For some reason, dining at a restaurant brings out the worst in many people — and no one knows that better than those who’ve worked in the food-service industry…
That’s why when Redditor u/beardedrockerboy asked, “Restaurant staff, what is the dumbest thing a customer has said to you?” Both former and current restaurant employees shared the unhinged customer encounters that made them reevaluate their faith in humanity. Without further ado, here are 19 of their best (worst?) stories:
If you’ve ever worked at a restaurant and had an entitled customer encounter, feel free to share your story in the comments or answer anonymously using this form!
1.
“I waited tables at a popular steakhouse during college, and I would always have the most random customers. Once, an older lady waved me over after the steaks had been delivered and told me, ‘Your A1 has gone bad, it’s runny.’ I told her that I’d be happy to bring out a different bottle of steak sauce and explained that the ‘runny sauce’ was actually the au jus we serve with prime rib. She was shocked, so I showed her the description on the menu. That’s when she said, ‘I don’t want ASS JUICE, give me A1.'”
2.
“A couple and their approximately 8 or 9-year-old son came into the restaurant. The mother told me she couldn’t eat anything red-colored because she was breastfeeding her son, and red-colored food affected her breast milk.”
“She then proceeded to chug half a bottle of Merlot.”
3.
“When a customer’s card declined, she told me that she was going to call the cops on ME because she insisted she had money on the card. I said, ‘I really don’t think that would end up the way you are imagining.'”
“Thirty minutes later, her husband came in and handed me a different card; apparently, she never activated her debit card after she received it.”
4.
“A woman ordered a Bloody Mary. When she got it, she took a sip and spat it all over everyone at the table. She started screaming, ‘Why does this taste like tomato juice?’ It didn’t stop there. She went on and on like I had handed her a glass of bleach, at one point accusing me of trying to poison her.”
5.
“At the beginning of the call, I told a customer that pizza orders were taking around 30 minutes. She seemed fine with that, so I proceeded to take her order and ended the call with a reminder that pizzas were taking half an hour.”
“She screamed at me, ‘Half an hour? I thought you said it would only take 30 minutes?’
I told her, ‘Yes ma’am, here in Texas, half an hour is 30 minutes.'”
6.
“Someone ordered off the sushi menu, but said they didn’t like sushi. So, they asked if all the ingredients in the roll could be used to make a sandwich.”
“Later, this became a phrase we used at the restaurant: ‘That is as screwed up as a sushi sandwich.'”
7.
“I worked at a fancy restaurant that required uniforms. All the women on staff had to wear a knee-length skirt with black pantyhose. A woman submitted written complaints about me several times because I was dressing provocatively and ‘strutting around in a tight skirt’ in front of her husband, apparently trying to seduce him.”
8.
“I was a pizza delivery driver during college. One evening, a massive blizzard struck, and most of the roads were heavily snow-covered. A woman called and ordered a delivery to be placed on top of a local hill. The road was steep and winding through a dense forest.”
“As the blizzard was very sudden, I knew there was no way the local municipality would have plowed out yet.
I asked if there was any way she would be willing to pick up the pizza herself, to which she replied, ‘I’m not risking MY life for a f*cking pizza.’ But apparently she was fine to risk mine.”
9.
“I had a guy order a McDonald’s Big Mac at the steakhouse I worked at. I explained that they only have those at McDonald’s, but I could have the cook make him a burger.”
“He agreed, but then sent it back because it didn’t taste the same, and he was upset.”
10.
“I had a customer who ordered a Hennessy on the rocks, but became enraged with me when I served her Hennessy on ice. She got legitimately upset and argued with me and the rest of her party when we tried to explain that I had given her exactly what she wanted, and then became angrier when I wouldn’t give her anything after that.”
11.
“Not a restaurant, but a deli in New York in the mid-’80s: A couple came in and told me to ‘slice the ham thin.’ I sliced it and offered a piece for them to taste and approve. They wanted it even thinner. I told them at some point, it wouldn’t stay together because it would be shredded, so they agreed that shredded would be fine. So, shredded it was.”
“Two hours later, they brought the ham back and were screaming at the owner, ‘Is this a joke? We aren’t paying for this, it’s not even meat at this point.’
The owner gave them back the money and asked them not to return. I was a teenager, so I apologized to the owner many times.
He told me, ‘They’re just a-holes, don’t sweat it.'”
12.
“This was during brunch at a restaurant I worked at as an expo: we had a very basic omelette with ham and cheese on it. The order comes back for the omelette without ham and without cheese. We asked the server to verify because that’s just scrambled eggs. The server informed us that the customer claims to be vegan.”
“When the server asked her to clarify, she confirmed that she was vegan, and therefore, she didn’t want cheese or ham. She paid like triple for basically a side of scrambled eggs and ate the entire thing.
It’s been five years, and I’ll never forget it.”
13.
“I worked at a coffee shop at a huge mall in the 2010s when I was a teenager. It was the peak era of Black Friday in-person shopping mania, and our mall would literally open at 7 p.m. on Thanksgiving and stay open through the next night.”
14.
“Years and years ago, when I was bartending my way through college, a woman flipped out because I used a newly-washed glass for her drink.”
“She literally thought I would get a ‘new’ one for her, as in an unused one fresh from the factory.”
15.
“When I was working at a restaurant, I had a guy come up to the bar whose lips were obviously swelling. He got angry at me and said, ‘Is there cinnamon in this?! I’m allergic to cinnamon!’ I told him that cinnamon was in the spice blend we used on several dishes. Now, this man had not mentioned any allergies or asked any questions about the menu when I took his order.”
“Right before he stomped out, he yelled, ‘This happened to me last time I was here, too!'”
16.
“I worked in a fine dining Italian restaurant in NYC. The dish names were in Italian on the menu, but had very clear English descriptions. We also took the time to review the menu with patrons in great detail.”
17.
“I used to work at a historic hotel in North Carolina. On Sundays, they had a massive ice sculpture of swans, flowers, etc. They really did a good job of it.”
“I came in one Sunday to see a woman in her nineties doing her best to get her due from the buffet. She was methodically cutting off one of the ice flower sculptures for her plate.”
18.
“I recently had a guest who was upset that they were being charged for a side with their meal. I grabbed the menu and showed them that the side was listed as $2.99, not free. She claimed, ‘I didn’t know what the numbers meant, so I’m not paying.'”
“I thought, ‘That’s fine, save your $2.99, and never eat with us again.'”
19.
Lastly, “My family used to own a restaurant. Once, a woman called in and ordered a large pepperoni pizza, a two-liter soda, and a dozen hot wings. I was 17, I took the phone order, made the pizza myself, and fried and dressed the wings. Everything was perfect. I even made the delivery myself.”
Which one of these stories surprised you most? Current and former restaurant employees, what was your most entitled customer encounter? Feel free to tell us about it in the comments or answer anonymously using the form below!