Although it is important not to compromise one’s standards—especially when paying for something—being picky can sometimes cross the line. No matter what these customers were asking for, what they really needed was a chill pill.
1. He Landed In The Thick Of It
I watched this guy come into the Wendy's and order a milkshake. It was standard stuff, except he came back with his girlfriend 10 minutes later with about one-tenth of the milkshake left in the cup and complained that the consistency was too “milky”.
He explained that a milkshake is a flavored, cold drink, and if they wanted a thick shake, they should have ordered a “thickshake”. Oh, but then the whole situation took a wild turn.
Without missing a beat, the employee picked up a caramel sauce bottle, and squeezed it in the woman’s face, then flicked some sprinkles into the caramel sauce dripping from her forehead for effect. He lost his job almost immediately, but I'm sure he thought it was worth it.
I sure did.
2. Well Done
Where I worked, people would often ask for their "undercooked" burgers to be remade. It was usually no big deal, but every once in a while, you would get a ridiculous customer.
This one time, a customer came up to the counter and told us their burger was undercooked and demanded we re-cook it.
Unfortunately, they decided not to tell us until they were three-quarters done with the food. So, my manager happily obliged and had their burger remade. But he had the perfect trick up his sleeve.
After cooking the burger, he cut it into four pieces and cheekily presented the customer with a fresh quarter of a burger—well done. The look on their face was pure justice.
3. Comparing Pineapples To Oranges
I worked at an Italian restaurant as a waitress. 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 almost burst out laughing.
It had diced tomatoes, pineapples, and ham—exactly what the menu stated. I showed her this, and she said, "What are you talking about? These are yellow! Pineapples are orange"!
I was pretty confused, so I went to fetch my manager.
He tried explaining that pineapples are quite yellow—not orange—and if she didn't like it, she could order something else on the house. She got mad and said no, that she wanted the Hawaiian pizza, but with the right pineapples.
She started explaining what they looked like, and I said, "Wait, do you mean ORANGES," since she completely described oranges. She said, "NO, PINEAPPLES," and started describing oranges again. At that point, I took my phone out, Googled oranges and pineapples, and showed her.
She pointed at the oranges and yelled at the top of her lungs, "YES, THOSE I want those". My manager told her we do not have those and that she could either pick something else or eat what she had. She left.
4. It Matters How You Slice It
A dude ordered a pizza that had fresh jalapenos on it; they were cut lengthwise.
When I gave it to him, he flipped out and asked why we put bell peppers on it. I told him they were jalapenos, but he wasn’t having it.
This guy barged right into the back kitchen and began mouthing off at the chef. He said he couldn’t believe he didn’t know the difference between bell peppers and jalapenos. The chef took out a whole jalapeno and said, “This is a jalapeno, right"? The guest replied, “Yeah”.
Then, the chef cut it as it appeared on the pizza and said, “And that’s what you have, right"? The guest had a stunned look on his face and said, “…Yeah”. He left me an awful tip.
5. Sizzling Mad
Once, I had a guy order a Grade 9 Wagyu scotch fillet medium rare. We sold this steak for $63. He got the steak and cut it into tiny pieces because it was slightly under medium rare. It was a truly infuriating move. 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 doneness.
So, we got this $60+ steak back in pieces and had to cook another one for this guy, and we did. I couldn't believe what he did next. He did the exact same thing. He cut it into tiny pieces and said it was undercooked. This guy had now squandered $120 worth of food.
The whole kitchen was livid. But he wasn't done yet.
He then ordered a pasta dish, which I made and sent out. The guy ate the entire thing and said it was garbage. When he went 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. However, thinking of that guy really gets me mad.
6. Bare Bones Diet
A trio of ladies ordered a pork sandwich and two cheeseburgers.
It sounded like a normal order, but it wasn’t.
They were on the Atkins diet, so they wanted no buns, no cheese, and no toppings of any sort. So, I brought out three plates, two with just patties and one with a pile of pork. Then they asked, "What is this? This is NOT what I ordered"!
I said, “Well, ma'am, that's a pork sandwich minus the onions, coleslaw, cheese, bun, and fries”. I’m not really sure what they were expecting.
7. They All Scream For Ice Cream
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, then stay there for the remainder of the day. One day, I was stationed at the "playground," which was one of the worst places to be.
Children at that location would run rampant throughout the park while their parents sat around on benches, chatting with friends or just not paying attention to what their children were doing.
I would 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. I would then tell them to go ask their parents for some money if they wanted ice cream.
On this one particular day, it was exceptionally hot. One kid had a full-out temper tantrum when I told him I couldn't just give him ice cream.
He was on the floor crying and screaming, and I just continued to help other customers around his howling body that was sprawled on the ground.
The brat finally pulled himself together and went to find his mother. About 15 minutes later, Bratty and his mom strolled over to the cart.
The child was sniffling and happy that he persuaded his mother to get him ice cream. They started checking out the selections. We had about 15 different ice cream options, all with prices clearly marked.
The kid picked out the most expensive option, and the mom was like, “Whatever you want, sweet baby".
I handed her the ice cream, and she unwrapped it and handed it to him. He immediately started drooling and slobbering all over it. It was a day that was hot, so it started melting quickly.
She asked me how much it was, and I told her, gesturing toward the clearly marked sign. She freaked out.
She started screaming at me about how she was not paying that much. I was just like, "Sorry, ma'am, there's nothing I can do. He already started eating it". She started flipping out at me and finally gave me the money, all in change, mostly pennies and nickels.
Oh, but it got worse after she asked for napkins.
The park wouldn't let us hand out napkins because too many people litter, 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.
I politely explained why we didn’t have napkins and apologized for the inconvenience.
This woman went bananas. She grabbed the now disgusting drippy ice cream from her son's mouth—who started another temper tantrum—this time with better reason—threw it at me, reached into my tip jar, and pulled out the money. She stomped away with her crying son.
I had to try and wipe the ice cream off my shirt using 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.
8. She Was Left Crushed
When I was an employee at Dairy Queen, I knew how to whip up some truly amazing Blizzards.
This lady came through the drive-thru 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 lifeless mouse.
She stated, "The Oreos are too pulverized. I want another". The Oreos come pre-shredded, but whatever.
They cost us 25 cents to make, so I made her another one. I mixed it for about half a second, leaving massive chunks of Oreo on top, barely mixed in. I handed it to her, and she said it looked perfect. But then I realized her sneaky, 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 just smiled. I was going to enjoy this. I said, "I'm sorry, the Oreos are too pulverized," and threw it away right in front of her.
9. We Cooked The Cluck Out Of It
We sent out an order of grilled chicken that a customer had requested.
We made sure it was well done as they wanted, so we left the chicken on for a little bit extra before sending it out. The customer sent it back, saying it was uncooked. We were all confused, but we were going to make sure it was cooked this time.
The chicken got thrown in the microwave for a minute, then back on the grill for another few minutes. The meal was then sent out again. We were all getting the feeling that this picky customer just wanted to get her meal for free. The customer sent it back again for a second time, stating that the chicken was still raw.
All the line cooks were mad at that point, as the chicken couldn’t get any more cooked without being burnt. Still, they weren't about to give this lady a free meal. We ended up cutting it into cubes, per our manager’s order. We microwaved it for a few minutes and grilled it again for even longer.
The customer still complained but ended up eating this disgusting chicken. The chicken, at that point, must have been like eating warm sawdust.
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10. A Tuna Travesty
I was a line cook in a fairly upscale seafood restaurant. Once in the middle of a busy Saturday dinner rush, we got an order for an ahi tuna tartare.
The way we plated our tartare was pretty elaborate and took a good seven minutes to create. I happened to be tasked with building the tartare that day. I sent it out, and it was beautiful.
There were wasabi and sriracha aioli designs surrounding the slices of cucumber, and seaweed salad and ginger piled around the perfectly stacked raw tuna marinated in ponzu and eel sauce.
I sent it out the window, and it came back almost immediately. The reason why shook me. The lady who had ordered it "doesn't do raw fish". She requested we sauté the fish and rebuild the plate for her with a gross pile of well-done cooked tuna chunks slopped in the middle.
Freepik, stockking
11. Stuff It Lady
I worked at a restaurant where we offered a grilled two-pound lobster for $60.
It was hefty enough, but you could also get it stuffed with crab meat and bread crumbs for an additional $10. So, a woman at my table inquired about the additional price and said, "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 basic grilled lobster.
As it turned 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 it! BIG MISTAKE.
She ate the ENTIRE lobster and then waved me over and said, "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.
Her reasoning made me want to roll my eyes. She said that it seemed like we had removed a lot of the lobster to fill it with bread crumbs.
At that 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 mad.
We remade it, didn't charge her for the second one, and even tried to comp her dessert to keep her happy.
But that wasn't the worst part. After all that, she 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.
12. Mussel Madness
A horrible woman came in and ordered mussels.
After my friend brought their plate out, the woman claimed that the kitchen took the meat out of the shells. My friend tried 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 spread out the shells and meat on the tablecloth to prove her point.
She discovered that she was wrong and stormed out. The awkward part was that the woman was at a table with three other friends who were mortified and paid for the meal leaving a HUGE tip.
13. A Few Sandwiches Short Of A Picnic
I used to work for a sandwich restaurant where you filled out your order on a paper bag and wrote your name on it.
When it was done, we would call out your name, and you would come to pick it up. The sandwich-making process took about five minutes, so most people would go and fill up their drinks and sit down to wait, but some entitled folks did not do this.
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 those sandwiches were approaching.
Then, they would settle in and start wolfing them down.
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. Meanwhile, the people whose sandwiches had been taken would begin to do the same.
We would have to make a ton of replacement sandwiches because a group of idiots didn’t understand the concept that if they didn't fill out the bag for that sandwich, and if their name wasn’t on it, it's not theirs.
14. Trim The Fat
I had a guy eat his entire 14-ounce prime rib—but he did it in the most peculiar way. He had made a pile of the fat on his plate and asked me to weigh it so he could have a pro-rated refund equivalent to the weight of the fatty bits.
Roasted prime rib contains a ring of fat in the middle and is often served with some fat at the tip.
People usually enjoy eating the fat with the meat. By itself, the fat probably didn’t weigh much, but after the guy had ravaged his plate, the pile of disembodied fat resembled a neat stack of biological debris.
15. Burrito Bust
I was the assistant manager at a burrito place.
During our annual town festival, it got packed. There were 30 chairs in the place, and there would easily be twice as many people waiting for meals; the line would run out of the door.
One day, it was so busy that we were just yelling for names, handing people their orders, and politely explaining that we were breaking the fire code and we needed the customers to head outside to the festival tables.
We had a guy complain about the wait, and our cashier told him we were working on it.
He got his order and immediately asked for it to be remade. He said with the wait, he knew his food was cold. So, we made it a priority and rushed it out in a few seconds.
He then went to stand in the window and eat. I don't have time to argue with him. I started fuming when I saw him coming back to the cash.
He began whining about getting a burrito replacement because his was wrong. He wouldn’t tell me how or why it was wrong, it was just wrong. The owner came flying out of the kitchen, pulled the register open, and pulled out $20.
He walked over, pulled the half-eaten $7 burrito out of the guy’s hands, handed him the bill, and told him to get 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.
16. Go Somewhere Else
I was hired to work in a casino buffet in the kitchen as a cook. In our orientation we were told that "the customer is not always right, but the customer is always the customer". Part of my duties included maintaining the area where my food was displayed and self-served.
As we all know, a buffet is a restaurant where patrons walk around choosing their meals from the offerings in the buffet. There was one man who came in and asked for deviations from our normal offerings. He wanted certain dishes prepared differently to his taste. This wasn’t a health question and we did in fact make adjustments for people with specific health problems.
This guy came in all the time and the employees always indulged his every whim.
He even would order a whole pizza to his liking, take the whole thing to his table and sit for hours nibbling the toppings. When management heard about what was happening he was informed that he would choose from our offerings but there would be no more adjustments.
He was not happy and complained loudly that he had been able to have it his way, so to speak. Luckily, my managers had the perfect comeback. He was advised that if he wanted to order his meal he could go upstairs to one of the other restaurants.
17. An Adult Behaving Like A Child
I had dinner with a crazy family friend who refused to eat anything brought to the table. We were at an old country-style restaurant that didn’t have menus; you eat what they bring out. She insisted that they make her special portions of their traditional recipe dishes, prepared precisely how she wanted them.
She then went back to the kitchen to supervise that they were following her instructions exactly. She told us—with pride—that she had them remake her vegetables three times. I was 12, and it was my birthday dinner. I’ve never been so embarrassed. I asked the waiter to take me into the kitchen.
I told my folks that after she went back, I wanted to see the big kitchen—but I had other intentions. What I actually did was apologize to all the cooking and wait staff for my guest.
18. Get Out Of My Hair!
I used to be a cook for an extremely busy Denny's.
It was basically the cult spot to go to. At the time, I had bright pink hair. One day, when things were tapering down a bit, before the bar rush, my other cook for the shift took a break, leaving just me.
One of the waitresses came back saying that one of her customers had found a hair in her french toast.
I saw the plate. Everything had been eaten aside from two little pieces, with a long black hair between them. I made her a new order of French toast, bacon, and hashbrowns and brought it back to the table.
As I put it down, I got my revenge. I told her, "Here is your remade order. I would like to point out that your waitress has short blond hair". I removed my hat and said, "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 soup kitchen".
I then went back to my line.
My night manager and general manager were both huge stoners at the time and thought the whole thing was hilarious.
19. Salad Swindlers
I did a rather large takeout order for a family; it was around $65 to $75. They didn't tip, which sucked, but it was takeout. I was pretty shocked when they came in four days later. They were carrying the salad—the cheapest thing on the menu—and started complaining it wasn't fresh.
It looked like they had left it sitting on the dashboard.
The bartender came and got me out of the kitchen. She was a sweet girl who didn’t really have the mean side you needed to deal with ripoffs. They wanted a full refund and gave me the receipt. They had used something to cut off the date and time I made their food.
I looked at the receipt, and I asked where the rest of the food was if they wanted a full refund. Before they could even answer, I told them that I had personally made their food four 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 didn’t like my food.
20. Hiding Out Hooligans
I used to work at The Outback. There was a family who the wait staff knew well and their behavior was absolutely diabolical. At least twice in the past, they had ordered, eaten, then disappeared in the bathroom until the bussers cleared the table thinking they were gone.
That's when they'd put their plan into action.
They would then demand a refund, as they hadn't finished eating because the WHOLE FAMILY decided they had to take a raging pee at the same time. The first time I saw the family, I had several servers and the manager tell me their story, point out their table, and told me not to bus 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. We never saw them again as long as I worked there.
21. A Journey For Some General Tso’s
I used to deliver Chinese food. One night, I delivered to some guys who were obviously tripping.
The guy who answered the door's pupils were popping out of his eyes, and his friend had built a fort out of what I'm pretty sure was a combination of pillows and garbage bags. The delivery went OK.
I tried to act very nonchalant about the whole interaction.
I didn't want to freak them out. And yet, we still got a call from them later. My boss did not speak the best English, and what ended in a shouting match over the phone turned into a journey for me. The guy was demanding a refund because his food was bad, so my boss was happy to oblige under one condition—we get the food back.
So, I ventured back out to their humble abode, wishing I'd bought some form of self-defense for driving delivery in such a bad neighborhood.
I came to the door, and Mr Pupils was much less friendly this time. He asked me, "What is up, man, is this some kind of sick joke"?
I laughed and said, "No man, they really want the food back". However, this was not why he was upset.
I told him, "That's just some Buddha man. Looking at things from a different perspective, ya know"? Apparently, I was wrong.
He informed me it was a Chinese threat and that they had contaminated his food. There I was, stuck, and this guy wouldn't give me his half-eaten General Tso's meal because he was saving it "for the FDA".
I didn’t want the stuff, but my boss paid me well and was always flexible with my college schedule. So, I told him that he had the right to do that and that I wanted to call my boss to let him know I couldn't get it back.
I stepped outside, and he slammed the door on me.
My boss said, “Don't worry about it," and I really should have just left, but I wanted to let this guy know it was OK since he was tripping. I knocked, and he opened the door and flung the General Tso all over me.
I just kinda stood there, making eye-to-eye contact with this guy. Then he said, "Be sick, you traitor," and closed the door.
22. His Theory Went Up In Flames
The only pizza we had at our restaurant was a simple Margherita pizza. One guy had me make him a meat lovers/combo pizza with white sauce, which we didn’t have. So, I had to reduce some Alfredo sauce.
It took roughly 15–20 minutes to make, and he sent it back because the bottom of the pizza was too dark for him.
He insisted I cooked it too close to the flames, and that's why it tasted too burnt for him. The issue was that we used a three-deck conventional oven with no flames in sight.
23. What A Piece Of Trash
When I worked at a restaurant in Cincinnati throughout high school, I got to see some interesting things. I worked at a family-owned restaurant that was a Tex-Mex place that had good food for cheap.
This guy got the taco salad which had a lettuce base, meat, onions, beans, tomatoes, dressing, and cheese.
Then, one could add whatever they wanted on top for the extras. It was a really hot day in the summer, and this guy got take-out. It was a very standard order at the beginning of my shift.
Toward the end of my shift, I got a complaint and was surprised because I didn't think I had messed up.
The manager told this guy to come back in, and that we were going to assess what we did wrong, and if we messed up, we would refund him.
He showed up with the taco salad that had been sitting in his car for hours. When I looked at his receipt, I almost laughed in his face—it was four hours old. The lettuce was soggy, the cheese melted, and the container was watery.
This guy had this thing obviously sitting in his car for quite some time.
He expected us to refund his money and give him a free fresh salad. We refused because it was his own fault. If he had taken it anywhere and eaten it within an hour or so, it would have been perfectly fine.
He proceeded to throw a temper tantrum.
He finally conceded to us not giving him free food. He then walked towards the door with his gross salad and said in a loud voice for the whole dining room to hear, "Trash can’s full". He opened his salad, dumped it on the floor, and walked out as if he got us back.
Freepik, jcomp
24. Time To Make The Pizzas
My older brother was working at a Domino’s back when he was in high school. I was about 12–13 at the time, and I was waiting for him to take me home. I was sitting there, and this mom came in saying she had called in an order of pizzas a half hour earlier—it was only 20 minutes.
When she got there, she was seriously mad that the pizzas weren't ready, and they only had almost half of them done already.
She began yelling and cursing, "Where are my pizzas? I've been waiting for twenty minutes"!
The manager came over and apologized, asking her to be patient, and told her that it doesn’t take 20 minutes to cook 20 pizzas. She got all mad, so he distracted her and gave her a couple of medium pizzas that were reserved for customers who had just ordered.
I would have never given her a thing.
He gave them to her at a discount, just to get rid of her. When the other customer came in asking for his pizza, the manager apologized, explaining that they had a really big order just before he came in.
The guy said, "Oh, that's no problem man. You guys take your time". The change in types of people is astounding.
25. Too Hot To Handle
I used to work at a pizza place that also sold single slices during lunch; we were usually pretty busy. I took a fresh pie that I had personally cut up to the front hot box.
A minute later, a guy walked in, ordered a slice, and asked me to reheat it. I explained that I had just put the pizza in moments ago. It was still piping hot.
I got a “that's what they always say”. He didn't believe me and asked me to reheat it.
He obviously thought I was lying or lazy. So, I reheated the already burn-the-roof-of-your-mouth hot pizza slice. After a minute—the customary reheat time—I took it back out. Five minutes later, the service bell was going bonkers.
The guy told me, "I've been sitting here for five minutes now, and this pizza is still too hot to eat. I want a refund"!
26. Crazy Croissant Guy
I was a barista at a well-known coffee chain.
I was working a closing shift and (as usual, due to our proximity to the local university) we had a line of regulars to the door around 9:00 p.m. We only had a few pastries left in our bakery case because it was the end of the day.
One regular ordered the last almond croissant. As I was about to hand the plate to him, I was caught off guard by a crazy interruption. Another regular yelled that HE should get the last croissant.
When I apologized and let him know that unfortunately the other guy had ordered the last one, this man LUNGED across and over the counter to try to grab the plate out of my hand.
He grabbed my arm and tried to pull the plate away from me. I stood my ground and gave it to the guy who ordered it.
My manager made the angry man apologize for basically harassing me over a pastry, but it was obviously insincere. This guy never stopped coming in to order his tea and croissant, but I refused to serve him after that.
27. A Little Bit Of Heat Went A Long Way
I was cooking brunches at a tennis club because I needed the extra cash. I had the same customer with 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". I rewarmed the plate and sent it back out, and she said it was "great".
28. Sundae Funday
When I was a kid, I worked as the shift manager at a Hӓagen-Dazs 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, so we 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 mother 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—the works! After I had completed this culinary masterpiece, it turned 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 him any more than a ten percent 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 got revenge on this awful customer. 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.
I basked in the look of his rage.
Needless to say, some dude with his kids right behind the original customer grabbed it up and shared it with his family. The original dude was livid. So, I explained that he had 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 cost the company pennies, and the look on that guy's face was priceless.
29. Picture-Perfect Pizza
I had one guy send back his pizza. He said, "It doesn't look like the pizza picture on my phone"! Well, 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—I would have said it was closer to underdone—and shoved the picture at us. We tried to make something similar to what he requested, but if he wouldn't have been so rude, we would have been much more willing to accommodate him.
30. Three Strikes And She Was Out
I was a regular at a local Mexican restaurant. Unfortunately, I decided to take a girl there for a first date. I asked her beforehand, and she said that she loved Mexican food, so I thought, "Perfect. I know the staff. They'll take care of us, I'll look good, what could go wrong"? Famous last words.
We went through two rounds of drinks while she scoured the menu, asking the waitress or me what things were. She finally settled on some enchiladas. The food came out, she took a few bites, and said, "Gross, this isn't what I wanted".
She sent it back, ordered a chicken burrito, and had the same reaction.
She got a menu again, and about this time, I was going from, "Oh, this is cute, she doesn't know what she wants, to, wow, are you really ordering a third dish right now"?!
Finally, she ordered tacos, ate them, claimed that Taco Bell was better, and talked trash about the restaurant and staff, which was a big no-no for me.
They busted their rears to deal with her nonsense. Dinner ended with her complaining that they charged me for two of her dishes instead of just one.
She grabbed the check from my hands, pulled out a coupon, and insisted I use it. At that point, I decided to make my opinion known and declined her coupon.
I laid down a $20 tip on the $60 check. It was a nice tip, but after everything they went through, I wanted to show appreciation to our server, who bent over backward for this girl.
My date saw what I tipped and called me passive-aggressive, suggested I was siding with the restaurant, and hanging her out to dry.
I didn’t disagree; it was the quietest car ride back to her place ever.
31. Burger Beast
I had a lady order a 1/4 lb burger, and she received a 1/2 lb. She only had to wait about two minutes. She brought it back immediately, complaining that she had to wait over five minutes for her burger, which was "completely wrong".
I asked her what she ordered and what she got, and she explained that she got a half pound and couldn't afford the extra calories.
She kept complaining to me, not letting me get in a single word. So, I just walked away while she kept whining and got my manager.
He was able to calm her down long enough to get the burger back from her and give it to the cook, who just removed the extra patty and served it back to her.
She angrily scarfed it down, left her garbage all over the table, and stormed out.
She was screaming that she was never coming back and was going to tell everyone she knew about our "horrible service". I thought that was the end of her, but I was so wrong. She came in the next day with family AND friends, praising our service and product the whole time she was waiting in line.
32. The Color Of Meat
I was working in customer service at a Food Lion. A woman came in with 80/20 ground beef her husband had bought two days prior. When I asked what the problem was, she told me that her husband had bought "bad" meat. When I asked her if it was spoiled or had a problem, her response baffled me.
She said that the beef was pink.
It was one of the days that I got written up for laughing at a customer to their face.
33. Know Your Onions
I had someone send back a sandwich for the dumbest reason ever...It had a piece of green onion on it. We didn't have any green onions in the kitchen.
We never had green onions, so I had no idea what she was talking about! Then, I looked at the sandwich and scoffed.
What she was calling a green onion was a tiny, minuscule, almost unnoticeable piece of stem from the spinach that she had specially ordered to be chopped rather than just placed on the sandwich like a normal person.
I wouldn't have been quite as mad if she hadn't already eaten three-quarters of the sandwich.
34. She Tried To Out Pizza The Hut
Once upon a time, I worked at Pizza Hut. I had a customer come in and say, "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 the pizza would cost more.
We made it and told her, "Here's your cheese pizza, ma'am".
She replied, "I didn't want a cheese pizza! I wanted a Meat Lover's pizza"! She did this many times.
Freepik, ASphotofamily
35. Say Cheese, Please!
I worked at a rather high-end restaurant. A young lady asked me what was on the cheese plate, so I brought over the cheese cart that had a very lovely glass-domed cheese board.
I pointed out to her all the different cheeses and told her what they tasted like.
She ordered the sampler, and I carved out several slices from the different cheeses right there and laid them in front of her before I was on my way. Ten minutes later, I heard from another server that the plate was sent back to the kitchen.
Apparently, the young lady said she "got bored of just cheese".
This “young lady” was an adorable 11-year-old girl with more poise and politeness than most people I had ever met. She was trying her hardest to act like her parents and their grown-up friends and even had me pour her grape juice into a wine glass.
So 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 knew what I had to do. I ran through that kitchen and got every fruit, berry, jelly, chocolate, cracker, and anything kids would like and built a new cheese plate.
That kid was so happy.
She thought she was going to be in trouble for ordering it and not eating it. There was not even a crumb left when I cleared the table.
36. She Got A Raw Deal
I worked in the seafood department at Central Market in a very upscale suburban neighborhood; it was basically HEB's Whole Foods.
The customers have been bred into monsters by this company and its "the customers get what they want" attitude.
This plastic face and chest, leather-skinned, bleached hair, middle-aged, Escalade driving, pink tennis skirt wearing trophy wife got two pounds of wild-caught Florida Key West pink shrimp. It was $17.
99 a pound. These things are bright pinkish orange.
They look cooked, and customers always initially think they are, but they are not. The shells are still on them, so you have to peel them and devein them as well. They're also placed next to the rest of the raw shrimp, and all the cooked shrimp are on the complete other end of our case.
I couldn't believe what this lady did.
They were returned four hours later—just the tails—saying they didn't taste good. They called later—and their complaint had me reeling. They all got sick from them and complained that the texture was terrible and they tasted raw.
Their whole family ate all two pounds of raw shrimp. I'm sure they heard me laughing through the phone.
37. Kosher Crackpot
When I worked in a diner, I had a patron order a cheeseburger with no special instructions beyond "medium-rare". It was brought out to them, and they started complaining that there was cheese on the burger and that mixing meat and dairy wasn’t kosher, etc.
I explained to her that the cheeseburger comes with cheese and that if she did not want cheese, she should have ordered the hamburger, which I offered to serve her instead.
I asked the patron, "But you ordered the cheeseburger, right, not the hamburger"?
They responded, "Yes! How hard is it to find a kosher cheeseburger? This is discrimination! I'm calling up the Anti-Defamation League and telling them about you! I demand to speak with the manager"! I was about to get the manager to deal with this loon when the older man in the booth next to her got up.
He approached us and said, "Ma'am, I've seen much in the way of anti-Semitism in my life. I grew up Jewish in Poland, survived Auschwitz, and saw many people [lose their lives].
It is you, not him that are giving Jews a bad name".
The woman turned bright red, put a $20 bill on the table, and walked out before the manager even came over.
38. She Wanted Her Proper Piece Of The Pie
One time, one of my customers called me over to tell me the sugar pie I had brought her didn’t match the photograph on our dessert menu and that it was false advertising. I then asked her what was wrong with her piece of pie.
She proceeded to grab the menu and count out the little designs on the pie in the picture, which totaled 13. There were only 12 on her piece of pie, so she accused me of having cut her slice smaller on purpose when, in fact, we received all the desserts pre-cut.
39. Bleu For You
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 called me back and told me that the steak was not rare enough. 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.
40. A Tricky Tuna Situation
I had a customer send back a tuna steak because she insisted the tuna was deep-fried. It was clearly grilled and looked exactly like normal grilled fish looks, and we never deep fry tuna. She insisted on a new tuna steak. When it arrived, she insisted that one was also deep-fried and that we were trying to trick her.
She suggested that we secretly deep-fried the first tuna steak, even though it looked completely normal and it was advertised as grilled on the menu. Then, we thought the best way to deal with that situation was by wasting a completely different tuna steak by deep frying ANOTHER one to "trick" her.
41. Hold The Bacon, Please!
I used to work in a restaurant.
I once had a guy order "a bacon chicken ranch quesadilla". I brought it out for him and left him to enjoy his meal. A few seconds later, he waved me over. He peeled open one of the quesadilla triangles and said, "There's bacon in here".
I said, "Yes, that's because you ordered the bacon chicken ranch quesadilla". He replied, "Oh, well, I can't eat bacon". So, I asked, "Well, would you like something else? Maybe try something without 'bacon' in the name this time"?
42. Barking Up The Wrong Tree
I used to work at a bakery.
There was a piece of chocolate bark brought in the next day, and the customer wanted it replaced.
They had put it in the fridge overnight, and around the thinner edges of the chocolate, there were minor fat blooms—whitish areas where fat crystals have reacted to a moist, cool environment—in this case, their fridge. They thought it was mold.
I explained what it was and that it was still perfectly safe to eat, but they demanded a new piece anyway, which, of course, meant they just got twice the chocolate for the price of one for being stupid.
43. Sushi Psycho
I had a customer complain that the Nigiri sushi rice falls apart after they dunk it in a pool of soy sauce mixed with everything they could think of to mask the fish taste.
They wanted the sushi rice to be molded like at the sushi conveyor belt place and served cold.
This was at a mid to high-end sushi place where the fish was FedExed overnight, and people were paying top dollar for the fish.
44. On The Edge
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 waitressing and cashiering.
She 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 them because the pizza didn't have sauce/cheese/ingredients all the way to the "edge".
The family had eaten the entire pies 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, and got the story from one of the cooks. He didn't say a word.
He just slammed the guy's head through the wall and well into the store next door. The guy had to be taken away on a stretcher. The staff and a couple of customers told the authorities that the customer had tried to hit my sister so my dad wouldn’t get taken into custody. Dad didn't get physical often, but when he did, he played for keeps.
45. She Didn’t Know Jack About Cocktails
I was a cocktail bartender. I had a woman bring back a Jack and Coke because she didn't like it. I asked her what she had ordered. She said, "Jack and Coke". I politely informed her that she wouldn't be getting a replacement or refund and to order something she actually liked next time.
She returned to the bar several times and purposely spoke to a different bartender each time to try and get her drink changed. Every single one of them looked at her like she was crazy and then refused.
46. They Were Allergic To Paying
Someone required that half of the ingredients in a meal that they were supposedly allergic to be replaced.
Then, they pronounced the results as being unpalatable. We were told to give them a completely different meal for free, one which didn't use anything they were supposedly allergic to.
They loved it until they found out that their "problem" wasn't going to result in a free meal for their entire party. Suddenly, it was sent back as being undercooked.
Meanwhile, about three-quarters of it had been eaten at that point.
My boss was a complete idiot, but that worked out on the side of justice on that particular evening. He promptly informed them that they wouldn't be getting their meal replaced and still owed for the other four.
The kitchen staff and I had to go stand between their table and the door and look unamused.
47. Environmentally Unfriendly
I made coffee for a living. I had a lady demand that we remake her coffee for the dumbest reason. The reason was that we had to use the pour-over method to make this particular coffee, and our utensils and measuring cups, filters, and such were plastic.
She watched as we began to make the coffee and then proceeded to flip out because we "were poisoning her". She actually shouted, "What are you doing? You can't use that plastic [stuff]. That will kill me!"! Needless to say, we were a little shocked. No customer had ever had such an outburst before.
We asked her what was wrong, and she said that all our plastic likely had BPA and other dangerous stuff in it, and if she drank that coffee, it would be the end of her. 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.
48. She Lost Her Nuggets
Before I was a chef, one year, I worked at a state fair at an "Orient Express" booth. A woman ordered a plate of sweet and sour chicken. About ten minutes later, she came back with every fried chicken chunk broken open, with the chicken consumed, and demanded a refund.
Her reason why was baffling.
She claimed there was no chicken in the breading.
49. A Warm Send-Off
A table of four was seated 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 off-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, 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 went.
Then, I heard an audible complaint from the dining room. The server came back with the barely touched salad.
Apparently, the salad was still too cold, and the customer had 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 straight 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, and the server ran it back out.
The server arrived two minutes later and told me, "She said it was the best salad she ever had and hopes that we add it to the menu". I finished my shift, went home, and drank myself into oblivion.
50. Regular Pain In The Necks
My mom owned a restaurant. A family of four adults and three children would come in to eat dinner about twice a week.
Every time, something would be wrong with the food.
They would complain, and my mom would give them a discount. The last time they tried that, my mom was not there, and I was in charge. They ordered three whole lemons cut into wedges for their soups.
Normally, we don't charge for extra lemon, but these people were getting on my last nerve because they were already complaining about how the food was cold, etc. So, I decided to get some petty revenge. I charged them $.75 for the lemons; we got them three for $1.
They started complaining that I was overcharging them, and they wanted a free meal.
I told them, "You come here every week, order the same food, complain about everything, and your kids run around like this is a park. I am not in the mood to put up with this.
If you go without paying, the [authorities] will be called".
They started saying that they knew the owner, that I would get fired, etc. My response was, "Ok, we can call her right now. She's my mom". They shut up, paid, and left. They came back the next week all nice and without any complaints about the food.
I did get in trouble with my mom, but it was worth it.
51. Mocha Madness
I worked at McDonald’s in college. We HAD to pick up part of Christmas Day, as no one was allowed to be off. A customer screamed at me for the most idiotic reason.
She told me I was ruining her Christmas because we were out of peppermint mocha coffee. Her husband said they would take regular mochas instead, but when I handed it to her, she cried and poured it on my counter saying it wasn’t fair, then walked off.
52. Left In A Stew
I owned a restaurant.
I had a table of three come in and order a fish stew. It would take 45 minutes to make one because it was all made on the spot; it said so on the menu. I also always made a point of saying, "That's gonna take at least 40 minutes to make, are you willing to wait that long"?
The customers said they were sure that they wanted the fish stew.
I transmitted the order to the kitchen, gave them some bread, tuna fish paste, and stuff to get them going, and got them their drinks. Fifteen minutes after I left, the lady waved me over and asked if the fish stew was going to take much longer.
I told her it would be at least another 25 minutes. She asked if there was any way of making it cook faster; there wasn't. I already knew this was headed in a rocky direction. She said other places that she knows never take that long for their fish stew and started spewing names of well-known restaurants in Lisbon.
I told her I understood but that there was nothing I could do and that I did ask them if they were willing to wait. She told me it was a disgrace and that we should be ashamed of our service, then asked for more vino. When the fish stew was finally ready, I brought it over and asked them if they needed anything else.
They told me they didn’t, and I promptly took off to tend to other tables. Five minutes later, I came back to check if they liked it and if they needed anything else. They said everything was OK. I went away again, and about five minutes after that, they waved me over again and told me there were two flies in their stew.
I looked over, and there were, in fact, two lifeless flies in their stew. It was an odd occurrence because my mother ran the kitchen, and she was a hygiene maniac. I apologized profusely, of course, and asked her if she wanted the complaints book or if she'd like to order something else.
She said she'd like the complaints book and to talk to the manager. I was the owner, so I put up with her, apologized, and told her that, of course, there would be no charge. She filled out her complaint in the complaint book and went to the bathroom.
As I was clearing her table, I made an infuriating discovery. I found a Ziploc bag with three lifeless flies beneath her chair.
I waited until she came back from the bathroom and said, "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 [get out]".
She went away, saying that it wasn't hers and that she was going to call the health inspectors to come and shut us down.
I got a picture of her from the security camera footage and sent it around to other restaurant owners in the area.
53. She Fried My Nerves
A woman ordered fries for her and her friend after church. I brought out the fries, and she said, "Oh, these are too cold. We want new fries". So, I decided to make the fries myself.
I made sure to cook them a lot longer and I served them only minutes after taking them out of the fryer. There was steam coming off of them.
The woman looked at them, touched them, and said, "Oh, these are ICE COLD". I had to get the manager to deal with it.
Flickr, Marco Verch Professional Photographer
