If you’ve ever worked at a fast food restaurant, or the equivalent of a fast food restaurant in another industry, then you know exactly what I’m talking about – those customers who ask you something and you just stare at them until you can make your mouth form the words, “Sir, this is a Wendy’s.”
When you’re working at said place, these moments can be as frustrating as they are mind-blowing.
Once you’re looking back, though, like these 17 people, they can be pretty funny.
17. The face I just made.
I worked at a chipotle for four years and got some pretty interesting requests. But I’ll never forget the time someone ordered soup.
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 at chipotle! It was the grosses concoction of bean juice, sofritas, mild, medium and hot salsa, and sour cream.
She was stoked.
16. This is a bit off topic, but too funny not to share.
This is really weird that this became a meme, because I swear this is true. In about 95 I was driving from New England to Florida for a college spring break trip.
Somewhere in South Carolina we stopped at a Wendy’s. near the hallway to the bathrooms they had a big map of South Carolina and I said to a person “can you tell me where we are?” I was pretty clearly indicating the map. The lady said …”Honey, you in the Wendy’s!”
I was like…. thanks ok. So no big Macs.
15. Had to be an alien sighting.
I worked at the concession stand at a movie theater in high school. This guy orders a popcorn and large diet Pepsi. Comes back to the counter like 10 mins later complaining that his soda is carbonated.
I explained to him that all of our sodas are carbonated and he asks me if we had a microwave. We did, so he wants me go into the back and microwave his soda. He wants it warm but not too warm.
Went to the back and had to pour the soda into two different cups because the original wouldn’t fit into the microwave.
Truly bizarre experience.
14. At least he didn’t continue to argue.
One time this older dude rushes up to order and slams a coupon on the counter saying” I want this!”.
I pick it up It has menu items for KFC. I ask him “What exactly would you like to order?” He instantly gets disgruntled with me for not reading his god damn mind and shakes his finger at the coupon and said “Well Whatever is on the coupon, obviously!?” in a condescending tone.
I just look at him for a minute and say word for word “Sir, this is McDonald’s. I don’t know what you want me to do with this KFC coupon.” He looks at me dumbfounded. Then looks behind me at the menu and around the store, yells “Awh, Sh%t!” (Like this isn’t his first time walking into the wrong establishment), grabs the coupon and storms off.
13. It can really throw you off your script.
I’m late, but I used to work at Taco Bell as a drive-thru guy. I just took people’s orders, took their money, and gave them their shit, basically.
So there’s the usual script you follow when a customer pulls up.
“Hi, welcome to Taco Bell. How are you?”
And 90% of them say “Good, could I get a…” and carry on with their order. The kind 10% of people say “Good, how are you?” and you would usually say something like “Pretty good. Thanks for asking! What can I get for you today?”
Well one time, I got an outlier. I asked “Hi, how are you?” and defying all convention, this man on the other end, in a country accent responded sadly “We’re not doing too well.”
It wasn’t in a dignified way either. Dude sounded legit upset about something. I was just bewildered, I had no idea what to say. I think after like 5 seconds of silence I was like “Uh…. well sorry to hear that, what can I get for you tonight?”
The speaking part of that job is so routine that you become a customer service robot. Then this sad guy comes through and actually is honest about his current mood and it just threw me off entirely.
12. You’re right about one thing.
“You don’t have tables?”
Nope.
“I’ll just have the general chicken”
…this is a Pizza Hut.
“Fine, just a few egg rolls.”
How about a pizza?
“Why would I order pizza at a Chinese restaurant?”
You’re right, that would be stupid.
11. Wait, what?
I had that once working at McDonald’s like 6 years ago, this lady, probably in her 50’s, comes to the front counter, I say my NPC greeting script of “Welcome to McDonald’s, how can I help you?” and she straight faced, staring into my soul, asked if I would have s^x with her.
I was astounded at the confidence and sheer bluntness about it, as well as how inappropriate it was, that i stammer out something about me being 16 and that’s illegal, she then got all sad-faced and started on about a divorce and she was having a rough time with it.
I managed to chime in with “How about a nice burger for some comfort food?” And she ordered one. I never saw her again, thankfully.
10. Some people have a hard time with life.
Dude came to drive thru. I open the window, “sir, how can I help you.”
“I’m outa checks.” He replies calmly.
“Not sure I follow you.” I say.
“I’m outa checks.” He says again more impatiently.
“Right, I heard you but I don’t know what you want me to do about it. You can pay with cash or card too.”
Dude gives me a weird look then says, “Oh this ain’t the bank.” And peels out away from the window.
I’m a pharmacist.
9. A Big Mac is not a Whopper. To be fair.
Worked at McDonalds. We would always get people that would ask for a Whopper Burger, either seriously or trying to be funny. Cue the exhausted “We don’t sell Whoppers sir/ma’am, we have the Big Mac.” in response. Usually we get an “oh, right. Ok, one of those”.
Until one day we had a guy come through drive thru that asked for a large Whopper Meal, and instant reply back: “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”.
Me: “Sir, we don’t sell those. This is a McDonalds. The closest equivalent would be a Big Mac, but it’s NOT a Whopper. If you want an actual Whopper burger you need to go to Hungry Jack’s [Burger King]”
Reply: “A f@cking Whopper Meal!”
Me: “Ok sir, I can’t give you a whopper meal here, but I can order a Big Mac Meal for you. The Big Mac is the closest equivalent we have, but it is not a whopper. Are you happy with a large Big Mac meal instead?”
Him: “Yes, was that so hard?!”
We give him a large Big Mac meal, and sure enough 10 minutes later he is back through the drive-thru screaming into the speaker that he hasn’t gotten his Whopper Burger.
8. Excellent recovery. 10 points to Gryffindor.
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 and I guess habit took over because she started the announcement with “Attention Walmart shoppers…”.
She realized her mistake and made a good recovery with “…you are in the wrong store”.
7. What was she expecting?
I worked at Dunkin and one time a customer came through the drive through and complained to us that the drive-thru was built in a way that made it hard to drive.
She started yelling at my co-workers so I just put down what I was doing and told her “ma’am we cannot change the construction of the building.” Like seriously though what’d she want us to do I just make sandwiches.
6. No one is arguing it’s authentic.
Y’all 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 Panda Express and stood at the buffet line for about ten minutes, critiquing our “mistakes” and explaining how Chinese cuisine doesn’t actually have fried wontons with cream cheese filling.
Ma’am, we just fry what came in the bag from a warehouse in California.
5. Is this some kind of alternate timeline?
I worked at a bakery and it was not uncommon (about 10-12x year) for guys in their 30-40s to bring their dates in and place large 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? 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 pick up and if you tried to take the order seriously and get details, they’d get rude as f*ck ’cause I guess yelling at employees was also seen as sexy in this scenario… ?
It had to have been like one guy at a workplace who did it and told all his friends because it was so fucking weird and I’ve never heard of it being a thing elsewhere.
4. This is your brain on drugs.
I worked at a pizza place and I got a complaint that we delivered sushi.
It was a pepperoni pizza.
But he could not be convinced.
3. Bless their hearts.
About 11 years ago I had just went into management at McDonalds and they sent me to “practice” running our 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 15 feet away in a booth. They both look and sound frail. The exchange went like this:
Me: Hi what can I get for you today?
Lady 1 (standing): yes I’ll have the lunch meat combo
Me: I’m sorry what?
Lady 1: the lunch meat combo
Me: I’m sorry we don’t have that here
Lady 1: oh…well what do you have?
Me: well we have burgers, fish, chicken.
Lady 1: wait…what is this place?
Me: McDonald’s.
Lady 1 turns and looks at her friend and literally yells: they don’t have the lunch meat combo here!
Lady 2 (sitting 15 feet away): What?
Lady 1: They don’t have the lunch meat combo!
Lady 2: What do they have?!
Lady 1: It’s McDonald’s!
Lady2: What?!
Lady 1: McDonalds!
Lady 2: Where are we?!
Lady 1 looks at me: give us just a couple minutes
Me: no problem take your time.
At that point I had to step away because the interaction reminded me so much of the spongebob episode with the two older ladies and the chocolate bars that I was about to die laughing so I had someone else take over the register and told them to promo their meals because they made my day.
2. Sometimes you just gotta hang up.
Not fast food, but 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 were located at such-and-such. I told her that I think she had us confused with another Italian restaurant chain, Johnny Carino’s. She still disagreed and tried to argue.
I finally just basically said that I am standing in the building that I work in 5 days a week, I’m pretty sure I know the location of my physical body and hung up.
1. This is kind of sad.
A friend and I stopped into a Hardee’s (Carl’s Jr.) for breakfast, ordered our food, and sat down. The place was totally empty except for us. Maybe a minute after we sit down an older guy walks in and goes up to the counter.
While the guy is ordering, a Hardee’s employee shuffles over to us very quickly, but quietly. They really quickly say “I’m sorry guys but could you move to another table? The gentleman at the counter comes in here every day for breakfast and he always sits here.” My friend and I confusedly glance at each other, and the worker looks over his shoulder real quick before looking back. “Please, he’s…not all there. If this table isn’t empty he’ll get really confused and he’ll panic. Please.”
My friend and I gather our stuff and really quickly jump up before the old-timer can see that we were at this table and move to a booth in another part of the dining room. The employee looked so relieved he was bout to cry.
Sadly that Hardee’s closed permanently about a month later.
I’m so glad these stories were shared but wow. Humans, am I right?
Please tell us more of these stories in the comments if you’ve got them!
