Food servers come across some off-putting customers while on the job. Check out these servers accounts of the most disgusting customer they've ever dealt with:
That’s Just Not Right
>>> “I once had a family come in with a child who couldn’t eat solid food. They brought a blender with them. They ordered him a chicken basket with fries. They put it in the blender and made a shake. I started to gag. They called my manager over for making fun of them. I wasn’t making fun I was just grossed out by your chicken fry shake!”
>>> “I bus tables and hostess at an upscale diner. About a month into working there, during a regular weekday lunch shift, a family of three walked in and I sat them at a two-top with an extra chair for the baby carrier beside an empty four-top. The mother pulled out two chairs from the table beside theirs and proceeded to change her filthy child right there in the corner of the dining area. I spent about fifteen minutes after they left just sanitizing the entire two tables and all the chairs. People are super icky.”
>>> “I used to work in a Japanese restaurant, and everyone thinks they know the right way to eat this stuff, and everyone eats it differently, so I’m used to odd special requests. One day this guy comes in by himself, orders a couple maki and a side of mayonnaise. He’s very specific, saying he wants like a little ramekin filled with it. That’s a new one on me, but we use mayo in some of our sauces, and the customer is always right so I hand him the mayonnaise. I take off, kind of forgetting about it until I walk by his table and he’s eating the mayo by the spoonful in between bites of sushi. Don’t people know cellulite is the main ingredient in mayonnaise?”
>>> “We had a woman who demanded that everything she ate be heated up, like yogurt, cottage cheese, cake, ice cream, etc…is that a health code violation!?”
>>> “I was working at a restaurant. A father and his kid came in. The kid orders a hot dog and asked for a balloon. I bring both the balloon and the hot dog. The kid wants to be able to hold both, so the dad ties the balloon to his kid’s wrist. The kid eats the hot dog and projectile vomits all over the table, the booth, the floor, and the balloon. The dad cuts the balloon off the kid’s wrist and takes the kid to the bathroom. While they’re doing their thing, the balloon starts drifting, dripping vomit on other tables and nearing a ceiling fan. That’s when I thought, ‘YIKES.’ So I grab the balloon and say, ‘Hey, I need to deflate this’ and grab a fork. Let me pause here to say that my concentration face, when doing a meticulous task, involves a slightly open mouth. I’m a genius, so I grab the skin near the bottom of the vomit balloon between my fingers and try to puncture it with the fork to let the air out slowly. The balloon popped, spraying my agape face with hotdog vomit.”
>>> “I am a host and it’s my job to make sure the restroom is clean. Today a man walks to the counter and tells me the bathroom is dirty. I walk into the bathroom and there is a pair of tighty-whities with a giant poop stain on them sitting right next to the toilet. Awesome.
Learn Some Manners, Will Ya?
>>> “I work at a chain Italian restaurant. This guy orders chicken Alfredo and a side of ranch. I am assuming the ranch is for the little tiny piece of salad he is working on, so I put in the order and grab his side of ranch. It sits there till I drop the chicken Alfredo. This psycho grabs the side of ranch and dumps it into his chicken Alfredo, stirs it up, and takes a giant bite! Grossssss!”
>>> “Roughly 6-7 years ago, I was waiting tables at a restaurant when the fattest person I’ve ever seen walked in. She was seated in a section that I wasn’t waiting on so other than the initial mild curiosity, I ignored her. 25 minutes or so later, I heard someone gagging. ‘Great’, I thought, ‘Someone got sick on our food.’ The sections were divided for smoking so I couldn’t really see what was going on. A few minutes later, I heard another person making dry heaving/gagging sounds. I started to get a bit worried at this point. The managers rushed out but I just continued on doing my thing. Waiting tables at night is crazy busy, short of a nuclear war, so you just have to keep on working. Then it eventually hit me, I wanted to gag as well. It was the smell. It turned out that the incredibly obese woman had crapped herself and just sat in it. Long story short, many customers were refunded money. At least the ones who stuck around. We propped all the doors open in the building and sat outside for a good hour before going back in and closing up shop. I’ll never forget that night.”
>>> “I was having a pretty good shift tonight until a customer at my table took a bite of his mashed potatoes, chew, then spit them out onto the table in front of him. He looked at me in disgust and said ‘These are cold, clean this up.’ Disgusting.”
What Was Their Thought Process?
>>> “I was told by the customers that the women’s washroom was dirty. I had a waitress check the bathroom first to make sure the washroom wasn’t occupied. To both our horror, some women had her period all over the floor and toilet. It literally looked like a crime scene with a bloody footprint and all.”
>>> “A customer in restaurant dropped his fork. When I heard the sound, I approached and asked if everything is alright, and if they need new forks/knives. At the moment I didn’t know what dropped, I had just heard the sound. They said ‘No, everything is alright, thank you.’ They proceed to pick up the fork from the floor, and continue eating with it.”
>>> “I worked at California Pizza Kitchen for 3 years. We would have the same old obese lady come in every few weeks and place a to-go order for 3 pizzas. She would demand that we let her cut her pizza herself because ‘Y’all never do it right.’ She would literally take the pizza cutter and do some kind of satanic symbol in the pizzas, rip the lids off of the pizza boxes, pay, and go sit in her car and devour everything. Some things you can’t unsee.”
>>> “I had a creepy foreign family in my section last night. They yelled at each other the entire time in some kind of Eastern European language and ordered in broken English. They ordered a chocolate cake for dessert and the youngest member of the family took it upon himself to ‘make me a present.’ This creepy little foreign boy licks the remaining chocolate on the plate into the shape of a heart. The family left without leaving a tip. I guess they thought letting their youngest son tongue the heck out plate was enough gratuity for me.”
>>> “I just watched a lady pour like 20 Splenda packets into her iced tea then ask me for, ‘More Splenda. Like, alot more…'”
>>> “At the restaurant, I go to for lunch every day, there’s this guy that always orders shrimp and mayonnaise. The shrimp are the precooked baby shrimp that they sell by the kilo. As for the mayonnaise, he fishes a large spoonful from a tub full of industrial mayonnaise and glops it all over the bread so that it is way too much. The guy loves it that way apparently because he continues to order it every day. It makes me want to gag when he eats it.”
Things You Can’t Unsee
>>> “A family that came in with their three little kids one very busy night and constantly complained to us about the speed of service, despite the fact that there were only two of us on staff. Did I mention we bussed our own tables? After two hours of the family complaining and shouting at each other while their kids shrieked, I come to bus the table. In the past five minutes since I’d last been by to check on them, the two eldest children had literally upended their plates over the table and played in it like it was a zen garden. There were refried beans everywhere, including smears of it on the wall, rice scattered on the floor in about a six-foot radius, and soggy napkins stuck to everything in sight. They didn’t even leave a tip.”
>>> “Last night a man came in that literally looked pregnant. Not only did he have to sit 2 feet back from the table, but he spilled food all over himself and the floor, demanded 8 diet coke refills, smelled really bad and stiffed me. Then again, I would be upset too if I had to permanently shop in the maternity section at Target.”
>>> “Once saw a guy dump a plate of butter fried shrimp down his pants at Red Lobster. I guess he wanted to take a few home on the sly. The thing is they would have brought him a Styrofoam container if he asked.”
>>> “I saw a customer lick the ketchup and hot sauce bottles and put the lid back on.”
>>> “This one elderly gentleman took a food menu and a drinks menu into the toilet with him. When he came out, he put them back on the table.”
The One Gross Ingredient This Customer Couldn’t Get Enough Of
“Although I’ve never worked at a Subway, I’ll never forget the most nauseating creation that I’ve ever seen assembled there.
While waiting in line for my own meal, I happened to find myself standing behind a young man of about nineteen. He was overweight with an unkempt beard and thick glasses. Judging by the slightly awkward way in which he voiced his order, a passerby might have assumed that he was uncertain of what he wanted between his bread slices. After ordering meatballs with American ‘cheese’ as his primary ingredient, he went on to detail a rather bizarre combination of garnish:
‘Um…pickles…jalapenos…um…pickles…more pickles…um…banana peppers…um…pickles…’
This continued for several seconds before he finally seemed to be satisfied. Then, the employee assisting him asked if any oil or vinegar was desired.
‘Um…just, just oil.’
So, the oil went on, and the young man licked his lips. The sandwich artist asked if he would like anything else.
‘Um…more oil?’
So, the oil went on again, and the young man licked his lips again. The recreation of the event was so perfect, I actually wondered if I was experiencing deja vu. The sandwich artist asked if the young man was satisfied with his order, or if he would like anything else. The employee looked a little bit concerned at this point.
‘Um…more oil?’
Once again, the same tone of voice. This time, though, the sandwich artist offered to keep pouring until the young man asked her to stop. He nodded his understanding, and the oil began flowing once again and it kept flowing, for several seconds, until the entirety of the young man’s sandwich was drenched. A minute or so later, it had been wrapped and paid for, but by the time the credit card reader had worked its magic, there was a pool of viscous fluid collecting in the young man’s bag. I got to watch as he licked his fingers, slurped down his sandwich, and then sucked the remaining oil out of his sandwich bag.”
Take Your Service Somewhere Else, Please
>>> “I thought this was revolting. A customer ordered a grilled chicken salad sandwich with hot mayo and extra butter. LOADS of extra butter. Probably about 3 tbsp served with it and then she asked for another 5-6 tbsp. There might have been more butter than chicken salad and there was definitely a puddle of grease left on her plate when she was finished.”
>>> I have three stories that come to mind. The most disgusting, however, is a disgruntled customer blew his nose all the way across his forearm sleeve in rebellion in front of a rude waitress. Another customer drank from other customer’s bottles as they went to the restroom. There was also a food fight with food being taken out of the mouth and tossed, sometimes missing and hitting those seated at other tables.”
>>> “I cleaned up green puke on St. Patrick’s Day. It was only 11:12 a.m.”
>>> “An older greasy guy didn’t wash hands properly after eating and using the bathroom. He didn’t wash hands upon entering the kitchen. He proceeded to handle change, sneeze, and cough while working the window. He then gloveless, touched the meats and veggies, moving condiments around and touching everything.”
>>> “Back in the day, I worked at BD’s Mongolian Grill. Now this restaurant was pretty close to some major colleges and one night, a party of college-age guys in suits and ties come in. I can only assume this was a fraternity party and I seat them and move on. When I go to clean the bathrooms, one of the frat boys goes into the men’s bathroom. Being female, I stay outside of the bathroom until it’s empty so I can clean it but in the brief moment when he walked in, I saw him go into the only stall. I wait outside for a good fifteen or twenty minutes, bouncing back and forth between the host counter and waiting for him to get out. I had a hawk’s eye on the door and watched as 3-4 other people went in and out while he was in there (because there is a urinal as well). Suddenly he emerges, nervous, only to tell me that ‘someone’ had pooped his pants in the bathroom and left them there. Of course, the only someone who had been in that stall for the last half-hour was him. With a firm glare, dripping with sarcasm I said, ‘Oh, well that person must have been very special.’ My manager and I had to clean the bathroom that night.”
“We’ve Seen Some Crazy Stuff, But…”
>>> “I work in a fairly popular fast food place that you can only find in my city. It’s a small-time business and me and the cashier have been working in the place for years. We’ve seen some crazy stuff, but once I was working the grill on a slow day when this huge, foul-smelling, fishy guy waddles in. He left quite an impression on the poor cashier.
He ordered a Double Triple Balty Deluxe, a house speciality, and proceeded to list off this ridiculously complicated order using old diner speak. He wanted his burger ‘on a raft, four by four, animal-style, extra shingles with a shimmy and a squeeze with light axle grease.’ He asked me to ‘make it cry, burn it, and let it swim.’ Who orders like that?! Anyway, I managed to decipher most of the stupid stuff he spat at the floundering cashier and handed him the burger. I was actually quite proud of this (rather disgusting) looking burger, and watched him take the first bite.
Let me tell you, he took his sweet time. It was really suspenseful, all the customers in the restaurant had quieted down and everyone’s eyes were on him. He finally finishes the first bite, looks at me with such a weird grin on his face and screams out for all to hear, ‘NO PICKLES!’ I KNEW that I had put pickles on that burger and the guy was just being a jerk. ‘Haha, kidding!’ he says and shows us the pickles he was hiding under his tongue.”
“Still Not Worth It”
>>> “I used to work as a waiter at a fast-paced Korean fried chicken restaurant! Many people would come after work and drink with their friends, especially on the weekends.
One dreadful Friday night, a customer reserved a table for 40 people. Due to the large reservation, we had to close off the store and pretty much gave them the whole place so they can celebrate a birthday. I think the birthday boy had just turned 21 so they urged him to keep drinking. They drank for hours and hours.
The birthday boy had to use the bathroom and wouldn’t come out for 35 minutes. His friends became worried so they kept knocking. When he finally came out, the bathroom was a mess. He had thrown up all over the sink, toilet and the floor. Cleaning the toilet and the floor wasn’t even that bad cause we can mop it up and stuff. The worst was the sink.
Some pieces of chicken were clogging up the hole so I had to put on a glove and pluck out the chunky parts little by little. Not to mention, the smell was putrid beyond comprehension. I remember trying to hold back a gag the whole ordeal.
They felt so bad for me that they left a VERY__generous tip! Still not worth it though.”
Just Ew…
>>> “We once had a customer ask for old fish and chicken at a Long John’s. I figured it was for a pet or something until I saw him eat it in front of me.”
>>> “A customer constantly picked his nose and then continued eating like it was nothing. I’m sure he was one of those people who don’t wash their hands after using the bathroom.”
>>> “We serve alfredo fries and someone ripped the package, leaving the tablecloth soaked in alfredo sauce. Guess who had to clean it up.”
>>> “A lady came in asking if we found a bag of hair. She came back a few hours later and asked if we found a bag of hair extensions. She then came back a few days later and asked again.”
>>> “We have a frequent wasted old man that comes in with a bottle of malt vinegar and pours a large amount of it on everything he eats.”
>>> “A child puked all over his mom. Oh, it was ripe! But what makes this memorable is a table got sat right next to the throw-up booth and a giant grown man got a smell of the puke and instantly threw up too. I spent the next 25 minutes cleaning up 2 piles of puke. I hate my job.”
>>> “I get it, kids make messes. And truly, even to make a tiny half effort to clean up OR just leave me a correct tip and a cheerful ‘so sorry’ and I am more than happy to clean it up. But to the person that let their little runt detonate his spaghetti tonight all over the table and THEN left a 5% tip…you suck.”
>>> “Each person at this half ton table ordered 4 extra sides of mayonnaise with their hamburgers, I could hear their blood pressure raise with every bite!”
>>> “Not a customer, but rather a homeless person who walked in through the backdoor and went to the bathroom. He refused to leave and pooped himself leaving a stain on the bathroom floor. I walked in the day after and could smell what I thought was manure. Rank.”
