Part-time workers can't do much when unreasonable customers have impossible requests. Thankfully, their pain is our pleasure. These stories of the worst fast food customers are simultaneously excruciating and hilarious. From ordering “McNuggets” at any fast-food chain to ominous repeat customers, get ready to appreciate the person behind the drive-thru window.
1. Getting Through To You
I was a shift manager at a McDonald’s in the middle of a mall. A guy came up to the counter with several McDonald’s bags of food then said, “My wife came through your drive-thru, and you messed up the order!” I asked, “are you sure she came through our drive-thru?” He went, “Yes! She told me she went to the drive-thru. When she got home, she realized the order was wrong. Y’all need to give us our money back and give us the proper food,” he requested defiantly.
Confused, I looked around the mall and asked, “Did she drive through Sears or JC Penny to get here?” He finally realized he was in a mall, then grabbed his bags, and left.
2. Standing My Ground
I had a lady who got mad because she’d put her coffee on the roof of her car, and it spilled. So, because she was a regular, she believed she deserved free coffee. We said no. She said she was calling our owner operator. We just got bought by another corporation so we gave her the store number. I pretended to be a secretary. After an, ahem, acrimonious phone call, she went to drive off. This is where the story goes off the rails.
As she's trying to drive out of the parking lot, her car broke down. She couldn’t afford a tow, and for some reason, the store manager absolutely refused to help her out and call anyone. So, she literally ended up living out of her car in our parking lot for the next two weeks until my manager finally made the call. Crazy times.
3. Prequels or OG?
When I worked at McDonald’s, a man drove up and instead of ordering, talked on his cell phone and explained the entire plot of Star Wars, talked about how his intimacy wasn't negatively impacted by being Asian, and bragged about owning "multiple beautiful electronics." He then put the phone on speaker. Dude was on hold the whole time. Then he remembered he was at McDonalds, asked for free coffee, didn't get it, and left.
4. Looking For Pleasure
I worked in this small-town grocery store. One day, when I was first starting at the store, a stereotypical neck beard walked in the store and asked if we sold toys for adults. I told him that we were a family friendly grocery store and didn't have those items. All he ended up buying was hot pockets and ice cream. Never saw him again.
5. Holey Bread
I’d been working at a popular deli chain restaurant for a few years and was working in the back one day when a new trainee came rushing over, absolutely bawling, so I immediately knew something was seriously wrong. I had her stay in the back to calm down and alerted the head manager so we could deal with the situation.
I went to the register and found a petite Korean lady shouting very loudly and demanding the trainee come back and saying she was trying to cheat her out of her money. She also kept shouting what I can only assume were crude Korean insults. The manager looked at her with a “lol nope” expression and took over the line.
I got the pleasure of dealing with Korean Karen. Somehow, I managed to keep a cool head and told her calmly to explain her problem. She was screaming, yelling, and rambling about how upset she was and said the cashier didn’t give her any change and that the bagels she wanted were too expensive. I redid her transaction.
The entire time I was packing up her bagels, she's still angrily waving her arms around in a fit—until she bumped a customer next to her. He very politely, but also very sternly said, "Excuse me!" She decided to take this opportunity to spit on him. While this was going on, the assistant manager had already made a call to the authorities.
An officer came in while I was finishing slicing this monster-lady's bagels and tried to ask her questions very calmly like what was the problem, what’s her name, things like that. When he asked to see ID, she went ballistic. I couldn't believe my eyes. She shoved him and then spat at him! The whole time he had kept his hands to himself. This, clearly, was the breaking point. The officer grabbed her wrists and started to cuff her.
He was ordering her to put her hands behind her back, and out of nowhere, she let out this howling scream and started trying to fight with the guy. His partner came in and saw the commotion. He immediately jumped in. She went so nuts that he had to tackle her onto the ground. They took her out to their car in cuffs and came back inside to pick up her personal items that were dropped in the fray and asked me if anything else was hers, and I gladly handed them her change and bagels.
6. Sweet Guess
As a former Taco Bell worker, here is the one order I will never forget. A lady at the drive-thru ordered a meal, sat for a second, then asked, “How many Cinnabons come in the dollar two pack?” Oh honey.
7. Let Chill
My family runs a concessions trailer at fairs. We serve one item and one item only: Empanadas. As a hint that this is what we sell, we have a huge empanada on our sign and the trailer has a giant 16-bay steam table directly in front of the serving counter. Despite all this, one day, when we were extremely busy and it was hot and we were all soaked in sweat from the steam needed to make the empanadas, a customer came up to the window after standing in line for probably fifteen minutes, saw us with soaked shirts and headbands and steam pouring out of the trailer and asked, "What flavors of ice cream do you have?"
8. Nothing You Want
A customer came in to the Pizza Hut mall kiosk where I worked and asked, "You don't have tables?” I said, “Nope.” So, they said, “Okay, I'll just have the general chicken then.” I reminded them that this was a Pizza Hut. Their response was baffling. They just sighed and went, “Fine, just a few egg rolls then.” I asked, “How about a pizza?” "Why would I order pizza at a Chinese restaurant?" You're right. That would be dumb.
9. Quality In-Patient
In the hospital, I had a patient throw her hospital toothbrush at me because the room wasn’t up to her standards. After it hit me on the head, she demanded to be transferred to a “better room with better service.” Uh, ma’am, this is a hospital and not a hotel.
10. No Catch
At Panera, a guest called from their car with a chorus in the background giving orders for pickup. First order was simple, but the next order was something we didn’t carry; it had salmon. Some regional Paneras did have or have had salmon, but we were not one of them. So I politely said, “Sorry, but salmon is not an item we carry.”
Just as I was about to suggest an alternative for the customer, the person on the other end of the phone cut me off and started getting really aggressive, "Yes, you do! You do!" they screamed. But we don't. We just don't. Then I'm like, "Hey, maybe you're thinking of another chain. We are very similar to..." and then I listed off some other places.
But, again, they cut me off screaming, “I know you have the salmon! I just ate it the other day!” And, by now, I was just being honest with them and said, "Hey man, I don't really need this attitude. We don't have salmon. I can't make the dish for you. You got us confused with something else." Then there was this very long, ominous silence.
Finally, someone who wasn’t the person who had been yelling about salmon, said, “Wait, this isn't *insert some totally not Panera sounding place that I don't remember here*?" I went, "No,” and then immediately everyone in the car started yelling at each other, and then I hung up. Customer service is the absolute worst.
11. Wrong Lane
A guy came to our drive thru. I opened the window and asked, "Sir, how can I help you?" Calmly, he replied, “I’m outta checks.” I said, “...Not sure I follow you.” “I’m out of checks,” he said again but sounded more impatient this time. "Yes, I heard you, but I don't know what you want me to do. You can use cash or card?" The dude gave me a weird look then said, "Oh, this ain't the bank," and peeled out from the window. I work at Burger King.
12. Routine Mistake
I managed a Del Taco during my teenager years. We had this older man come in once a month and drive straight through the speaker to our window. At said window, he’d look at me until I came over, start ordering Starbucks, then midway through realize that he was at a Del Taco, turn bright red, mutter angrily, and drive off. This happened once a month, every month, for two years.
13. Shopping Cues
I used to work at Target, and they hired a new girl who had previously worked at Walmart to work the fitting rooms and, by default, the intercom system. A few days after she started, she was about to make an announcement over the intercom. Unfortunately for her, habit took over and she went, “Attention, Walmart shoppers,” before realizing what she'd said. She made a good recovery with, “...you are in the wrong store.”
14. Glad To Help
I worked at a local brewery a few years ago. One day, a man came in and put two big growlers down on the counter. I was scanning the bottles, and I made the usual small talk, "How's your night going?" The man took a deep breath, looked me in the eyes, and dropped the mic. He said, in this numb voice, "Well, I just walked in on my 14-year-old son undressed and video chatting a middle-aged man.”
He finished, “…so it could be a lot better." I didn't quite know what to say, so I told him, "Oh, that's not good...enjoy your drinks."
15. Butternut Squashed
I worked at a small roadside produce shop. My boss had a few different stalls, so I was often left to run the stall by myself. I remember this lady walked up and asked me, "Do you have any tomatoes?" I shook my head and said, "Sorry, we don't." She got weirdly upset and whined, "But the place down the street has them!" So, I said to her, "Then go there."
16. Need To Cool Down
I worked at a Dairy Queen. One day, a frustrated lady came in holding her bag. She whipped out a receipt and, without giving me any context, said, “There’s supposed to be a Baja Blast.” I told her, “Ma’am, this receipt is for Taco Bell.” She quickly said, “My bad,” and sped out.
17. Have It Your Way
Back in high school, I worked at a Wendy's. Despite this, I had one guy try to order McNuggets over the speaker. When I asked what size of chicken nugget he wanted, he got all defensive when I didn’t call them McNuggets. Then he said, “Fine, fine, fine, I'll get a Whopper.” So, I went, “...uh, a Dave's Double? Or Baconator?” Dude just started screaming at me as he zoomed off into the smogset.
18. Fizzed Out
In high school, I worked at the concession stand at a movie theater. This guy ordered a popcorn and large diet Pepsi. He came back to the counter 10 minutes later complaining that his soda was carbonated. I explained to him that all of our sodas were carbonated, and he asked me if we had a microwave, which we did have.
So, he wanted me to go into the back and microwave his soda. He wanted it warm but not too warm. I went to the back and had to pour the soda into two different cups because the original wouldn't fit into the microwave. It was truly a bizarre experience.
19. Seeing Is Believing
This happened at Wendy's. I once had a woman come through the drive thru and try to order macaroni and cheese. I politely informed her that we didn’t have that. She insisted we did. I told her we definitely did not. She got angry and yelled that yes, we did. I said to her, "Ma'am, I have been working here for three years. We have never had macaroni and cheese. It’s not something we serve. Would you like to order something else?"
She swore and said, "Yes, you do! I can see it on the menu board! It’s right there right in front of me on the menu!" I told her I wasn’t sure what she was looking at but we definitely didn’t have mac and cheese. I told her that if it really did say mac and cheese on our menu board then that meant someone vandalized it. She disagreed and said that it was definitely part of the menu board, and it’s real and, we did have it, and she wasn’t leaving until she got her mac and cheese. It was almost ten minutes of this back and forth.
All the while, she was holding up the drive-thru line. I finally got the manager to come and deal with it. Even with my manager there, this lady absolutely refused to accept that we did not have mac and cheese. She also refused to order anything else and she wouldn’t move her car until we gave her the mac and cheese that we didn’t have. It was such a mess, but it wasn't over yet. Not by a long shot.
We had a line of cars wrapped around the building now, and everyone was annoyed. It’d been half an hour, and the line had not moved. The manager told her that if she didn’t leave, he'd have to call someone. Then she screamed at him, still going on about how she could clearly see mac and cheese on our menu board right in front of her. I decided enough was enough. I exited the building to go see the board.
I walked along the outside to the drive-thru order screen where this woman's car was. I asked her to please show me on the menu where it said the words "macaroni and cheese" anywhere. She pointed and confidently said, "right there," with all the conviction of someone who’s absolutely sure of themselves and being right. I looked to where she was pointing. I saw it. I sighed heavily as a bit more of me lost some hope for humanity.
I composed myself and told her as politely as possible that, “ma’am, that is a picture of the orange slices that come with the kid’s meal. We do not serve mac and cheese. Please drive away." She was confused. Then she looked at the menu board again. The realization finally dawned on her, and she drove off without another word. I went back inside and screamed in the walk-in freezer for ten minutes.
20. Establishing Location
I was the dummy customer. My wife and I were walking back to our hotel after a meal where I had around four extremely well-made margaritas. I wanted a Mocha Milkshake for dessert. I walked up to the counter, and the employee asked me, “What can I get you?” I said, “I will have a Mocha Milkshake.” “We don’t serve that.”
In utter disbelief and disappointment, I went, “What kind of Arby’s is this?!” The employee answered, “Sir, this is Hardee’s.” I completely blanked out. Then my wife said, “Can you mix some chocolate and vanilla shake together? He’s too wasted to notice the difference.”
21. Bit Of A DIY
Back when I was in fast food, I had someone who wanted me to remove all the sesame seeds from the top of a bun. The answer was no.
22. Preaching To The Deep Fryer
You wouldn’t believe the amount of disappointed rich people who come to Panda Express and find out we aren’t serving authentic Chinese food. Once, a well-traveled rich woman came into the restaurant and stood in the buffet line for about ten minutes critiquing all our “mistakes.” Ma’am, this is not a Michelin star establishment. The food is from a warehouse in California.
23. Taking Too Long
Around eleven years ago, I had just gone into management at McDonald’s, and they sent me to “practice” running this location inside a Walmart. Two older ladies, probably in their 70-80’s, came in, and while one came up to my register, the other sat down about fifteen feet away in a booth. They looked and sounded frail.
I greeted the first one in line, and she went, “Yes, I’ll have the lunch meat combo.” Caught off guard, I said, “I’m sorry. What?” She repeated that she wanted the lunch meat combo. I apologized to her and told her that we didn’t have it. So, she asked, “Well, what do you have?” I started listing, “Well, we have burgers, fish, chicken…”
She stopped me and said, “Wait...what is this place?” I told her McDonald’s. She turned to her friend in the booth and shouted, “They don’t have the lunch meat combo here!” Her friend couldn’t hear her, so she repeated herself. This happened back and forth twice. The lady ordering said, “Give us just a couple minutes.”
I told her to take her time. But, at that point, I had to step away because the interaction reminded me so much of the Spongebob episode with the older ladies and the chocolate bars that I was about to choke laughing and had someone else take over the register. I told them to promo their meals since they’d made my day.
24. New Secret Menu!
I worked at a Chipotle for four years and got some strange requests. But the best was when someone ordered soup. Here's the thing: Chipotle doesn’t have soup. I promptly reminded her this was a Chipotle, but she insisted we could do it. So, we made her soup! It was the grossest concoction of beans, salsa, and sour cream. She was stoked.
25. Explain It Again
I worked at McDonald’s. We would always get people that would ask for a Whopper either seriously or trying to be funny. We’d always give the exhausted response, "Sorry ma'am, we don't sell Whoppers. We have the Big Mac." Usually, we’d get an, "oh, right. Okay, one of those.” It was fine—until one day when a complete idiot ordered at the drive-thru.
He asked for a large Whopper meal and got the instant response, “Sorry sir, we don't sell Whoppers here. We have Big Macs or Quarter Pounders or McChickens." He replied, "No, I don't want that. I want a Whopper." I explained, “My apologies, sir, we don't sell those. This is a McDonalds. The closest equivalent to a Whopper is the Big Mac.”
“If you want an actual Whopper burger, you need to go to Burger King." He just angrily swore and gave me his order again. I said, “Okay, sir, I can't give you a Whopper meal here, but I can get a Big Mac Meal for you. The Big Mac is the closest equivalent we have, but it is not a Whopper. Are you happy enough with that?"
He went, "Yes! was that so hard?!" We gave him a large Big Mac meal, and sure enough, ten minutes later, he was back through the drive-thru screaming into the speaker that he hadn't gotten his Whopper burger.
26. Whatever The Cost
I was the manager on an overnight shift at a burger place. People who’d been drinking were always trying to order pizza and other dumb stuff. One time, a dude insisted he wanted a pizza, so I said alright, but it would be $100 dollars and take like an hour. He was like cool, came around, and gave me $100 at the window.
There was four of us there, so I told the dude to park and sent a worker to the grocery store across the parking lot to buy a frozen one. They brought it back, and we cooked it in our oven and brought it out to the dude, who by this point had fallen fast asleep in his car. The four of us just split the other 95 bucks that he had given us.
27. Poor Craftmanship
I worked at Dunkin Donuts. One day, a customer came through the drive thru and complained to us that the drive-thru was built in a way that made it hard to drive through. She started yelling at my co-workers, so I just stopped what I was doing and told her, “Ma’am we cannot change the construction of the building. We're just here to make sandwiches and serve donuts."
28. Dental Therapy
I work at a dentist’s office and sometimes answer the phones. People love to just dump on me for some reason. I guess they need someone to talk to, so they call the dentist? I don't know. One time, I had a lady take 15 minutes telling me she was going to quit her job because it was interfering with her ability to be a single parent.
Another lady called to tell me about her psychotic delusions that the people were after her and that she was hearing voices in her head. Then there were the two patients who were engaged. Their wedding date was posted in the patient’s chart. They’d always come in together. She’d rub his feet while he got his work done.
I called their number for the woman to confirm an appointment one time, and the man answered. He said they had a falling out, and his former fiancé was living at her mom’s now. A month or so later, he called to tell us they were back together, and the wedding was still on. Nothing about dental – apparently she just wanted us to know.
29. Sorry, Wrong Number
I worked at Chick-fil-a, and the number of people who would ask for McNuggets was astronomical. We also had a breakfast menu only available from 6-10 AM. After our lunch rush was over, I was managing the drive-thru. One man came to the drive-thru and asked to get a #2. It was slow, so he definitely got what he ordered.
Two minutes later, he came back through and told us he ordered a #2 but did not get the correct sandwich. I instructed him to pull around, and we would give him the right sandwich free of charge. I took the sandwich, checked that it was the right one before handing it out, and handed it out. End of story, right? Wrong.
Two minutes later, he came inside and was irate because he had come through the drive-thru twice now and both times received the wrong sandwich. I said that I’d personally checked it and that he received the correct sandwich and even pointed at the #2 on the menu board. Angrily, he looked at me and pointed at the menu.
As though I had done something wrong, he yelled, "No! I want that number 2," pointing to the breakfast board. It was 2 in the afternoon.
30. We Don’t Provide That Service
This woman, probably in her 50's, came to the front counter. I said my greeting script of, "Welcome to McDonald's, how can I help you?" She straight-faced stared into my soul asked me a question I wish I could forget. Hand to God, she outright asked if I would sleep with her. I was astounded at the confidence and sheer bluntness about her request as well as at how inappropriate it was.
I stammered out something about me being 16 and that's not allowed. She then got all sad and started on about a divorce, and she was having a rough time with it. I managed to chime in with, "How about a tasty burger for some comfort food?" And then she ordered one. I never saw her again after that incident, thankfully.
31. Something to Say
I was a cashier at Walmart. I was finishing the checkout of one woman’s order when another older woman came up behind her on a motorized cart. The first woman said some kind of pleasant greeting like, “Oh hi, how are you?” to the second woman, which somehow developed within the space of two to three minutes into a full-blown monologue.
She went on about how she was really mistreated by her mother as a child, but her mother was now gone, and she still missed her even though she also severely neglected her, which brought on the plethora of health problems she’d suffered starting in her teens with abnormal puberty and after that, life only got worse from there because of various awful men.
The first woman looked at me like, “Uh oh.” She quickly finished paying, picked up her order, invented an excuse, and got the heck out of there, abandoning me to listen to the rest of the second woman’s woes. Turns out she also had children who were all ungrateful and just never wanted to have anything to do with her even during the throes of her worst illnesses and health issues.
Some of them completely cut her off, and it’s all her former husbands’ fault because she was too nice of a person, too loving, too giving, and she loved her children too much and gave them too much. She sat on her motorized cart just continuing her speech about her life of torment looong after I was done preparing her order. At this point, I was standing there waiting for her to pay, but she just wouldn’t shut up.
She couldn’t take a clue. The line was backing up behind her. She still wouldn’t shut up. She was talking about how her husbands made her work when she shouldn’t have had and her kids hurt her. Her son threw her out of his house for just no good reason. She was just trying to help. I wasn’t even saying anything to her. Like, what exactly was I supposed to say? “I’d diagnose you with a latent case of narcissistic personality disorder, intelligence-lacking type, perhaps histrionic personality disorder except I can’t because I’m a Walmart cashier and not a psychiatrist.”
But I was a pretty scared kid at that time and felt really awkward and on-the-spot to say anything. I couldn’t even manage a peep of, “Ma’am, could you please pay?” It only ended when the guy behind her loudly said something like, “What’s the hold-up? This isn’t the place, lady,” that she finally switched to grumbling. She quietly mumbled about how rude he was while she begrudgingly got her wallet out and then somehow left, and it was over. All because the first woman tried to be nice.
32. Similar Signatures
Back when I worked at Burger King years ago, we always used to get people coming in and ordering Big Macs and other stuff from McDonalds. The cashiers just said, “Screw it,” and put in orders for Whoppers or whatever the closest parallel was for whatever they ordered. It happened so often that eventually, my manager put conversion charts by the registers.
33. Old Crow
I went to KFC for dinner one night only to walk in on a customer ranting at the clerk. I overheard a bit of the conversation and realized the guy was screaming about the old NES game Castlevania II. He was saying it was such a scam! The entire game was designed that you couldn’t play it without buying the Nintendo Power strategy guide!
The Gen Z Clerk asked, “What’s that?” I saw the pained look fall over the clerk’s face as she immediately regretted asking that. The man then launched into the history of Nintendo Power. Luckily, the clerk saw me and formed her exit strategy, “Sir! You need to wrap this up. We’ve got a line forming!” He saw me and went quiet.
34. Caught Unaware
Once, this older guy came in and slammed a coupon on the counter saying, “I want this!” I picked it up. It had menu items for KFC. I asked him what exactly he wanted. He instantly got disgruntled with me for not reading his mind and shook his finger at the coupon and said, “Well, whatever is on the coupon, obviously!?”
He said it in a really condescending tone. I looked at him for a minute and said word for word, “Sir, this is McDonald’s. I don’t know what you want me to do with the KFC coupon.” He looked at me dumbfounded. Then he looked behind me at the menu and around the store and shouted, “Frig!” He took his coupon and left.
35. Land and Sea
I worked at Chick-fil-A for too many awful years. One time, a guy walked in looking at his phone and said, “I’d like the fish sandwich combo.” I blinked a couple of times confused and then finally asked, “What was that?” The dude looked up from his phone, sighed, and said with emphasis, “I said I wanted the fish sandwich combo!”
“Sir, this is a Chick-fil-A. Literally all we have is chicken,” I told him. He finally looked up at the menu behind me, then around at the restaurant completely bewildered, turned around, and just walked away. I’m not even sure how he even drove there, parked his car, and walked in without noticing at all where he was.
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36. All For Dough
I worked at a bakery, and it wasn’t uncommon for guys in their 30-40s to bring their dates in and place big imaginary orders. They'd look at the case and flip through some photos then come up to the counter and be all gross schmoozy rubbing up on their date like, "Baby, anything you want. You can't decide which flavor? Then he'd cut in all gallant and go, “Ma'am, put me down for one cake in each flavor. One whole cake. One donut, every flavor. Put a heart decoration on each one."
After the first couple times, we started pretending to write it on scratch paper and threw the paper away at the end of the night. They'd never schedule a time or date to take any of the cakes. If you tried to take the order seriously and get details, they'd get very rude because I guess yelling at employees was also seen as attractive in this scenario? It had to have been like one guy at a workplace who did it and told all his friends because it’s so weird, and I've never heard of it being a thing elsewhere.
37. Sticking To The Story
I worked at a Vietnamese place that had these dope metal chop sticks people would take. A table actually asked me once if they could take a pair or two home with them, and they gave me a tip because I said, “I bring people food. What kind of ethical decisions do you suspect me to be able to make?” They grinned as I walked away.
I made an extra $10 in tips for my silence, and my boss thought they just liked me, but I knew they had the chopsticks, and they knew I knew they had the chop sticks.
38. Ride This One Out
We had a lot of cab drivers come into the gas station because home base was around the corner. This one older cabbie came to pay for his gas. Then he talked to me for the next 45-minutes. I timed it. If another customer came, he'd move to the side and continue talking. I couldn't leave the counter until this dude left.
39. Unreasonable Expectations
I worked at a convenience store that served coffee. A guy who came for coffee screamed and threw straws and stir sticks at the wall. When he asked where the milk was and I told him in the cooler at the end of the counter, he started screaming about how stupid the layout was because he had to walk four feet to get to the cooler.
40. Do You Know Where You Are?
I was a hostess at Carrabba's. I answered the phone, and a woman asked if were we located at such-and-such intersection. I told her no and gave her the correct directions. She insisted I was wrong and that we’re located at such-and-such. I told her that I think she had us confused with another Italian restaurant chain.
She still disagreed and tried to argue. I finally just basically said that I am standing in the building where I work in five days a week and that I was pretty sure I know the location of my physical body and hung up.
41. Clean Up Crew
I worked for Taco Bell, and a woman ordered three of those taco twelve boxes, and, of course, she wanted sauce. So, I gave her one of those small bags that had four generous fistfuls of each of the sauces. The bag was packed because I did not want any sass from this woman. She came back ten minutes later with her food.
She dumped the bag out in front of me and pointed to one of the sauce packets that was a little crusty since sometimes they pop. She gave me a lecture about how unsanitary we were. Then she asked me why we didn’t take the time to wipe off each individual packet before distributing them. I gestured to the sauce packets.
“Well, we sell a lot of food. If this is how many sauces we gave just to you, imagine how much we go through a day. There just wouldn't be time," I explained. She still huffed at me and asked me to clean the dirty packet. Since I was her sauce slave and I needed to keep my job, I did.
42. Not So Fast
I worked at a small-town Dunkin Donuts just off the highway. We get a lot of out-of-staters coming through. They’d ask for Starbucks items and sometimes the Aroma Joe's rush drinks too. Once, I had a mom that came asking for some sandwich that turned out to be from the Sonic drive-ins. Those don't really exist where I'm from. The three of us working were super confused by what she meant because we'd never heard of it before.
She asked to speak to our manager. We told her the truth; the manager had gone home for the night, but the assistant manager was in at six the next morning. She demanded to speak to a manager right then and there and told us we needed to call her and put her on over the drive-thru speaker. Both went right to voicemail.
We said we couldn't reach them, and she screamed, "This is the worst Sonic I’ve ever been to!” At this point, our jaws just drop. Like what just happened. My co-worker literally asked what a Sonic was. Not to annoy her or be funny or anything but because she literally did not know what a Sonic was. The woman freaked out even more.
She yelled, “I will go to corporate, and I will have this location shut down! I knew a Sonic up here wouldn’t be any good!” We said, "Ma'am, this is a Dunkin Donuts. What is a Sonic?" There was a pause, and then she said, "I'm so embarrassed." Then it sounded like she was starting to whimper a bit before she drove off.
43. Wrong Place, No Time
I worked at O'Reilly Auto Parts, and we frequently had people try to return stuff they bought at AutoZone or advance. This was usually an understandable mistake because it was almost always a mechanic that just forgot where they bought something or even just drove to the wrong store by mistake. Except for this one guy.
This one guy came in talking on the phone and asked me for a return. He handed me a receipt and turned around to continue his conversation. I immediately realized that he had the wrong receipt and tried to get his attention making me look like a jerk for "interrupting" his conversation. I said it was the wrong receipt.
I got his phone number to look it up. While I was doing that, I overheard him say, "yeah, I'm at AutoZone returning that part," so I looked through his profile and sure enough, he’d never bought it here. I tried to interrupt him again to tell him, and he just waved me off. The conversation was obviously more important.
I let him finish. I helped more customers, and after hearing him say, "I'm at AutoZone,” again, I loudly said, "you’re at O’Reilly’s, dude. AutoZone is down the street!” He just ignored me. The dude spent a good 15 minutes on the phone before coming over to the counter and said, "alright, did you return the thing yet?"
44. Keep The Change
I was taking orders at McDonald's pretty late in the evening. It was quiet at that time so I had no customers until one dude came into the store and approached me at the till. He asked, “do you mind if I give you some coins to get a bill off of you?” Our policy is not to exchange money but I thought I'd do him a solid.
I assumed it was probably just $10. Nope. I was so wrong. He then opened his bag that had a massive bag of coins stored in bank counting bags. He stacked up $10 in 2 cent coins and then another stack, and he got about five stacks in when I had to stop him and say I couldn't do that big of an exchange. Well, he was not happy. He took his coins.
He calmly put each back one at a time and said, “you've wasted my time. You've embarrassed me terribly. You lied to me. Good for nothing. That's for your trouble." He left a $10 stack of two cent coins on the counter and left. We’re not allowed to accept tips in McDonald's, but my manager saw everything and said I could.
45. Up To Standard
I worked at a pretty basic cafe, and even though our decor and sign makes it pretty clear that we're not a fine cuisine kind of place, we constantly get people coming in and expecting 5-star restaurant and quality service. It’s like these people are wannabe restaurant connoisseurs. If you’re going to a cafe, you accept the quality of service you get. It's not fine dining on some penthouse floor restaurant in Manhattan. Chip a few blocks of your enormous ego or you’ll be horrifically disappointed each time you go to one.
46. Cold Center
I cooked at Friendly's way back when. The big square burgers came frozen, and if enough weren't pulled and allowed to thaw, then you'd be cooking a frozen burger, and it'd take way, way longer. So, the waitress came back and said the guy wanted it rare. Now, company policy was it had to be at least medium well or well.
After some back and forth, I gave in and said I'd cook it like he wanted, but we both agreed that if he complained, it was on her. She said ok. I was cooking, and she came back and said it was good. I said, “uh, no. It's still frozen, and it's literally cold in the middle, not to mention quite raw. She told me to take it off. So, I cheesed it up and told her I wasn’t making another one.
She came back five minutes later and said the dude loved it. It was the best burger he ever had. I told her she got lucky.
47. Missing A Little Pepper
I worked at Chilis, and it always amazed me how many times people mistake us for a completely different restaurant. On day, I had two different people come to pick up food and get incensed at the fact that we didn't have their name on our list. Of course, they then insisted that it was us who must have screwed up. I’d ask what their order was, and they’d list meals that were clearly from Outback Steakhouse.
Yes, it's next door, but how do you miss the giant pepper on the side of our building and walk in expecting steaks with an Australian theme? They’d just say nothing and leave the restaurant.
48. Silver Platter
While I was working at McDonald’s, every single day at the exact same time, this old guy would come in and order his food. He came so often that most people knew that he wanted a special order – overcook the life out of the patty. It started up right when he walked in. That was the easy bit. The problem was the guy was forgetful and always asked for a plate.
Actually, he would demand a ceramic plate to eat on every time he was there. That’s when we would explain to him that this was a McDonald’s and we didn’t have plates. He’d usually be okay with it. But sometimes he'd rant and rave. One day, I watched the guy have an absolute fit. One of my co-workers stepped outside the breakroom with a plate of food that she’d brought from home. When he saw that, he screamed, “I knew you scoundrels had plates!” We just could not convince him otherwise ever thereafter. The moral of the story: Keep it in the breakroom.
49. I Didn’t Order A #2
I worked nights at McDonald's and was at the drive thru. I was taking an order for a bunch of wasted girls when I overheard one of the girls say that she seriously needed to poop. Her friends apparently did not care and told her to go outside. So, she stepped out of the car and knelt down in the bushes next to the car.
The bushes were in plain view of the security camera. Everybody inside the place saw her, and it was a full-blown mess. So, I told her through the service window that everyone could see her. The look of sheer horror the girl made through the security feed made everyone burst in laughter including her friends. Poor kid.
50. Hear No Evil
I worked at Burger King when I was a teenager. We’re short staffed one day, and the girl on the drive thru was on break, so our manager stepped in to cover her. He was pretty old and didn't have the best hearing, so most customers were pulling around to the window to talk to him as he was struggling to hear the orders.
One guy got to the window and yelled, "I want a large Big Mac meal with a coke please! Is that so hard?!" My manager very calmly said, "My apologies, sir, that won't be difficult." He leaned out the window and then proceeded to give this jerk a taste of his own medicine. He pointed down the road, "There's a McDonald's about three miles in that direction. They'll be able to help you.” He finished with, “Have a nice day, sir." Then he just closed the window and walked around the corner out of sight. I laughed so hard!
Sources: Reddit,
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