Some customers just do not have a filter, when it comes to what they say to the people handling their food.
Judged For Working At McDonald’s?
“The strangest thing a customer has said to me while working at McDonald’s is: ‘Why don’t you go to school? You know working at McDonald’s is a dead end job.’ Of which I promptly replied with: ‘Actually, I am in school. Today is one of the three free days in my weekly school schedule, so I spend it at work where I can earn some experience and also provide myself with some extra money. I don’t intend to stay here long, but they have excellent flexibility in scheduling that works great for any student looking for work.’
The statement was strange in a way that it was very ignorant.
Fun fact: The store I worked at had 30 percent full-time workers, and 70 percent part-time workers and all of the part-time workers were students currently in school.
Another fun fact: The store I worked at, generally overstaffed their schedule because there was almost always one or two people who can’t come to work, because they have to study or do group assignments, etc. Overstaffing isn’t generally an issue as the store location is highly profitable.”
The Customer With The Pickle Obsession
“A couple years ago, I worked at a drive-thru and this guy came around to pay.
When he got there, he asked, ‘Hey, did I say I wanted extra pickles on that? Because I want extra pickles on that.’ I informed him that his burger was already made and ready to go, but offered to have a new one fixed up with a satisfactory amount of pickles. The man paused, then had a look of realization. He looked up and said, ‘Don’t worry about it! Now that I think about it, I think I might have some extra ones right here.’ This valued customer then proceeded to open up his glove compartment and pull out a giant jar of sliced pickles. It was weird.”
Never A Dull Moment At Arby’s!
“I worked at Arby’s and a customer complained that I had raised the prices. Me. The 17-year-old cashier. I said it wasn’t my doing but he didn’t believe me. I finally told him I would discuss it with Jim Arby (or some other made up name) next time at the country club. He was satisfied.
Another old guy berated me for not counting out his change. It was a dime. So I said ’10’ and he berated me for my attitude. His son apologized and shuffled him away
I’ve had a 10-minute argument with an old lady where I tried to tell her I couldn’t accept tips and she kept insisting on giving me one. She asked to speak to my manager, who said if they see me put money in my pocket they will think I’m stealing. He tried to give her a coupon for a free shake. She stormed out.
A guy in the drive-thru asked if we serve beef. I jokingly said no. He apologized and drove off.
A lady brought in a couple of ketchup packets, saying she hadn’t wanted them and could she have a refund
And lastly, an 8-year-old kid came in, slapped a five on the counter and asked for as many fries as $5 would buy. It was a lot of fries. He went out and his mom came in yelling at us for letting her kid buy just fries.”
Baristas Are Supposed To Be Customer Mind Readers?
“There was this one dude at Starbucks, who expected me to read his mind.
I politely asked him: ‘What can I get for you today?’
His response: ‘Coffee.’
Me: ‘Will that be dark, medium, or blonde roast?’
Him: ‘Ugh, why do I have to answer so many questions? I just want coffee!’
So I decide to put him down for a medium roast (our most popular).
Me: ‘Okay, what size would you like?’
Him: ‘WHY DO I HAVE TO ANSWER SO MANY QUESTIONS!’
I put him down for a grande size.
When I hand him his coffee, he replies: ‘THIS IS WRONG, I WANTED A VENTI DARK ROAST!’
And he proceeded to call my manager and tell him about my horrible service.”
Arguing About Menu Items
“People are literally saying and doing strange things, all day, at McDonald’s. There’s more than one story per shift, so there are stories for days!
One time, I was handing a guy his order in the drive-thru, and he had been quite pleasant the whole time. But then an ambulance with sirens blaring, rushed by our McDonald’s. The man said, ‘There goes another overdose,’ in a matter of fact tone. I didn’t know what to say and just laughed nervously.
Then there are all of the people that do not understand the menu. I have worked there a year and a half already and I am going to be a manager soon, but people love to argue about the menu like they know better. I’ve had a lady tell me that she could order a certain breakfast sandwich because it’s on the lunch menu. No, a breakfast burrito is not on the lunch menu! It has breakfast in its name! Someone argued with me that the grilled chicken is breaded. I kept repeating myself that we have plain, grilled chicken breasts and crispy breaded chicken. They didn’t believe me. And there’s this guy that repeatedly asks for his snack wrap on a burger bun. My managers don’t allow that and he argues with me about why he can’t do that. It’s different costs for buns versus a wrap and we can’t charge him properly.
They want items not on our menu, as others have mentioned. I had someone yelling at me about fried chicken. Like from KFC. He kept yelling that he wants a bucket of fried chicken and he doesn’t see it on the menu. I’ve been asked for whoppers, buddy burgers, and onion rings. One person that wanted one of those then exclaimed he was at the wrong restaurant by accident and left.
There was also a guy who would come by regularly early in the morning and had a car with the driver’s side reversed. To solve the issue of reaching the window in the drive-thru he would drive backward through our drive-thru. This would be from 5 to 6 a.m.”
They Had To Get The Police Involved!
“I work at a pizza place.
First, we have a delivery charge of $3.40 and if you pay with debit/interact, we charge an additional $1.50 to your bill; it’s due to the company we use for debit/credit purchases. It has been like that for at least the last four years and, we have no control over it.
I took this customer’s order, let’s call him ‘Bob’. Bob orders a 12-inch pizza, breadsticks, and a drink. So the price is around $30. After I tell him the total, he says he’ll pay with his debit card, and when I tell him about the debit charge, he says: ‘I guess, I just won’t tip.’ Already this guy is a dick for telling me this but whatever, put it in. Five minutes later, Bob calls back: ‘Hey I was wondering why my bill is so high?’ I tell him about the delivery charge and he goes, ‘I’ve never paid that before! Find my last bill.’
Now, since he just made a new order, his last order was erased and filled with his recent order. I tell him I can’t do that. Now he wants to know every order he’s ever had to prove he’s never paid that. When I tell him I can’t do that, he goes nuts. ‘Look, idiot, stop being stupid and find my previous orders.’
By that time, I started losing my cool and I am becoming emotional, so I ask my manager (we’ll call her O) to continue the call. She tries to explain what I’ve tried to explain to Bob but, by that point, he has snapped. ‘Look, woman, I have NEVER paid this delivery charge before. Check all of my previous orders, you stupid idiot.’
At that point, my manager hangs up on him, but then he calls again. He starts swearing at her, so she hangs up. He does this at least five more times in two minutes before she calls our area manager, who then talks to the customer. Then two minutes later, we get a call. ‘You had to squeal to your boss!?’
We hang up and cancel his order; this is in the time span of seven minutes. It doesn’t stop, he starts harassing, not only my workplace but our area manager, who then calls his boss in the head office to talk to the guy, because Bob threatened the area manager. Bob still tries to call us for three hours, each call happened every two to five minutes.
We had to get the police involved and I had to make a statement about it. Again, this all happened due to him having to pay a delivery charge of $3.40.”
Angry Over Tater Tots?
“When I was in high school, I worked at a burger joint.
At first, they’d always have me working the fryer, and that freaking sucked. The guy who supervised me was Joe, and Joe was pretty much a huge jerk and was always yelling at me for something. Way above and beyond new guy stuff.
Anyways, one day they take me off that dang fryer and put me on the window. I start my shift, and it’s going well. Then, near the end of the night, this one good ole boy rolls back around the drive-thru. I open the window, and he looks me dead in the eye, and says, ‘My tots aren’t freaking done you stupid piece of trash.’ He proceeds to throw the bag at me.
Guess who’s on the fryer? That idiot Joe. So, we cooked the guy some more tots and Joe somehow blamed that stuff on me. I worked there for five months. Did not have much fun. Good shakes though.”
Disagreement At Little Caesars On How To Make A Pizza
“A guy came into the Little Caesars where and said, with complete conviction I might add, ‘I’d like a Canadian pizza please!’ So I sold him one and he left.
He came back five minutes later freaking out because ‘This isn’t a Canadian! It has mushrooms on it!’ A Canadian pizza has pepperoni, bacon, and mushrooms. That is literally the definition of a Canadian pizza. I explained this to him and he asked how much it would cost to swap the pizza for a Meat Lovers. I told him it would cost $9.60, which is the full price of a Meat Lovers since we can’t take a pizza back once it’s left the store.
He got very angry and said something like, ‘Well fine, I guess I’ll just eat it then,’ and stormed out.”
The Couple’s Hidden Agenda
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“I was working the drive-thru at McDonald’s one night, and a guy with a good looking lady pulled up to my window. They said I was super polite, and asked how old I was. It’s not an unusual question, so I answered truthfully that I was 18. Both of their eyes lit up, and the lady said, ‘Told you!’ I was confused, to say the least.
Then the guy handed me a business card and said that they’d like me to apply for a job where they work. Once again, this wasn’t so unusual, until I saw that they wanted me to apply for a job as a streetwalker.
It took all of my willpower to keep my jaw from hitting the floor, but my eyes were as wide as baseballs. They told me to seriously consider the offer and drove off. My manager came over, saw the business card, and just about had a litter of kittens. The weirdest offer I’ve ever had to date.”
Onion Rings And The Creepy Coffee Man
“Off the top of my head, there’s not a lot of really weird requests. Mostly, I got people requesting items that weren’t on the menu and when I told them we didn’t offer them, they would insist I didn’t know what I was on about, and that we should sell them.
Probably the funniest of all of these was a lady who wanted onion rings.
She kept repeating she wanted onion rings and finally gave up trying to convince me over the headset and drove around to the window. When I repeated that we didn’t have onion rings, she got huffy, insisted that she’d never been to a McDonald’s before that didn’t sell onion rings, and we should be ashamed of ourselves for not selling onion rings, before she drove off to the Sonic across the street. No McDonald’s in my region has ever sold onion rings, so it came off as a really weird request, although I understand there are a few McDonald’s that do.
Another time a guy came through the drive-thru with a strong accent. This was after I went up to management, and the girl in drive-thru had to come get me to find out what he needed because she couldn’t tell what he was asking for. He was asking for what sounded like a ‘whooper’. We managed to get cleared up that he just wanted the McDonald’s equivalent of a whopper.
My store had a customer we referred to privately as ‘Creepy Coffee Man.’ He was a bit stalkerish towards a few of us, and he had a tendency to sit in the lobby for hours drinking one cup of coffee. Turns out he was staring at our behinds when we turned around. He told one girl, ‘You have a beautiful heart-shaped butt.’ Called one of the guys, ‘Sweetheart’ and told me he had the male equivalent to the ring I wear on my left hand. There was more but, he seriously creeped us all out, to the point where some of us would hide in the back when he came. The cops eventually had to come and tell him to stop coming to the store and leave us alone because he tried to follow several of us home.”
Trying To Get Her To Fire Her Manager?
Vladimir Gjorgiev/Shutterstock
“Hard to say off the top of my head, but I think I’ll list a few ‘strange things’.
I had a customer come through the drive-thru and try and pay me in Australian Dollars. This wasn’t really the weird part, the weird part was how offended he was when I passed it back to him.
‘Sorry sir, but I need New Zealand money.’
‘What?’ He gave me a real sour look. ‘But it’s worth more!’ He huffed and gave me New Zealand coins instead. I know some people do try and use Aussie/Samoan/Tongan etc. coins here to be sneaky/lazy, but he was very serious about the whole thing.
One time, a woman tried to tell me to fire my manager. It went like this: Our drive-thru has two lanes, so I was wearing the headset for one and my manager, an older foreign man, had the other. I remember, suddenly, out of nowhere, he asked me to finish his car’s order for him, quickly saying how she was having trouble hearing him. That was okay, I changed channels on the headset and finished it. Then, she (the lady in the car) drove up to the pay window, where I was. The first thing she said was something along the lines of: ‘Oh, you must be the boss. You should fire that foreign man, he didn’t sound like spoke English at all!’ I was quite shocked. Firstly, I was a crew member back then, so I have no clue why she would think I was in charge. Possibly racism. My manager’s English is fine, if not a little fractured and accented, but I have no more trouble understanding him than I do someone from North America.
Anyway, I told her that he was my manager, and watched her confused frown as she finished cashing and drove to the next window. I told him (the manager) later and he good-naturedly laughed about it.”
Starbucks Drive-Thru Woman And Her Ridiculous Outrage
“I work at Starbucks. The general rule at Starbucks is ‘Make the moment right!’ So basically, if a customer makes enough noise, they will get their drink free. This is almost guaranteed to happen.
Well, a woman comes through my drive-thru and says that she forgot her gift card for Starbucks at the bank. I apologize and ask her if she had an alternative form of payment.
She absolutely exploded on me, cursed me out, demanded to see my manager (who was not there). The thing is, I noticed that she had dollar bills with her and her drink happened to be $5.25. From that outrage, it was clear she wasn’t going to pay for it by any means.
So, she got her free drink. I’m still steaming.”
The Demands Of Subway Customers!
“I had someone scream at me about their sandwich. They said: ‘You smashed the avocado, closing my sandwich! I do not want it mushy! I want a new one without avocado!’
So I made five sandwiches for this idiot and then he didn’t wanna pay for them anymore because the tax was like $1.19 and said he shouldn’t be charged tax. He exclaimed: ‘Why isn’t everything $5?’
Another time, a lady came in and made a complaint. She said: ‘My bread was hard when I tried eating it this morning!’ I said: ‘Okay, may I have the receipt?’ This dude bought this sandwich three days prior.
Ugh, Subway customers are filled with such entitled jerks.”
Not Allowed To Have Fun At Work?
“Some guy was trying to explain an idea for improving our efficiency at something.
I can’t really remember, but I know it wasn’t a half bad idea. Unfortunately, I obviously can’t control a national corporation and two of my co-workers were behind me, and one of them said something that made the other laugh. Suddenly the previously friendly idea guy stops and flips out. ‘Are you laughing at me?’
Co-worker a: ‘No sir, co-worker b just made me laugh.’
Idea guy: ‘You better hope you weren’t laughing at me.’
(They just walk away smiling)
Idea guy: ‘Are you still laughing at me!?’
co-worker b: ‘No sir, just smiling.’
Idea guy: ‘Well this is work. You shouldn’t be laughing or smiling!’
Co-worker a: ‘We aren’t allowed to laugh or smile?’
Idea guy: ‘Yes! Work isn’t supposed to be fun.’
Co-worker b: (visibly looking around at other workers laughing and smiling as we had a light-hearted staff and management liked how happy we seemed) ‘Sir, we aren’t banned from having fun at work. Actually, most of us do have fun here.’
Idea guy: ‘Give me your names. I’m reporting you to the owner. You’ll be fired!’
(both give names and repeat how to spell them) He leaves. We make fun of him for a week. Of course, nothing ever came of it either due to him not actually reporting us or because we didn’t do anything wrong. Our owner laughed and had more fun than anyone else there.”
Dealing With The Worst Customers And The Worst Manager
“During my first week in the drive-thru, a lady pulled up to my window without stopping at the speaker. When I opened my window she threw four large drinks at me, then two Big Macs, and two burgers screaming, ‘I said no cheese! I’m deathly allergic to cheese!’
Turns out, one of her Big Macs had cheese on it, by accident (a fault in the kitchen, not me, since I entered the item correctly). So she decides to throw everything at me but her fries, because she’s mad. My manager stepped in at that point and I went to clean up/cry in the crew room. No idea what happened to her.
One lady kept coming back saying her burger was made wrong. ‘I said I like light ketchup only!’ Okay, the first time we did make it wrong so I fixed it for her. She came back again, ‘You made it wrong again, there’s too much ketchup!’ Whatever. I made it again. She comes back. ‘There’s no ketchup now!’ So I then asked her, ‘Did you open it up and look?’ ‘No. But I can tell there’s none!’ I open it and show her the freakin’ ketchup.’Well now your dirty hands touched it! I want a new one!’ Here you go. Just freakin’ leave. ‘My fries are cold now. I want fresh ones for having to come back so many times.’ Woman, you ate all yours already but here, just take it and leave. ‘These fries aren’t fresh and you didn’t fill the box enough.’ At that point I just shut the window on her, locked it and walked away. She banged on it for a bit but nobody answered so she threw her drink at it and left.
But the worst customer was this fat, dog-faced woman, who came in with her fat son and was looking at the menu at the front counter.
While she’s looking, her son grabs the gift card holder for and starts ripping cards out and throwing them everywhere. As kindly and politely as I can, I say to him say, ‘Please don’t,’ and reach my hand out for the cardholder, as if waiting for him to hand it back to me. He gives me the biggest grin, as his mom starts screaming at me. ‘Don’t you dare discipline my child, you don’t know his needs! Where is your manager? You should be fired!’ I wasn’t a manager at this point, I was a crew trainer, so I had to take her order then go fetch the only manager in the building so she could yell at him about me.
Just my luck, it’s the manager who hates my guts. The woman then complains to him that I was super rude and practically abused her son. When she finally leaves, my manager delights in screaming at me for being rude forces me to do a bunch of extra mind-numbing labor tasks, then sent me home early to cut my hours. He also brought up this incident any time he could, to make me look bad in front of anyone who’d listen.
Screw him, I still got my manager promotion after he was fired for scheduling me to work 13 days in a row (among other things).”
