and the server told me the husband had a look of discontent as he paid his bill that night. Never saw them again as long as I worked there.
I am usually a chef, but I like to be well-versed in the hospitality arts so I was taking a go as a server at the rather high-end restaurant I was working at.
A young lady asks me what is one the cheese plate was, and I bring over the cheese cart that has a very lovely glass domed cheese board and I pointed out to her all the different cheeses and told her what they tasted like. She orders the sampler and I carve out several slices from the different cheeses right there and lay them in front of her before I am on my way. Ten minutes later I hear from another server that the plate was sent back to the kitchen, apparently, the young lady said she “got bored of just cheese”.
Seems like a real btch? You just want to pick that cheese plate up, run back into the room and slam that cheese plate in her face? Wrong. This ‘young lady’ was an adorable 11-year-old girl with more poise and politeness than most people I ever met. She was trying her hardest to act like her parents and their grown-up friends, even having me pour grape juice into a wine glass.
So what did I do? I went back to the kitchen because I knew no one throws out a cheese plate, and sure enough it was sitting in the corner ready for the line to snack on after service. I ran through that kitchen and got every fruit, berry, jelly, Nutella, chocolate, and crackers (anything kids would like) and built a new cheese plate.
RAINBOW OF COLORS I tell you! That kid was so happy, she thought she was going to be in trouble for ordering it and not eating it. Not even a crumb was left when I cleared the table.
There was a customer who every single Sunday would send his steak back 3 times. When finally confronted about it by the manager, the man said “If I’m paying 45 dollars for a steak, I’m going to have it sent back three times just because.” So basically he felt like if he was paying that much for a steak, he felt it necessary to send it back to the kitchen multiple times.
Just about a week ago a table of four was sat in our dining room, proclaiming that they were hard to please. One of these co-dependent diners requested a room-temperature salad consisting solely of mixed greens, avocado, salt and pepper, and a mixture of Tabasco and olive oil. While I thought this was a little of a beat, I went ahead and had the pantry guy pull the salad greens out of the cooler to warm up. I made the Tabasco vinaigrette and sliced up the best avocado we had, and put the salad together. The food runner grabbed it from the cold pass, put it on a tray and away we go.
I hear an audible complaint from the dining room (in our very loud kitchen). The server came back with the barely touched avo-tobasco salad. Apparently, the salad was still too cold, and the customer has requested that we “put it in the microwave for a minute or so, so it will soften up”. I double-checked with the server that this, verbatim, was requested by the customer. She, with a dead look in her eye, solemnly nodded yes.
I chucked that plate in the industrial microwave, hit it with about 10 seconds of acceptable radiation, and pulled it out. It was melting in front of my eyes. I threw it on the tray, the server ran it back out. Said server arrived 2 minutes later…”She said it was the best salad she ever had, and hopes that we add it to the menu”
I died a little bit on the inside, finished my shift, went home and drank enough rye to kill a domestic pet.
I make coffee for a living. Just today I had a lady demand that we remake her coffee. The reason was because we have to use the pour-over method to make this particular coffee, and our utensils and measuring cup and filter and such is plastic. She watched as we began to make the coffee, and then proceeded to flip out because we “were poisoning her”.
She legitimately shouted “What in the heck are you doing, are you trying to poison me??!! You can’t use that plastic sh*t! That will poison and kill me!!”
Needless to say, we were a little shocked, no customer has ever had this outburst before. We asked her what was wrong and she said that all our plastic likely had BPA and other poisonous stuff in it and if she drank that coffee she would die. I’m not even exaggerating. She literally said she would die if she drank it.
We then had to MacGyver an apparatus out of other stainless steel tools in order to make her coffee.
She didn’t even say thank you, she just watched us and gave us dirty looks the entire time.
I used to work in a restaurant. Once had a guy order “a bacon chicken ranch quesadilla”. I brought it for him and left him to enjoy his meal. A few seconds later, he waves me over. He peels open one of the quesadilla triangles and says, “There’s bacon in here.”
I said, “Yes, that’s because you ordered the bacon chicken ranch quesadilla.”
“Oh, well, I can’t eat bacon.” “Well, would you like something else? Maybe try something without ‘bacon’ in the name this time?”