The Worst Tantrum She Had Ever Witnessed
“I’m a host, and our restaurant is in a converted house, which means we have approximately 11 tables inside. This particular day, the college that is the reason for our whole town was having some kind of large event, probably homecoming. It had also been raining and was super cold, so we weren’t seating our more spacious outdoor area.
It was towards the end of the night. We had been on a wait that had stretched up to 2 hours at some points over the night. Things were winding down and our wait was only an hour at this point. We use an iPad app to manage our waitlist, which means that the entirety of our waiting customers aren’t always in our 8×8 ft waiting area. This group came in and they were completely smashed. One girl and three older male alumni, presumably her dad and uncles or something. I told them the wait, they said, ‘No, we don’t want to wait,’ and sat down in our waiting area.
I checked in the next two groups and then walked up to Rude Group and asked if they would like to be added to the waitlist. Rude Group told me actually they wanted to wait and I should know that. Great. I wrote their info down with the girl’s name. One of the dads came up and started hitting on me and making bad jokes, which weren’t worth more than a fake smile and a ‘heh heh’ since I was about 10 hours into my shift of dealing with this type of crap. The girl, who was my age, proceeded to start yelling at everybody who came in that ‘this girl can’t take a joooooke.’ I asked my manager at what point was I allowed to kick them out. My manager told me to use my best judgment. Great.
Dad Number 2 came up and asked when their table would be ready. I asked if he was with the girl’s party that came in 5 minutes ago. He said no, they had been waiting for 45 minutes. I apologized, but there was nobody else with [girl’s] name on the list and are they sure they weren’t the party that came in now 6 minutes ago? He acquiesced that original [girl’s] party might be them. I reiterated…the wait was an hour. They had been here about 7 minutes, so the wait would still be about 50 minutes or so.
The dads didn’t like this. All three grown men started screaming at me, a tiny, 5’3″ girl, because they’d been waiting ’45 freaking minutes’ and that I was a liar. Dad 2 tried to push my host stand over on top of me. I got to utter the most satisfying words any host gets to say: ‘You all need to leave. Please don’t ever come back.’
The dads screamed some more. I screamed back. On their way out the door, the girl said, ‘Whatever, this girl looks like Dwight anyways.’ My best guess is because I wear glasses?
Anyways, they all left, I got a new nickname, and Dad 2 fell over the fire hydrant trying to get away when my large and scary manager followed them outside. We left him laying on the sidewalk in the rain.
I have more stories from my years in the industry, but this was the most frustrating and most tantrum like behavior I had ever witnessed.”
The Customer Isn’t Always Right
“I was cooking at the snack bar of a bowling alley and we were BUSY. One old lady was there for a bowling league, which she did multiple days a week. It was her favorite hobby. She had ordered a grilled cheese and thought it was taking too long. It hadn’t been long at all, but she came up all angry and started yelling at us, accusing us of cooking our coworkers’ orders first and just throwing a fit. It didn’t bother me at all until she called the middle-aged lady taking orders a ‘stupid wench.’
I got super mad and told her if she wanted fast food, she could walk her fat butt to Taco Bell. She says, ‘I’ve known the owner for 20 years, you’re so fired!’
I pointed him out and told her to go for it. She ran up to him and told him her side of the story. He came into the kitchen and asked me if I really said that to her. I told him I did, but I also gave him the rest of the story and told him what she said to our cashier. The whole time he was talking with me, the old lady was standing across the counter grinning at me, thinking I was getting fired. The owner walked back out of the kitchen, and I got to see her smile disappear as he told her to get her things, leave, and never come back.”
He Should Really Shake It Off
“I worked at Hardee’s in high school as a cashier. One day, we got hammered with a $100 order in the drive-thru and about five orders in the lobby. Hardee’s policy was to deal with drive-thru first because corporate hammered us about drive-thru times, so all kitchen work focused on like the 10 monster burgers they ordered, with one cook. Needless to say, I told the people ordering there would be a wait and they all said okay. We got the orders out. The final order I took was for a 50-year-old gentleman with his 20-something-year-old son sitting beside him. He asked where his shake was. He started to get snotty, saying he waited 10 minutes and I should have gotten his shake. I apologized and went to make his shake immediately.
I got back, made it, ran it out to him and that’s when he lost it. He started in a calm voice about how he had to wait 12 minutes for his shake. I apologized, but he started raising his voice. He got so upset, he took the shake he just waited 12 minutes for and took off the lid and sloshed the shake out onto me. He then took his burger and threw that as well. I told my manager I was ready to clock this man since I was covered in shake and burger. The manager walked out there, telling him it was unacceptable what he was doing. The man got the salt and pepper shaker and chucked them at him, all while the son was laughing his head off. This piece of crap was told to never come back and if he was on the property for another minute, the cops would be called.”
All Because Of One Mishap
“A couple weeks ago, I was serving this older couple at the restaurant I work at. It’s a pretty low-class, simple family restaurant.
They wanted the chicken tacos, with spinach dip as an appetizer. Sure. No problem.
Mind you, it’s dinner time and it’s busy. Regardless, I enter the items in so that the spinach dip would come up first.
Well, it didn’t, the tacos were done at the same time as the dip. Still, it was not an issue, but the girl running the food to the tables didn’t realize this.
As soon as she gets there, the yelling starts, progressing into screaming. This man in his 60s-70s is absolutely red in the face ranting and screaming about how his dinner is ruined and how the runner should be fired for being incompetent. Mind you, this girl is 15 years old and started crying.
I go over to try and calm the situation down and am immediately met with a solid ‘EFF you!’ followed by a demand for the bill so he could pay for his drinks and leave. I agreed and got him the bill. As he was using the debit machine, he snaps again at me, ‘Don’t be freaking rude!’
This man was off the rails, his wife was just head down hands in her lap the whole time, clearly embarrassed by all this.
And I kid you not, this was ALL BECAUSE THE APPETIZER DIDN’T COME OUT FIRST.
I thought maybe something else had set him off but nope, that was the reason.
Some people, I tell ya.”
Truly Embarrassing Behavior
“When working at a Baskin, while VERY understaffed and VERY busy, we ran out of waffle cones, which we made in-house. It was impossible for us to make more because there were literally two of us working, one person doing EVERYTHING in the drive-thru and one doing EVERYTHING in the lobby. I was literally running through the store trying to make the seven milkshakes that had just been ordered in the drive-thru, when some guy in probably his mid-50s decides to approach me at the counter, slam his hand down, and say, ‘YOU RAN OUT OF WAFFLE CONES?!’ Mind you, we had two other types of cones available.
Me: ‘Yes sir, I apologize but as you can see we’re very busy and–‘
This dude wasn’t having it. He started screaming at me about how ‘YOU PEOPLE should’ve been more prepared and demanded a free scoop of ice cream for YOUR MISTAKE.’ His wife just stood there looking embarrassed. I gave him the freaking ice cream just to shut him up because I had a lot of other crap to do and he sat in the lobby eating it, glaring at me and shaking his head. What a jerk.”
“Eff All Y’all And Your Meatballs!”
“I was in a crappy little pizza shop in NYC with my ex-boyfriend, his brother (who is NYPD but was off duty), and his sister. When we walked into the shop, there was a gentleman at the counter arguing with the cashier over the fact that the spaghetti and meatballs dinner went from $6 to $6.50. The owner explained that they now charge for the meatballs because their meat supplier raised the price of the ground beef they purchase, and they need to make up for the cost or go out of business. Perfectly reasonable and not a huge price gap. Or so I thought…
While the gentleman continued to argue with the cashier, I decided I’d step out for a smoke while my group stayed in line. When I came back in, the gentleman and the cashier were both screaming, and I saw my ex’s brother waving at me. He was mouthing ‘do not move,’ but I was too distracted by the yelling to notice what was going on.
So I took a few steps towards them and asked, ‘What were were you saying?’ At which point, the gentleman turned towards me and I then saw he was holding a Glock in his hand and he’d just had pointed at the cashier. Then I realized that my ex’s brother had his weapon drawn, too.
I froze in my tracks and the gentleman turned his aim away from me and shot his weapon three times, through the front window of the shop. You could hear the police sirens getting closer, so the gentleman shouted, ‘Eff all y’all and your meatballs’ before he darted out the door.
I literally peed my pants. My ex’s brother had only been an officer for a little over two weeks and said that he wasn’t really sure what he should have done differently, but the police that arrived were pretty great to all of us. Luckily, the gentleman was a regular customer and they had his name via his credit card in their register history, so they were certain they could track him down and charge him for the incident.”
Stories From Starbucks
“I worked at Starbucks for the better part of a decade. I’ve got two stories that stick out:
1) We sometimes run these coupons called treat receipts. The gist is you can get a drink later in the day for a discount if you bring back a receipt from earlier that day. We had this lady who would abuse the system to use the coupon twice and every time we’d just give her the discount, but we’d say something like, ‘It’s normally for one drink but we will take care of it for you today.’ We did this probably 10+ times for his lady and she was always rude about it.
So this lady rolls up and pulls the usual and for whatever reason, the barista wasn’t having it, knowing we’d been over it before with her. The customer’s response was to slap the drink out of the barista’s hand and yell various obscenities. We tell her to leave and she does.
You think that’s the end of it? Nope. Turns that employee was married to a police officer, so she filed a police report and they issued a warrant. The police picked her up a few weeks later as she was trying to get on a cruise. The total of money she would’ve saved if we let her use coupon twice? $0.21.
2) It was a busy day and a barista was getting yelled at by a woman for not putting chocolate on top of a drink. I went over and said, ‘Oh it doesn’t normally come with chocolate, but I can put some on for you. It’s no problem.’
This caused a man in the corner to come over and say, ‘Is there a problem here? Are you trying to get beat?’
Me: ‘Are you serious?’
Him: ‘You’re freaking right!’
Lady doing the original yelling: ‘It’s not worth it!’
Him: ‘I’m tired of people disrespecting you on your birthday!’
He then attempts to jump over the counter and she pushes him out of the store. They then call the store phone to yell at and threaten me through the window. We called security and they were escorted out of the mall we were located in.”
Apparently There’s A Wrong Way To Cut The Cheese
“I used to work in a deli and one time this lady came up asking for ‘cheese sliced thin and stacked on top of each other.’
I thought to myself, ‘How else would I stack it?’ but I sliced the cheese and went to hand it to her. She lost her ever loving mind because I didn’t stack it right and made me reslice the cheese thinner and way over stagger the slices. All while berating me and telling me how awful I was at my job and how she knew the owner and was going to tell him how awful I was and how bad my attitude was. Luckily, my manager stood up for me when the owner came to talk to him. The dumb old hag made me cry first thing in the morning.
Another time, I had a guy freak out over the price of bologna. One type was on sale and one type wasn’t and he wanted the type that wasn’t for the price of the one that was. When I told him I couldn’t do that and got my supervisor to back me up, he screamed at both of us and called us stupid, uneducated women. So glad I don’t work there anymore.”
Why Would She Lie About A Food Allergy?!
“The restaurant I work at is an Italian restaurant and cafè. The food is pretty good and we have a lot of options including gluten-free, vegetarian and vegan ones.
We had a family come in and the wife ordered our gluten-free chicken parmesan, which is coated in eggs, rice flour and Italian seasoning. She stated that she was allergic and needed her dish to be free of any gluten products.
Her husband orders our lasagna, which is my favorite dish we have. It comes with a side of garlic bread and a little side salad.
Once the food comes and I go to check on them, the wife accuses me of putting gluten in her food and she’s very allergic. I tell her that her dish is gluten-free and we take allergies incredibly seriously.
She scoffs and says, ‘Okay’ in an ‘I don’t trust you’ kind of way. Whatever, it’s not like I literally memorized the menu in my head to a point where I dream about becoming a plate of spaghetti.
I see her take a bite of her husband’s garlic bread and lasagna and me being petty, I walk over and tell her that his dish is not gluten-free.
She tries justifying it and makes up some crap about how it’s fine. Her husband finally cracks and says she’s just on a fad diet. She can eat gluten, it’s not an allergy.
She got angry and left a huge mess on the table and spilled her red vino everywhere before she left.
I love my job, but I really hate some of the customers.”
How To Get Banned From Outback Steakhouse
“I work at an Outback Steakhouse. In the eight years I’ve worked there, I have seen some truly awful pieces of human garbage come and go. I could literally write for hours on some of the monsters I’ve had to deal with…but the one that I’ll always remember was a Takeaway order. This was also the only time I have ever talked back to a guest.
The woman ordered a vinaigrette dressing with her salad. The takeaway girl was on her first day and gave her the mustard vinaigrette (our house dressing). Before the lady left, she rummaged through her bag, found the dressing and yelled at her that it wasn’t the right one. I mean, she went from 0 to 100 in the blink of an eye. I managed that day, so I went to the car and brought the appropriate dressing and apologized. She demanded that she not pay for the salad. I almost wanted to backhand her out of the gate, but I obliged and took it off the order. Giving her the new ticket, she glared at me and screamed, ‘THIS WAS ALL YOU TOOK OFF!?’ I told her that’s what she asked for and I did it. She started insulting me, saying I was stupid and had no idea how to help a customer.
I bent over so her eyes and mine were eye level and said, ‘Ma’am, I will not tolerate the way you are speaking to me. Leave and never come near this restaurant again. Get out of here.’ She looked offended, but I walked away and didn’t look back.
Ten minutes later, the takeaway girl called me to talk to a new car in the takeaway spot. I did, and it was a lady who saw the whole thing. She asked for my name and said that she knew a nasty call or email was coming and wanted to also write something to my superiors about how anyone would have beaten the woman senseless and how well I handled essentially banning someone from Outback.
I never saw that old hag again, so I suppose it did the trick.”
His Verbal Abuse Left Her In Tears
“I was working cashier in a McDonald’s drive-thru. Because of tax, the $1 drinks are actually $1.09. A guy in business formal pulls in and orders a single coke, and comes to my window. He hands me $1.10 (single and a dime). I ask if he wants his penny for change back. Now, this is normal procedure, seeing as almost everyone else elects to leave it with us.
This gentleman isn’t having any of it, though: he starts by raising his voice and questioning my question ‘do I WANT my PENNY back?’ and then going on a rant about how ‘it’s my money, isn’t it?’ and other things. It peaks with him questioning how I even got the job with my ‘incompetence’ and him driving to the window in a rage, leaving me crying.
Later on, he actually left an official complaint (call in) with the store. The manager that night, bless her heart, actually saw it as so ridiculous that she just ignored the whole thing.”
Tales From The Drive Thru
“I worked the drive-thru at a fast food place in my hometown during a gap year from university. In the five or so months I worked there, I saw a lot, but here’s what stood out:
1) An old lady and her husband came through the drive through wanting two pieces of bone-in chicken each. My co-worker on orders let them know that there would be a 20-minute wait on the bone-in chicken. We mainly sold tenders and couldn’t just let food sit out for extended periods because of health code. We essentially had to efficiently manage how much food we cooked to not waste it. Nevertheless, she got kerfluffed and started yelling at my co-worker, stating, ‘This is (insert restaurant name here)! The food should be ready when I order it! We may not come back here…’ My co-worker then proceeded to request that I remind them of the wait to make sure they understand…after I had just heard everything over the headset. Needless to say, I heard the exact same rant all over again at the window when I did remind them. And for those who are wondering, they do still come back from time to time.
2.) This guy came up in a beat-up, ugly, pea green Ford Focus with one of the doors off-color. My friend on orders couldn’t hear him well and he got mad (which I can somewhat forgive because it can be frustrating with those boards and headsets sometimes). He pulled up to the window and then rudely stated that he needed three cookies. I asked my manager how long the wait was for cookies. It was five minutes. I thought to myself, ‘Oh man. This is gonna be great.’ I told him and he flipped out, saying he waited five minutes in line.
Another day in the future, he came back and my heart just sank when I saw him at the board because I knew he was going to suck. Basically this time, we couldn’t hear him that well again for whatever reason and all we got wrong this time was a tea. One sweet tea that takes a minute to make and hand to him through the window. Still, he went on to berate me because he thought I made the mistake. He also was wearing a snap-back cap as a forty-something-year-old as well. The whole time that time around, I had to keep from laughing at the fact that he was a middle-aged man in some beat-up car wearing a snap-back yelling at someone roughly half his age over a cup of sweet tea.
Needless to say, I don’t miss the customers at that old job.”
Banned For Life Over A Millimeter Of Coffee
“I work as a barista at a coffee shop. One day, this dude comes up and wants a filter coffee with almond milk at exactly 47 degrees. So I did exactly that.
A few seconds later, he loses his marbles and complains that the drink is wrong. I asked him what was wrong with it. He refused to tell me why and just shouted and insulted me instead. He said that the drink was 1mm too high. I was so confused.
He asked if only idiots work in the coffee shop, as it’s very easy to see the line in the cup he brought with him. He said this has never happened to him and that he felt so insulted, etc.
I tried to calm him down, but he insisted I get the manager.
My manager came and banned him from entering the store ever again.”