So it was my first job was a server at a very popular 24 hour breakfast diner/chain. We had lots of colorful customers.
One morning, I’m serving a woman sitting by herself. I ask her what I can get her, and she says she’d like an omelette. We have a list of pre-built omelettes, or you can build your own, so I ask her how she’d like her omelette. “Just a regular omelette, please” she tells me.
“Okay, so you don’t want one of the signature omelettes, what would you like inside of yours?” I ask
“Nothing, just a regular omelette.” She replies with a huff
I pause for a second because this order does occur, but not often. Some people like their eggs scrambled and cooked, then rolled up. “So you’d like an omelette with nothing inside?”
“YES! A plain omelette!” She snaps, now irritated that I’ve questioned her several times.
Cue malicious compliance.
So I enter the order, a 5-egg omelette with no fillings and no toppings. A few minutes later it comes out, and she is appalled. “What is THIS?!”
“Your plain omelette,” I reply…
“But where is the cheese, or the ham or the onions?!” She is irate.
“Ma’am, you ordered an omelette with nothing inside…”
She gets cocky and says, “An omelette is eggs rolled up with ham, cheese, and onions! Everything else is extra! You should know this, working at a breakfast place!”
I look at her deadpan and inform her “Actually, ma’am, omelette is French for scrambled eggs that are fried and rolled or folded; everything else is extra.”
I’m busy so I walk off and help other colorful customers, meanwhile she flags down a manager to complain, who confirms what I told her and points out that in the menu there is, very specifically, a ham cheese and onion omelette with a large picture in the middle of the page.
Then tells her she has to re-order her meal and wait a second time.
She didn’t leave a tip.
TL;DR: A customer ordered a “regular omelette” and got annoyed when I asked questions about fillings or toppings. So, I put in the order for a 5-egg plain omelette. She was so irritated and complained to the manager who backed me up. She had to order again and didn’t leave a tip.
[reposted from reddit]
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I’ll never understand why people get huffy when ordering food. If there was ever a time for clear communication, it’s when you want something specific to eat. If the server asks you a clarifying question, you should be happy that they care enough to get it right, not annoyed that they are wasting precious time by not reading your mind.
Yep, my one grandma would do this, it was so irritating to go anywhere with her.
If the server asks you a clarifying question, you should be happy that they care enough to get it right
I’m delighted when my server asks questions. It means they’re engaging their brains. I’ve got an unusual food allergy that’s usually pretty easy to work around in the kitchen. If it’s at a restaurant I’m not a regular at (the unusual allergy makes me pretty memorable so I get to be a regular pretty fast), if they ask me something before I inquire about their process I know I’m somewhere that’ll keep me safe. It’s one of those indicators.
This led me to watch the Eggless Omelette skit on youtube, and then came across this case of almost malicious compliance in the comments:
@jacoL8 6 months ago an excerpt from a Reddit comment:
This reminds me of a day when I was working as a kitchen manager. I had a server ring in one of our chicken dishes with a note: “cooked medium rare”.
I called the server over, and showed them the ticket. They asked “can we not do that?” And I said “We can. If they want to wind up in the hospital.” And I sent her back to explain.
The server went to the table, and told them chicken can’t be served undercooked, and the guest sent her back to tell us, “isn’t the customer always right?”
Hearing the conversation, the head chef exasperatedly took the ticket from my hand, walked over to the table and explained that chicken is not cooked like steak, and we are not legally allowed to serve undercooked chicken to them and they would wind up with it coming out of both ends. The guest agreed that would be a bad idea, and asked the chef to “prepare it how you usually would then.”
While leaving, the guest came up to apologize, and admitted that they didn’t cook at home and had no clue about the chicken, and that they were just trying to impress their date who had ordered a steak.
this deserves to be its own post!
