Every restaurant handles pick-up orders a little differently, and that leads to confusion. You kind of have to play mind games to figure out their system. I should be easy, right? You order food from the place around the block from you, and they say it'll be ready in 20 minutes. Great! But then when you show up 20 minutes later, they haven't even started your food. If you try and course-correct and show up after 45 minutes the next time, you may find your dish is soggy and cold. It's a hard gam…

These diners bet against Mother Nature and lost badly. That's what happens when you think you know better than everyone around you! The weather is not something any of us can control. If we could, we'd happily stop hurricanes and tornados in their tracks. But of course, human beings can't stop hundreds of thousands of raindrops or snowflakes from falling to Earth. It's halfway through the 2020s, if we could have this technology, someone would've invented it by now. No, all we have for now is um…

The owner of this coffee shop is in for a surprise. They somehow decided to run a business without doing some pretty basic research on how to pay their employees. As a teenager, getting your first job can be a joy. You suddenly have some walking-around money, or driving-around money, since you now have enough cash to fill your tank and drive your friends around. It might only be a few hundred dollars per month, but since you're working for the first time, you don't know any better. Many states…

These customers didn't let their poor social skills keep them from dining at restaurants . Instead, they showed up ready to eat food and interact with wait staff as minimally as possible. We all have days where we want to be left alone. Sometimes you just don't feel like interacting with people, and instead, you just want to curl up on your couch, order food delivery, and watch a movie. It's odd that apparently lots of people decide to go to restaurants when they're feeling antisocial. Why woul…

The feeling of ordering a meal and then disliking it is so awkward. It happens to the best of us. Maybe you decide to try a new soup, only to realize it tastes like seawater and sadness. Or maybe you confidently order a dish you've had numerous times, only to realize this establishment makes the meal with ingredients you don't care for. Or maybe your friends force you to try sushi, and you don't like a single one of those ingredients. But you have to save face in front of your dinner guests. Do…

A manager acting clueless? What a surprise. When restaurants have busy days , they prepare for them in advance. Fast-food restaurants are well aware that certain holidays and the days around those holidays are going to be jam-packed. For example, it's not just Christmas Day that's busy. People are out doing their last-minute shopping for a few days beforehand, and they might decide on a quick meal on their way home. In order to be prepared for that influx of people, restaurants need to have ext…

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…

This customer was determined to get the exact meal she wanted. She really should've picked another restaurant . Every now and again, people get a craving for a random food they've had before. They might not always recall what restaurant it was from, though. For example, if you're meeting some friends at a restaurant and someone else chooses the location, you might forget the name of that place by next week. Then you're left craving a quesadilla or a burger from somewhere that you can't remember…

There's always at least one person in every workplace who can't help but make everyone laugh. This is the kind of person that people say “lights up every room they walk into.” They just immediately begin cracking jokes and lightening the mood. This kind of person is especially appreciated in high-stress environments---like the back of house at a busy restaurant. Back-of-house, sometimes abbreviated as BOH, refers to all of the workers behind the scenes, like chefs, meal preppers, and dish washe…

Some people want to be food critics with their reviews, but this person took it further by writing a very long message directly to a restaurant. When I worked retail, I always found it so delightful when customers would vow to never return to our restaurant. It was often that they'd come in during a rush, and then were shocked, stunned, and horrified, that they'd have to wait a whole 15 minutes for their meal. Bigger problems are going on in the world. But not to these people. Sometimes they'd…

When you don't want fast food but also don't want to pay $35 for an entree, it might be time to head to a chain restaurant. The prices of everything these days have gone up to utterly comical levels. While looking to find a nice dinner at a spot in Manhattan, I found one place that looked stunning. Then, I took a peek at their menu to find that the cheapest item was an $18 appetizer of potato chips. Just let that sink in: nearly $20 for potato chips, as the cheapest menu item . I weep for the f…

It's time to dive into the tipping debate . Should you tip every time you eat at a restaurant? Many people, myself included, would say yes. It's not that we enjoy tipping, especially during these times of high inflation and being asked to tip for tons of services these days. But tipping is a necessity for waiters and waitresses, and it's a good feeling to reward someone who has done a good job taking your order and bringing you your food and drinks. But what if the waiters do a bad job ? What i…

A restaurant manager decided he wanted to cut costs on quesadillas, starting by using crepes instead of tortillas. That's probably because he had basically no real-world experience running a restaurant. Instead, he'd just taken a cooking course, then decided to cut costs at the restaurant in the quickest and easiest way he knew how: by making the food taste worst. Whether you're at a five star restaurant or a hole in the wall food shack, the quality of the food matters above all else. If your h…

When you go out to eat at the same place over and over again, it's often because you love everything about the restaurant. Maybe it's a pizza parlor with red booths and perfectly crispy pizza. Or perhaps you enjoy a quiet fancy restaurant where the appetizers are delectable and the conversations last for hours. However, some people enjoy going to the same restaurant on repeat for another reason—they've “taught” the staff members exactly how they like their food to be prepared . Whether these cu…

This waitress wanted to share a story about a family interaction at her job, but commenters took the customers' side! The OP has a few memorably cringe lines. If a waiter ever handed me water and in the same breath told me about how it had “came out of the dinosaurs years ago. [It's] just filtered super well," I'd hesitate to eat there. What a weird thing to say about a fresh beverage! Perhaps one of the worst ways to make water sound appetizing is to remind the customer of how water filtration…

Who said complying with the rules can't be a little fun? One employee told their story of their coworker's malicious compliance when their bosses started demanding they label every little thing. Food service workers have a lot to juggle. This person, u/Dra5iel, shared that they and their coworker both worked at a restaurant chain. Along with prepping food, cooking it, plating it for customers, and cleaning up, back of house staffers have enough on their plates already (pun intended!). When the…