Servers Share The Craziest Stories They Have And How They Dealt With It
If you have ever spoken to someone who has worked in customer service, they will likely tell you how terrible customers are.
If you have ever spoken to someone who has worked in customer service, they will likely tell you how terrible customers are. And, given that we are all customers at some stage or other, we are likely, sometimes, the aforementioned terrible customers.
Servers seem to have to put up with the worst of humanity on a daily basis and, worst of all, do it with a smile. Service-industry jobs are some of the hardest out there, and the workers are just doing their best.
If you learn anything from this thread, please treat your servers well and, of course, tip them adequately.
1. Do not be this person!
"I had a woman call me back to the table because I didnt place her nachos close enough to her. She asked me to push them closer to her.
EDIT: There was nothing wrong with her. She was just fat, lazy, and ignorant. Heres some extra icing on the cake. She was in a group of 5 people and when the bill came she said she would take care of it (to the cheers of her friends). $5 tip on $75 check."
2. WHAT
"I worked at as a server at a ritzy country club on cape cod and this women once brought in a paint chip and told me she wanted her cosmopolitan to be the exact same color as her pink paint chip"
3. Hmmmm
"I had someone order a warm root beer. As in, stuck in the microwave and heated up. I definitely made a face but I did it. Really sucks to work somewhere that has bottomless pop and be sticking one in the microwave every 15 minutes."
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4. Do not hide tips in SOUP.
[deleted]:
"Ahhh, yes. OG.
I worked there for a year. We had 3 old women come in. Each ordered ssb with water....
One water from the tap with round ice
One water purified with ice like sonic
One water from soda machine, no ice.
After being explained to about one type of ice and only water from the fountain or bottled, they returned their waters 3 times before the poor man called them three old bitches and left.
This same guy had one old lady come in twice every week, order one chicken gnocchi and water, and whisper to him "I hid your tip in the soup so the bus boy wouldn't take it". Sure enough, 18 or so cents, in the soup."
5. EXTRA ONION
"I had a 4 top once that one of the gentlemen was ordering and asked for extra onion, and he made extreme emphasis on EXTRA ONION. So I go to put the order in and I have to talk to the chef to make sure he understands EXTRA ONION. So when the order comes out, I get a side plate of a cut WHOLE ONION. I giggle and take the order to the table. I put the orders of food in front of all the other guests and leave onion man for last. I set his plate of food and extra onion down, he looks up at me and starts laughing. The whole table is now laughing. Im like dafuck? Apparently wherever they go, no matter what he always has to ask for MORE onion, and this time my snarky chef nailed it."
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6. OMG
"The strangest request! When I worked for Starbucks, I helped open the first drive thru store in the area so it was a learning process for some customers.
A lady orders in the drive thru lane an iced venti vanilla latte with 22 sweet n lows.
Me: 22 sweet n lows, like two two??
Customer: sigh yes 22 sweet n lows.
Me: OK, please pull up.
Now at the drive thru we put the extra milk and sugar in the drinks for the customers, when in a cafe they would add it on their own. So, the person working the bar looks at me like for real this lady wants 22 packs of sweet n low in her latte? That's what she said so that's what we made her.
They lady pulls up and pays for her drink. I hand it over and tell her to have a nice day. She stops and says "oh, can I get those sweet n lows now?" I just looked at her and said that they were already in her drink, boy was she pissed!!
She wanted us to hand her 22 packs of sweet n low in the drive thru so that she could take them home."
7. Salad, pasta, same thing?
"I once had a guy place his order, and then say "And give me one of those spaghetti appetizers."
I had been working there for a couple months, and we had no pasta dishes whatsoever on the menu. I politely tried to clarify this, but he wasn't having it. He just kept getting more irate. He insisted that he eats here all the time, and he always gets the spaghetti appetizer.
Eventually, he gets up from his table, storms over to another one, and points at what he wants on another diner's table. He was pointing at their cole slaw. And yes, as far as he was concerned, I was still the asshole for not knowing what he was talking about."
8. Weird, but kind of cute.
"Oh how I miss my old regular.
We are not a fine dining establishment, it's a small family style Italian restaurant.
This lovely gray haired gentleman would call ahead so that we could put a salad bowl in the freezer for him. After that I would go to his spot at the bar (or the closest one open to it) and set a large dinner napkin down (that he placed his salad/meal on). I would then place an empty wine glass with a napkin over it (per his request), just in case the dinner napkin didn't specify that the seat was taken.
Once he got there I would go to the back and make his specific salad: Very little lettuce, extra mushroom, extra tomato, extra onion, no shredded cabbage, and no cucumber.
That would be after I get him two ice cold beer glasses for his 70/30 sweet/unsweet tea mixture with an extra glass of ice.
He would then attempt to engage in a 5-10 minute conversation about our specials for the evening, and how he could alter them.
The guy came in between 3-6 nights a week and always tipped fairly. He was the kind of nice old guy that would get you and your wife birthday cards because that stuff was important to him.
He then moved 45 minutes away and we never see him anymore. Miss the hell out of that old man though."
9. I, too, hate when my food is cooked.
"A man sent back his plate because his hash browns were too hot. Like dude, just wait a little bit."
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10. Very burnt...
"Not a waiter but a cook. Had a lady order her tofu scramble burnt. So I cooked it hard. She sent it back because it wasn't burnt enough. So I cooked it harder. She sent it back again and the waiter said she really wants it burnt. So I got a wok super hot, put too much oil in and proceeded to burn the crap out of it. My chef came by and lost his shit. I explained it to him and he watched me burn just ruin the thing. It was black and smelled like a tire fire. She ate all of it and said we were the only place to get it right. She came back every weekend for it and we had to train new cooks how to burn the living fuck out of her food for her. I still can't comprehend why she would eat that."
11. ... yikes
"One couple in particular made the chef rage so hard she just walked out. Wife orders some meal and makes a ton of changes to it. She gets the plate takes one bite and sends it back because she doesn't like it. Husband orders $60 lobster plate. The lobster tail comes with pepper sprinkled on top. The husband sends it back and wants a whole new one with no pepper on top. Apparently his wife wanted to try one piece but doesn't like pepper."
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12. "Release the dolphins!"
"As a waiter at a coastal restaurant, we occasionally had dolphins come in the harbor right to where people would eat. These two old ladies came in and before they placed their orders, demanded I release the dolphins for their amusement. It took a good 10 seconds of silence before I realized they were serious. I passed this request onto my manager and then continued to eat free jumbo shrimp."
13. Free spaghetti?
"Customer asked for a spaghetti with a side of more noodles and extra sauce because they were going to share. So, I said "you'd like one spaghetti and then an additional order of spaghetti?" They told me I wasn't getting it and they just wanted extra noodles and some sauce on the side. I told them we would have to charge for extra noodles, and they ended up not wanting it. They somehow thought free spaghetti was a reasonable request."
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14. Do you have a horrible customer story? Tell us in the comments!
15. NOPE
"It wasn't so much the order that was disturbing, but the post order request. He asked me to chew up the food and put it back onto his plate. No medical reason. No missing teeth. Not old. Just creepy as fuck. He got very upset when I declined."
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16. NO
"Had a guy send one of our servers to the kitchen about 7 times, which is down the stairs far away from her section, to inquire about the weight of different hamburgers...all of them were the same yet he insisted she go down and check and would watch to make sure she did.
He sends her away to mull it over for a while and you can see him snickering with his equally douchey looking two sons. Finally the guy decides he wants a 24oz grilled "burger" with nothing else but the patty, no seasoning or anything. Not like some hulking bro trying to get extra protein, just an old asshole who wanted to fuck with the poor server. Ate a bite, said he didn't like it and ordered another burger. Tipped a very solid 0% after telling her "it'd all be worth it!""
Rachel
