Restaurant workers are some of the unsung heroes of society. You can't tell me otherwise.
Case in point: Reddit user Repulsive_Compote955 recently asked, "Servers at restaurants, what's the strangest thing someone's asked for?" People from across the restaurant industry responded, and lemme tell you, these folks have seen it all. Here are some of the most noteworthy stories:
Some of the responses had to do with very specific requests they received from diners:
1. "I had a couple that told me to wait before I pre-bussed their table so the man could lick every plate clean first. They had multiple apps and entrees between them and he licked every single one CLEAN before I was allowed to take it. They weren’t in a private booth or anything. The other guests could see this happening."
2. "A tablecloth! A gentleman shat himself at a booth and asked for a tablecloth so he could walk out with it wrapped around him. I still serve him to this day and that was around 15 years ago, no shame. He comes back once a week. We never asked about getting the tablecloth back."
3. "We had a woman send a grilled chicken salad back because it was cold. So, we cooked some new chicken and made sure to send it back while it was still warm. She sent it back again. The entire salad wasn't hot enough for her. We microwaved her salad. She ate it. I don't know, man."
4. "Honestly, I'd say the weirdest thing was that while I was a server at a restaurant in the Royal Hawaiian, a guest asked me to book a shark adventure tour. It had nothing to do with my job or even the hotel. Those tours were entirely separate businesses. I took his black card, went to guest services, picked up a pamphlet, and booked the tour. He tipped me $250 dollars. Totally worth it!"
5. "This man told me he couldn’t have anything that had been 'ground up' at some point. So like, anything with flour in it. Not because of the gluten, but because it was made small at one point."
6. "Fan lady. Not food related, but she would come in every Sunday morning (our busiest time of the week) and demand that the speed of the fans for the whole restaurant be slowed down. She claimed she had a medical condition and got away with it for two months. This stopped when one of the managers determined they also had a medical condition, but it required the fans to be left on at normal speed. This made fan lady very mad, and she never came back."
7. "I had a guy send back his eggs because the outer rim didn't match the color of some planet."
8. "Back when I was serving at a Chili's, I had a couple ask me to do the gender reveal for their new baby. I never met them before, but apparently, they f*cking loved Chili's."
9. "What always amazed me was how people assumed a restaurant could just whip something up for them. Especially when it comes to dessert. My coworker had a customer who perused the dessert menu, shut it, and asked for a slice of apple pie (never mind baking an entire pie for someone). Mind you, there was no apple pie on the menu and most dessert items at a restaurant are not made to order. People would also always put reservation notes asking us to bring a cupcake for a birthday — again, not something we had on the menu, nor something we were going to make special even if we didn’t have 210 covers coming in that night. Of course, people were more than welcome to bring in a cake or dessert, but no one wanted to pay the plating fee."
10. "The other night, I had a girl ask if the chef would manually take the bones out of the chicken wings. Of course, the chef said no because of hygiene, so one of her friends offered to do it for her."
Meanwhile, others chimed in with the most memorable food orders they witnessed while on shift:
11. "I used to work at Olive Garden. There was a lady who would come in at least once a week, and she was dubbed by us staff as 'pepperoncini lady.' She would want you to open a new bag of the pepperoncini we used in the salads and pour out the juice in a cup. She would straight up drink the juice. She would also get a bowl of pepperoncinis and just eat them."
12. "Ranch with everything. Don't get me wrong, I love my ranch dressing too. But people want it on the things you'd never expect. $60 steak? 'Can I get a side of ranch for the steak?' Soup. 'Can I get ranch with that?' Spaghetti. 'Would you like me to grate some fresh cheese on top?' 'No, but can I get ranch for it?'"
13. "I used to work at a Japanese restaurant and I once had someone come up to me and ask me if we had any low sodium soy sauce. The request itself was not so strange, and I gave him the bottle we kept behind the counter. The strange thing was what he used the soy sauce for, which was pouring some of it into his Pepsi."
14. "When I was cooking in the military, someone requested a BLT sandwich but with no bacon or tomato. He wasn't kidding, he just wanted bread and lettuce."
15. "A middle-aged lady insisted she didn’t like soda water or sparkling water, so instead asked for a white wine spritzer without the white wine. There are two ingredients to a white wine spritzer: White wine and soda water."
16. "I once had a dude order a large garden salad. He looked me dead in the eyes and very seriously said, 'No purple in it.' I just acted like, 'Yeah sure, OK,' with no follow-up questions. I ended up picking out anything purple colored in the salad and very nervously watched him pick through it. He was satisfied enough and left a decent tip. I can never unsee purple things in my salad now, but I eat 'em."
I've said it once and I'll say it again: We do not pay restaurant workers enough.
Do you have and strange requests from your time in the food and restaurant industry you'd like to share? Tell us in the comments!
Note: Responses have been edited for length/clarity.