No way should these restaurants get away with treating their customers like garbage! Seriously, these people encountered some of the nastiest human beings to ever work in a restaurant, and the resulting food was even more disgusting Next time, just stay in and cook at home! Content has been edited for clarity.
“A Giant Charcoal Brick”
“Maybe ten years back, a new Mountain Mike’s Pizzeria opened in my town. Since it was a really small town, my family got excited for a new restaurant, so we went in just a few days after they opened. The four of us sat down and were helped right away. We ordered a large pepperoni pizza and drinks, which was pretty simple. Our drinks come in a timely fashion. Our pizza did not. We patiently waited for an hour before we snagged a server to ask about our pizza. There were very few people in the restaurant, and most of the servers were sort of milling around, sweeping and wiping clean tables and other busy work. The guy apologized for the wait and said he would go check on it for us. He came back out and said they were very sorry, but it would be another thirty minutes on the pizza. He gave us no explanation, but we figured that maybe they had forgotten to put it in. We gave them the benefit of the doubt since they had just opened. We waited another forty-five minutes and no pizza came, so we called a server again. He told us he was very sorry, and he would go check on that for us. He came back out with a black disc that wasn’t even recognizable as a pizza. It was a giant charcoal brick. Parts of it were actually smoking. He put it on the table and told us to enjoy our pizza, and that they were sorry again about the wait, but that they forgot it in the oven. My dad finally had enough and very politely told the guy thanks but no thanks, we wouldn’t be eating this pizza and we would probably not be returning unless we heard that their service had improved. We stood up to leave, and the guy bolted for the back room.
Out came the manager. He asked us what the problem was. My dad told him that we waited nearly two hours to be served a pizza that had been in the oven for just as long. He showed it to the manager. It was literally inedible. The manager shrugged and said, ‘I don’t see anything wrong here sir, except that you’re trying to leave without paying for your meal.’
The manager ordered the employees to stand at every exit to ensure that we couldn’t leave. My dad still refused to pay and suggested that the manager let us leave or he would call the police. So the manager called the cops, saying there was an indignant customer in the restaurant. The cops showed up and ask what the problem is. The manager said we won’t pay for our pizza. My dad said the manager wouldn’t let us leave, but the guy denied it. The cops scoffed at the manager, walked us out of the restaurant, and we’ve never eaten there since.”
Perplexed And Terrified For Her Life
“I took my girlfriend to this fancy steakhouse in San Francisco. I ordered a steak, but when my order was brought out, I was given a butter knife to use. I called the waitress over and asked if I could get a steak knife. Oddly enough, she returned with another butter knife, but this one had a wooden handle. I tell her, ‘I’m sorry, but what I’m looking for is a steak knife, something that actually cuts meat.’
The waitress tells me, ‘That one will cut meat!’
I run the dull knife over my hand a few times while telling her, ‘No, no, you don’t understand. I’m eating meat, and this thing doesn’t cut meat.’
She replied, ‘But that’s a steak knife though!’
I say to the waitress, ‘I’m not sure what to tell you. I would like a knife that can penetrate and slice meat!’
The waitress looked spooked and asks, ‘Are you threatening me?!’
I was so perplexed. I had already handed her that butter knife back to her, so I was completely empty-handed. The waitress tells me again, ‘You’re being very aggressive and asking me for a knife to stab and cut with!’
I am completely at a loss for words. My girlfriend is just laughing at me. I finally tell the waitress, ‘Um, no, you aren’t a steak, so you have nothing to worry about. Look, just give me what you have and I’ll deal with it.’
The waitress shakes her head and says, ‘I don’t think it is safe to give you a knife. I’m sorry!’
The waitress just walks away. My girlfriend is doubled over laughing her butt off, and I cannot believe what just happened.”
Waitress With No Boundaries
“This was back when I was in my third semester of college. Finals had just finished, and I was in a strange funk from the lack of sleep and not seeing friends for about two weeks straight. I was tired and nervous because of all those finals. Anyways, to relieve some stress I decided to go out with friends and eat some hot wings. I gather a few of my closest friends and we head off to a certain owl-themed hot wing establishment. We get our menus and start chatting, looking at the menu, and just chilling. Then our waitress comes over and does nothing. She smiles, kinda leans in and rests her arms, and just stares at us. We were thrown off, and after a good few minutes or so she finally asks us what we would like to drink. When she comes back with our drinks ,she does the same thing, so we just starts ordering because if she’s not gonna do her job, we may as well do it for her. We get our food (fried pickles and a ton of wings) and we think things will resume to normal. NOPE.
This is the strangest moment. Remember, she hasn’t engaged us the whole time we were there, but she comes over halfway through the dinner and does her little routine. Smiles, leans, and stares. Then she looks me right in the eyes and eats one of the fried pickles. She looks over to my friend and again eats another one. She then giggles and leaves a table full of mortified customers. We just stopped eating at that point, ask for the bill, and leave no tip. While we’re trying to scramble away, I must have pocketed her pen when I signed the receipt. Some regular customer comes outside and asks for her pen. We give it back and he says something along the lines of, ‘Guess kids these days don’t know how to tip!’ so I respond with, ‘Not for terrible service I don’t!’
I don’t expect much when going out. I always tip a decent amount, even if service is slightly sub-par, because I know too many people who are servers and I know for a fact I could never deal with as much as them. But I expect to be engaged by the person serving me instead of just staring at me. Also, DO NOT EAT THE CUSTOMER’S FOOD WITH HANDS THAT HAVE BEEN GOD KNOWS WHERE!”
The Deadly Soda
“I went out to dinner a few months back with some friends at a pretty typical chain restaurant. I told the waitress that I would like a diet coke, but she said they only had Pepsi. I said sure, a diet Pepsi would be fine. I have my drink, along with a few refills. Over the course of the dinner, I start to feel really awful. I should mention here that I’m a type 1 diabetic, so I need to stick to the diet sodas. Since I always drink diet coke, I never know the different in taste between diet and regular Pepsi. I checked my blood sugar, which had been perfectly on target before the meal. My meter just read ‘HIGH’, meaning that the value was so high that the meter actually couldn’t process it. What I had eaten for dinner couldn’t possibly have put me there, and I had dosed with an appropriate amount of insulin to cover for it, so we flagged down the waitress.
I asked, ‘This isn’t diet Pepsi, is it?’
She responded by telling me that it wasn’t, that the diet Pepsi fountain was out of syrup and she didn’t think I’d mind. According to her, I was plenty skinny and didn’t need to drink the diet stuff. I started cursing, pulled out my insulin syringes to dose for the four full sugar sodas that I drank, and told her exactly what I was doing. I then told the manager what had happened, and that I wasn’t planning on paying for the meal, but would instead put the money toward the ER bill that I was about to receive. I went to the hospital, where the lab determined that my blood sugar was still in the 700s, even after I dosed, and I ended up staying overnight because my glucose level stubbornly refused to come back into range. My super awesome insurance covers all but $50 of ER bills if I’m admitted, so I considered it a wash with the $70 bill we walked out on.
I did write a letter to the owner of the restaurant and the parent company after that. The owner sent me a handwritten reply, saying that he’d start including information on diabetes along with food allergies in the training for all new employees, and that he was planning on making sheets with nutritional information available as well. The parent company only sent me a $10 gift certificate and a generic form letter thanking me for ‘sharing my thoughts’. Great.”
The Snootiest Pizza
“My parents and I decide to try a new, trendy pizza place right around the corner from my apartment one night. We decide to sit outside because the weather was nice and they had a huge patio and side deck. Unfortunately, everyone working at this place had an attitude, form the hostess who seated us to the waitress taking our orders. They made us feel like a huge inconvenience, but we were hungry and had heard the pizza was good, so we tried to look past that. As soon as we are seated on the patio, the girl offers to lower the shades because the sun was setting and was directly in our line of sight. We say that would be great, and a guy comes out and lowers the blinds for us. We order our drinks and look over the menu. Not even five minutes later, a young guy comes to our table, incredibly annoyed that the blinds were lowered. In a very condescending manner, he tells us that he’s going to have to raise the blinds because they trap heat in the patio, ultimately raising the patio temperature about twenty degrees. My dad politely tells him that the sun is in our eyes, and that they really shouldn’t offer to lower the shades if it’s going to cause a problem. The guy snaps. He is incredibly disrespectful toward my father and goes on a tangent, assuring us that the sun would set and even going as far as to take his sunglasses off of his head and offering them to my dad. He’s young, maybe 25, and treating us like we’re imbeciles, saying that our request to lower the shades would make the other customers less comfortable. Whatever, they raise the blinds and we question whether or not we’ll stay to order food.
We stay. Our drinks arrive, and we take a few more minutes to look over the menu. The waitress is nowhere to be found. We then sit in awkward silence, trying to get past what had just happened. Other tables are seated and the hostess offers to lower the shades for each table. We finish our drinks, and the waitress still hasn’t returned to take our order. We contemplate leaving, but she finally shows and we order.
The food came out cold, but one of the managers was walking around, asking how everything was. We told him about the sunglasses prick and he was furious.
I haven’t seen the guy working there since.”
Waitress With A Vendetta
“I was with my now ex-husband at a Friendly’s for dinner. It was a weeknight, around nine at night, and the restaurant was pretty empty. For the record, this place ran like a diner and was open 24/7. We had been there that late before, and there’s usually a trickle of people all night. They seemed light on staff, which was to be expected. It was the manager who was seating people. We were seated and then ignored for a full ten minutes. Our waitress never stopped at our table, although the tables on either side of us had customers, and she stopped at both to just chat. She wasn’t busy, and she wasn’t delivering food, so we wondered what the hold up was. We tried to get her attention, but she gave us a dirty look and didn’t stop at our table. At this point, we were annoyed, but not mad yet. The anger came when two more parties were seated and the waitress went straight over to them. So my ex got up and went over to the manager, who wasn’t very happy about the service. She had the waitress came over finally. She made the excuse that she thought the manager had taken our drink order, and she said we didn’t look ready to order. She was clearly mad that she was at our table.
We were hungry, and not a lot of places were open that late, and we didn’t want fast food. So we placed our orders. The bus boy/food runner brought us our drinks. And we were ignored again. We didn’t order anything complicated, so when a half an hour went by and we saw tables sat after us getting their food and our waitress ignoring us again, we got up and snagged the manager again. She checked on our ticket, but apparently it had never made it to the kitchen. So she took our order and rushed it through. Then it came time to pay. We should have known better, but we were waiting for the waitress to drop the check. All she had to do was put it on the table and then we would pay at the register. All she needed to do was toss it down as she flitted past. But of course she didn’t. We didn’t wait long, because now the manager was paying attention, and she came over with ice cream for us and told us the meal was on the house. She also saw us out the door. I asked her what the problem had been, because I had a feeling she’d spoken to the waitress. All the manager would say was, ‘Some people have strong opinions around here about what kind of clientele are allowed in.’
I didn’t understand. We were in nice, clean clothes, and we’re clean people. So we weren’t homeless-looking slobs or anything of the sort. We’re polite, neither loud nor obnoxious. So really, I couldn’t think of why we wouldn’t be the proper clientele. It was a beat up old Friendly’s, not some fancy place. As I was looking around, I realized that we were literally the only white people in the entire restaurant. I hate to think it, but I have a strong feeling that was the reason. And maybe at that point I was biased, but I felt like the other customers were glaring at us as well. It was a strange feeling.”
Shut Up And Eat!
I had a weird one a few years ago. My wife and I, along with a couple of her brothers, went out for coffee one evening. I had just gotten off work and hadn’t eaten, so I took a look at the menu and order beef frajolaki. This was a seasoned steak with onions and tomatoes on a torpedo bun. My wife ordered a turtle cheesecake with her coffee. About five to ten minutes after the waitress had taken our orders, another group of people sat down in the booth behind us. The same waitress came up, chatted with them, and grabbed their orders. After about twenty minutes, out comes the cheesecake that my wife ordered. No, wait, it’s a cappuccino cheesecake. My wife called the waitress back and told her about it, and the waitress apologized and offered to bring her the proper one out. My wife liked it well enough, so she said she’d just have the one that was brought to her. Another twenty minutes go by, and I’m still waiting for my meal, getting a little ticked off by this point, when I spot the waitress coming our way, plates in hand. Wait, plates? I was the only one who ordered! She walks by us and to the booth behind us and distributes the food. Now I’m getting really peeved. I hear the table behind me discussing their meals, and one of them asks another what he’s eating, to which he replies, ‘I don’t know, but it’s really good!’ How the heck do you not know what you ordered?!
Another ten minutes go by, and I’m about ready to leave, when out comes the waitress, plate in hand. She sets it in front of me and asks if there’s anything else I need. I look at the plate and back to her and say, ‘Uh, this isn’t what I ordered. I ordered a beef frajolaki. This is a beef dip.’
She looks at the plate, then quickly looks at the booth behind us. Yup, mystery guy who couldn’t remember what he had ordered? He was chowing down on my frajolaki. Mistakes happen, and I’m pretty mellow, but when she said, ‘Well, can’t you just eat this instead?’ I asked for the check and got up and went outside to wait for my wife before I totally lost it. To top it off, she tried to charge me for the beef dip.”
They Deserved Their Fate
“When I was dating my now-wife, I took her to this busy downtown restaurant on a Saturday night. We were seated in this table right next to the kitchen door and the busboy station, so dirty dishes were constantly being piled up behind me. This table was also behind this massive pillar, so we were visually cut off from the rest of the restaurant. We order some drinks. Twenty minutes go by. They never come. The manager is walking by, asking other tables how they’re doing. We grab her attention and explain the missing drinks and the missing waitress. The manager asks for the waitress’s name. I reply that I don’t know her name, since I don’t recall seeing a name tag. She says nothing, but gives me the one-eyebrow-raised-look-of-suspicion usually reserved for when little kids tell you lame fibs. She leaves to find our waitress and never returns. We finally order from another passing waiter, as it’s late enough now. We’re hungry and we take our chances. Lo and behold, our food comes, but still no drinks. While we’re eating, the original missing waitress walks up, points to her name tag and says, ‘Beth. My name is Beth!’ and walks away.
My lady and I exchange puzzled glances and continue to eat. When Beth brings us the check, I ask to see the manager. Beth ask why, what would I have to say? I tell her that I want to let the manager know that the service here is far below adequate. We were stuck in the corner and totally ignored. I remind her about the drinks that never arrived, and she just adopts the attitude of a snarky teenager, huffing and eye-rolling. After fifteen minutes, the manager arrives. The FIRST thing out of her mouth was, ‘Why don’t you like Beth?!’
I snap, but compose myself quickly. I explain that we were ignored for the past ninety minutes, and this has nothing to do with liking or not liking anybody. We hardly even met Beth. I explain that I’m not trying to scam a meal. We ordered the food and ate the food, so I intended to pay, but I would not be returning and would tell others to steer clear of this place. ‘Ignored?!’ cried the manager incredulously. ‘this is the ‘date table’. We find that young couples like to be off by themselves and not be bothered! Now how about I give you a voucher for a free dessert next time you come in?’
‘Next time? You think there’s gonna be a next time?!’ At this point, my wife, silent until now, says, ‘You could give us free dessert right now…’
The manager furrows her brow and says, ‘Well, if I gave it to you now, then I KNOW you wouldn’t come back!’
I paid the bill, left the old one-penny tip, you know, to make a STATEMENT! On the way out of the restaurant, Beth brushes by us and mumbles, ‘Thanks for the tip, cheap-skate.’ That place closed about six months later. Beth really needed a new line of work anyway.”
Are Subways Normally This Vicious?
So there’s a Subway that recently opened right across the street from my house. I started eating $5 foot longs every day. It was glorious. Not only was it extremely convenient, but the service was better than any Subway I had ever visited by far. There was one downside though. The guy who worked most nights was a short, surly man who was always being rude or trying to intimidate you, which was pretty easy due to his bulk and full sleeve tattoos. He also those teardrop tattoos, which, if I’m not mistaken, are prison tattoos.
Every time I would go in there, I would say, ‘Hey, how’s it going?’
He would answer with a grunt or just ask, ‘What sandwich you want?’
I would get through my order and he immediately threw meat and veggies around all willy-nilly, creating the most disheveled-looking sandwiches I’ve ever seen.
After going there a few times with this experience, me and a friend of mine go in one night. I go through the same routine. I order my sandwich, and before my friend can order hers, he begins mopping up the floor. She asked a question about the gluten-free sandwiches, but he erupted. This guy bellows, ‘Are you serious?! CAN’T YOU SEE THE PICTURE?!’ and gestures towards a picture of a gluten-free sandwich. My friend was completely shocked. She replied, ‘You know what? Forget this, you’re such a prick,’ and storms out. I simply tell him, ‘Wow, great customer service man!’
This guy merely says, ‘What?! You asked a question, and I answered it!’
He had this fury in his eyes, as if I had just insulted his entire family. What a strange man!”
Month-Old, Rock Hard Pizza
“I once ordered pizza and a bunch of other stuff like baclava, falafel, and fries for a group of friends I had over at my house. We were watching Battlestar Gallactica and doing some considerable drinking. So the pizza arrives, I pay the driver and tip extra as usual, only to realize a few minutes after he leaves that there are a few strands of long black hair on the pizza. The baclava was like a month old, rock hard, and stale. The falafel was cold and lacking the tzatziki sauce, and the fries were cold and undercooked. I’ve worked in the food industry and understand things can get rough, but this was completely unacceptable.
I call the pizza place and ask for the owner, as he is always around. He answers, and I tell him everything that is wrong with my order and how disappointed I am. The owner has the balls to tell me that there was nothing wrong with my order, and he hung up on me. I call back, and he must have had caller id, because he picked it up and hung up again. I called from my girlfriend’s phone and he answers. I tell him it’s me and to please not hang up. I explain that he is providing the absolute worst customer service I have ever experienced, and that I am a regular (he knew me by name). I had no other option but to tell him I would be forced to share my story not only with everyone I knew, but the entire community. I did not want to play that card, but I had no other choice. At this point, he totally freaks out and pulls a 180 on me, apologizing profusely and said he would personally come over to my place and return my money with a personal apology. I reluctantly agreed, as I figured that maybe this guy was going to come and attack me. After we ended the call, I ordered a bunch of food from a different place. Two hours pass and I hear the doorbell. Everyone who was there came with me to the door and as we opened it, there was the owner with what looked like $100 worth of pizza and appetizers, as well as a few bottles of soda. He handed it to me along with my money and apologized for his behavior, said something about family/business problems, we shook hands and called it even. I stuffed all of that food in my empty fridge and continued drinking with my friends, and I handed out full pizzas to them as party favors when they left. Truly, it was the weirdest pizza experience of my life.”
A New Level Of Pettiness
I was at this Mexican restaurant with a girl I’m getting to know. It was a less formal place, and no one would bring your food out to you or bus the tables. It didn’t seem like a place where you needed to tip. I don’t leave a tip on my receipt, and the cashier says, ‘Wow, big spender here.’ I look up at him in confusion, because I genuinely had no idea what he was talking about. It didn’t register in my mind that he could be upset over me not tipping, because he wasn’t doing anything to warrant a tip. The cashier ignores me and talks to my friend, saying, ‘Glad you’re dating such a big spender. He can’t even afford to tip. How do you think that’s going to go further down the line in your relationship?’
She was kind of baffled, I was kind of baffled, and at that point we decided to ignore the dude and find our seat. Finally, our food order is called out, and we decide to just get it to go. We grab our drinks and our burritos, and the cashier gives me dirty looks and keeps calling me, ‘Big spender’. We sit down on a bench near the restaurant, only to find out that our food was nothing like we ordered at all. Our drinks were also only filled up halfway. I’m normally not that picky, but I was here with a girl and I wanted to stand up to this injustice. We took our food back into the restaurant, where I explain to the cashier that our order is messed up and our drinks are only half-full. He replies, ‘Oh, complaining about your order and you couldn’t even be bothered to tip?’ He just keeps rambling on while a line forms behind us. Eventually, he goes over to fill up our drinks. He comes back and utters a ‘Whoops!’ before he pretends to trip and sends our drinks flying all over me and my lady friend.
I demand to speak to his manager, and the cashier immediately stops playing his little game. He says that he realizes he was being nasty before, but he really did trip. He was begging us not to talk to his manager, and he even offered our money back on the order. I refuse and keep demanding to talk to his manager until the cook in the back overhears us and gets him. The manager comes out, my friend and I both explain what happened, and the cashier keeps babbling about how it was all an accident. The manager takes me and my friend to the back to get cleaned up, and then he invites us to watch the CCTV footage of what happened. He also brings the cashier back with him. The cashier clearly tripped on nothing and deliberately sent the drinks flying onto us. The manager fired the cashier on the spot. He explained that the cashier was his friend’s son, and he hired this guy on for a few months only as a favor. The manager was actually super nice and paid for our meal. He also gave us cards good for ten free meals at his restaurant. He even cooked our orders himself and paid for a cab to take us home, so we wouldn’t have to walk home in sticky clothes.”