If you can avoid it, please don't be the customers who show up to an establishment mere seconds before closing time. There are few words that waiters hate to hear more than, “Oh good, we made it just before closing time!” The waitstaff are expecting people to be out of the building by the time the end of their shift rolls around. That way, they can properly close the restaurant: there's a lot of cleaning, restocking, or counting money that has to happen before all of the staffers can head home…

Every restaurant worker has at least one customer interaction that they'll never be able to get out of their head. Some are positive interactions, like having a regular who overtips, or a customer who goes out of their way to tell their manager how helpful the employee was. These positive interactions are always welcome, because many customers treat service workers like they're beneath them. Working as a server is just a job, but some customers treat these workers as if they're second-class cit…

It never hurts to be kind. Having manners helps a lot in life, too. It's like that saying goes: you catch more flies with honey than vinegar. You'll get far in life by treating people the way you'd like to be treated… but you'll also learn pretty quickly that not everyone is raised right. Some people just cannot fathom that people besides themselves have feelings, too. One of the best tips for knowing if someone was raised right or not is to dine with them at a restaurant , like u/SassNA**319 d…

Talk about a humiliating dining experience! This patron had an unfortunate emergency that required a relatively long trip to the bathroom. The trip took so long, in fact, that his server began to think he dined and dashed because he took his things with him. It turns out the customer elected to grab his things because he didn't want his stuff to be “out in the open” while he was gone for what he instinctively could tell would be more than just a minute. Well, the server decided the matter was s…

Servers wait on people from all walks of life, and that includes celebrities. In this thread, they shared the good, the bad, and the ugly. Back when I was a waitress, I didn't meet a single famous person. I guess the diner I worked at wasn't exactly in high demand, and it was also in a pretty rural area, so I doubt most people have heard of it. There was this one time when I thought I had waited on Paul Rudd, but nope, it turned out it was just a look-alike. To be honest, I wish I had him as a…

From seafood to surströmming, these people will never forget their encounters with these foul foods . Everyone seems to have at least one or two foods that they'll never ever eat . For some, this stems from getting sick soon after eating that food---even if it wasn't the one that made them ill in the first place. Other people simply took their first bite of a dish and vowed to never taste that food again . Either way, they're sharing their stories with everyone else so that we all know what to…

These chefs and waiters have the patience of saints. They've encountered some truly bizarre customer requests, and they're sharing the strangest of them with the r/AskReddit community. When you go out to eat and pay for a nice meal, you want it to be perfect the first time. You shouldn't have to ask the server to send back the dish to the kitchen, but it happens. I once got a green egg at a diner during breakfast, which I sent back to the kitchen with haste (politely!). But I'd never dream of s…

Who actually orders food like this? In a prompt to r/AskReddit, u/Graceful_Swan_Ronson asked waitstaff about the most ridiculous things their customers have ever wanted to eat. The resulting answers are hilarious and strange — and some are even a little bit wholesome. I have a few friends who order weirdly at restaurants, and dining with them is a delight. Sometimes I'll order a burger and fries, while my friend orders a slice of ham, a fruit smoothie, and a bowl of tater tots. It's like food r…

Some customers prefer to learn by experience, rather than listen to the waitstaff who know what they're talking about. This customer chose that route, and was quite displeased with her experience. You can't please everyone, which is especially true when it comes to food service gigs. No matter how long you've been waiting tables, there will always be those customers who ruin their own day by not understanding what they're ordering. Some customers will order a burger, then get upset because this…

Well, this is awkward.

These diners got way more than they bargained for after going to certain fancy-pants restaurants! Clearly, restaurants see the trend of photographing your dinner , and want to make people's meals as photogenic as possible. They've really come up with some, um, interesting ways of displaying their meals. Would you still eat your meal if it came in a slipper, though? Could you “do it for the 'gram," as they say? These diners are brave for eating off these weirdo serving trays, from clipboards to…

For the Karen's and Gentle-Karen's

Pull it together, Marg.