The whole “Sir, this is a Wendy’s” moment has become something of a meme these days. It can be applied to any clueless person, in any situation, whose expectations do not coincide with where they are currently standing in life.
But for fast food employees, those moments are all too real – and they happen on a pretty regular basis. These 15 employees (or ex-employees) surely had plenty to pick from, but came up with their best.
15. BIGGER.
This reminds me of when I was working at a grocery store. I was working produce, but the only floral employee also did two other jobs at the store so she worked 6-2, pretty inconvenient. On top of this, I closed produce alone pretty much every night, so I had to cover both because I had some experience with floral from my grandmother owning a flower shop.
One day, this man comes in around 6pm asking for help with floral, I go to help him and he hands me his cell phone. It’s his wife, who wants me to make “something like a bridal bouquet”. In my head I’m thinking “this is something you call about ahead of time, plus this is a grocery store floral department, god damn.” Anyway, I set about doing it, takes me a little while but I get it done, get it priced and off the husband goes.
I go back about my job, now behind because it was the after work rush. It’s coming up on 8pm and I’m getting ready to close down the salad bar when I see a teenager walk up with a fairly large bouquet. It takes me a couple of seconds and I realize it’s the one I made a couple of hours ago and he puts me on the phone with his mom who says it’s not big enough. I can barely get my hand around this bouquet at this point but I don’t argue it. I basically throw some more flowers in there and say it’s as good as it’s gonna get.
14. Talk about distracted.
Worked at Chick-fil-A for too many god awful years.
Guy walks in looking at his phone and says “I’d like the fish sandwich combo.”
Cue confused blinking on my part and then I finally ask, “what was that?”
Dude looks up from his phone, sighs, and says “I want the FISH SANDWICH.”
Me: Sir, this is CHICK-fil-A. Literally all we have is chicken.
He finally looked up at the menu behind me, then around at the restaurant completely bewildered, turned around and walked out. I don’t know how he even drove there, parked, and walked in without noticing where he was.
13. No love for Chili’s.
I work at a chilis and when I was hosting old people would constantly come in and talk about how weird it was that we redecorated so suddenly and where did the salad bar go??
They thought we were Sizzlers which was two buildings away from us. Happened at least four times.
12. Does not compute.
Worked at a small roadside produce place. My boss had a few different stalls so I was often left to run the stall myself.
I remember this lady walked up.
“Do you have any tomatoes.”
“Sorry we don’t.”
“But the place down the street has them.”
“Then go there.”
11. What on earth??
I used to manage a del taco during my high school teenage years, we had an 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 realizing it was a del taco and drive off. Once a month, every month, for 2 years
10. Well I think it’s kind of funny.
Someone asked me “What type of meat is on the grilled chicken sandwich?” I responded “Muskrat” he didn’t think it was very funny.
9. Welp, never eating there.
As a former Del Taco employee, I can confidently say that regular Del Taco customers are all mean and/or idiots.
One lady in particular still makes my blood boil almost ten years later. It was Taco Tuesday (3 tacos for $1.00) and we had over 50 orders in our queue plus a line of people putting in more orders. We were slammed and understaffed and our wait time was extremely long even though we were trying our best.
So this lady was getting really pissed about waiting for her super important order of six shitty tacos, defrosted and assembled by a guy who went to my high school but never actually showed up for class. Every time we would call out an order number, she would sarcastically (and loudly) cheer and clap and “congratulate” us for “finally learning how to do our jobs!”
This went on for ten or fifteen minutes before I finally showed her our order board and said “here is the order we are currently making, order 15, and waaaaaayyy over here is your order, order 45.” Realizing how many orders were ahead of her finally prompted her to leave (with no tacos) so that we could continue fulfilling orders under the silent watchful gaze of our other thirty angry customers.
I hated working there. Then one day, I showed up for my regularly scheduled shift to find a notice on the door that said “sorry, this location has closed.” So anyway, I hate Del Taco.
8. At least she came back.
Working at home depot I got my face ripped off because this lady wanted to return a label maker, and nothing that we scanned came up in our system.
She demanded a manager (supervisor) and that’s when I stepped in
Me: What seems to be the problem?
Lady: I’m trying to return this product, and you guys are telling me I can’t
Me: Well, unfortunately, when we go to scan it in our system, nothing comes up, are you certain you got it at Home Depot?
Her: Absolutely
Me: Ma’am, I apologize, but if it doesn’t come up in our system, there’s no way for me to refund you, if you can provide a receipt, I’d be more than happy to help you.
Her: *storms off angrily*
*hours later she comes back*
Her: Hey sooooo…I want to apologize
Me: Hmm?
Her: I found the receipt for the label maker, it was from Office Depot
We had a good laugh, and I told her I appreciated her coming back in.
7. Sounds like that was the plan all along.
I worked in a Jimmy John’s.
A dude in a military uniform came in asking about a military discount.
Told him we don’t give military discounts, to which he proceeded to flip out, pull out his phone and start recording a video, ranting about how we won’t give him his military discount like he deserves.
6. Why are people so rude?
Work at Panera.
Guest calls in from car, several people in background, all giving orders for a pick up. First order is something simple, next order is an item we don’t carry. A salmon dish of some kind. I know there are some regional Paneras that have or have had salmon. We are not one of them.
So I let them know, “Hey, I’m sorry but we don’t carry salmon. Maybe-” and the person on the other end of the phone cuts me off and starts getting really aggressive. “Yes you do! YOU DO!” they scream.
But I don’t. We don’t.
So then I’m like, “Hey, maybe you’re thinking of another chain. We are very similar to-” and I start to list off some other places, and they cut me off again screaming, “I KNOW YOU HAVE FUCKING SALMON! WHAT THE FUCK! I ATE IT JUST THE OTHER DAY!”
And at this point I’m just being honest with them and say, “Hey man, I don’t really need this attitude. We don’t have salmon. I can’t make the dish for you. You have us confused with someone else.”
There’s a long silence and finally someone (not the person who’s been yelling) says, “Wait, this isn’t *insert some totally not Panera sounding place that I don’t remember here*?”
“No.”
And then everyone in the car starts yelling at each other, and I hang up.
Customer service is the worst.
5. Poor dad.
When I was really young and had recently tried fried calamari, I confused it with the fried clam strips at White Castle.
I was adamant that they had fried calamari and convinced my dad to order it for me at the window.
They laughed at him.
4. Poor sap waited in line for ICE CREAM.
My family runs a concessions trailer at fairs. LOTS of great stories but this one always sticks out.
We have a giant 16-bay steam table directly in front of the serving counter. It’s old and some pans don’t sit quite right so there’s always a bit of steam leaking out. Our trailer is built around one item, empanadas (not really but similar), the trailer is even called that. All the signs advertise empanadas in big letters.
So one day it’s like 90˚ out and sweat is just running off of all of us. We’re packed, the line is running down the street, and we’re eight servers deep at the window. Customer comes up to the window, after standing in line for probably fifteen minutes, sees us with soaked shirts and headbands, steam pouring out of the table and they ask; “What flavors of Ice Cream do you have?”
3. They’re swamped, okay?
Not exactly a fast food worker but I do work in a restaurant and people can get Deliveroo/Uber Eats from us.
A couple times a week a driver will show up and show us their phone with an order for a 12 inch sub.
Yeah mate, that’s the Subway across the street, we’re a pizzeria, read the address.
God knows how they find the customer’s houses.
2. Ugly.
A customer called the store with a very specific request that I did my best to fulfill.
She had her husband pick it up.
He returned 20 minutes later with food thrown in a bag, out of its container, then threw it across the counter at me. His wife called to tell me I would never amount to anything.
I was on my final two weeks, so telling her to make her own dinner was particularly rewarding.
1. If you can’t find a McDonald’s, you have troubles.
It wasn’t me involved but I witnessed it.
I worked at Burger King when I was a teenager. We are 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 through the headset. Anyway this one guy rolls up to the window and shouts “I want a large big mac meal with a coke PLEASE! Is that so damn hard?!”
My manager very calmly says “my apologies sir, that won’t be difficult.” he leans out of the window and points down the road “there’s a McDonald’s about 3 miles in that direction. They’ll be able to help. Have a nice day sir.” Then he just closes the window and walks around the corner out of sight. I laughed so hard!!
These stories are super funny, mostly because I wasn’t the employee slow-blinking from the other side of the counter.
If you’ve been that person, tell us your best stories in the comments!
