Never work in hospitality. Strangest things people have complained about.

[KnopkaPixie]

Here's some to get us started:

"There's broken glass on this steak."
It was fancy coarse ground salt.

"I can't eat from a square plate. It's bad feng shui."

Any more?

I run a mobile bar.

You would be absolutely amazed at the number of people who think it’s acceptable to lean over the top of the bar, lift the lid off the ice bucket and scoop ice out with their hands. Absolutely grim 🤢

I know stab any hands I catch with an ice pick if I catch the dirty b&stards!

Also off topic but I am longing for some steak tartare now. It sems pretty bad now but when I was a child my mother would buy the absolute cheapest supermarket mince, mix it with onion and crack an egg on top and we would absolutely love it.

Racking my brains to remember when I worked in the wine biz - it's not that you find bits of cork in the glass, although I think that can happen if the cork is bad, but I believe it's the fact that the cork has gone mouldy and contaminated the wine in the bottle, thus making the wine undrinkable. So that can't happen with a screw top bottle, unless there used to be a mouldy cork in it which was replaced by a screw top, which I think is unlikely. It can't happen with the plastic corks some wineries are using instead of real cork corks, either, I'd imagine.

I don't think it's unreasonable to expect a diary to stay usable for a year. Fair enough if it looks a bit worn, but for pages falling out I would be pissed off.

I'm sorry, @Elphame, I hadn't spotted your reply before posting my more verbose one!

I wonder if he was the same idiot who wanted the water for his tea to be hotter that boiling, because that's not hot enough.

the veg option was omelette which you can’t eat as a breast feeder

I must have missed it, why can't you now eat omelettes when breatfeeding?

It was her medical insurance that tried to sue, as a way of trying to dodge the hefty medical costs. In the USA they often try to apportion blame where large amounts are being claimed.

The stake is difficult to find because it’s “rare” 🙂

Him " I want the same sandwich as last time". Me: no problem what did you order. Him: how am I supposed to know. Me: OK list the ingredients. Him: chicken and other stuff. Me: OK there's 6 different chicken sandwiches do you want to take a look and pick one. Him: are you stupid just make what I had last week. Me: I didn't serve you last time you were here so I dont know what you had. Him: storms off muttering stupid c*nt.

I have loads of others a guy threw his whole plate on the ground because there was no baked beans left. A woman who came over and told me to clean her table when I was clearly on my break I explained and told her I'd ask another member of staff and she demanded I do it as she was a paying costomer.
A woman who said she was there yesterday and ordered 5 sandwiches and we only gave her 4 could she have the other one now. She had no receipt so I said I couldn't without proof she started demanding I look at the security footage as proof.
A woman who said she didn't want her sandwich made by any foreigners.
A man who demanded he have the special from the previous week at the same price.

Regarding hot coffee, I knew someone who would always complain that her coffee was too cold, every single time.

Someone made her a cup, microwaved it until it was boiling, then, as soon as the bubbling had stopped, served it.

Customer complained the coffee was too cold.

I recently went to a coffee shop and asked for a take away cup as we were leaving and I was only half way through my latte.

The waitress took my half drunk cup and bought me back a full fresh latte in a take away cup, saying 'that was way too cold so made you a new one'. How nice!

On our first, and last, All Inclusive holiday a woman looked at my lunch, for no good reason, and told me not to touch that crappy soup as it was stone cold, even when I told her it was gazpacho she continued. This was the same idiot who insisted on asking me every day why I didn't have the chips with lunch You've paid for them y'know!

The woman thought that "medium rare steak" was an unusual cut of meat - like a heritage breed or something. She didn't undersand that it was a cooking description - so when given a medium rare steak complained.

I actually like that "rare steak" story. Maybe bear meat, or alligator perhaps?

PS I have eaten both bear and alligator and they are both horrible.

She'll never make it to Admiral with the Jupiter Mining Corps!

My daughter spent ages complaining on holiday that the beach was too sandy and the sea was too wet but she was only 4 at the time!

They normally make it right but the odd time they don't I ask them to remake it, they never question me as they know I know how it usually tastes!

Customer: ‘20 cigarettes please’
Me: ‘Of course, which ones do you want?’
Customer, crossly: ‘How should I know?’

Turns out that they were buying them for someone else but hadn’t bothered to enquire which type was wanted. I was supposed to guess, presumably..

Actual madness.

Scandi pizzas can be odd - especially in Sweden where most pizzerias are not Italian owned but Kurdish/Turkisk. Many of the pizzas would send Italians to their graves.

Banana is, I can confirm, a common pizza topping. My local place does several pizzas with banana - including the "Princess" that comes with pineapple, prawns, curry and banana!

Cold sauces are also a common feature of pizzas (probably from the middle eastern flatbread tradition). So mayo, bearnaise, tzatziki, hot and mild kebab sauces

My local pizzeria does the "Amore" which is a pizza with a steak on top and you get a pot of bearnaise sauce to drizzle over.

Kebabs on pizzas are also really common - for the works you order the Kebab Super that comes with a donner kebab, salad, and a portion of chips on top with a pot of kebab sauce.

And don't get me started of "pizza salad" - a huge thing in Sweden - which is a pot of seasoned pickled cabbage.

I have a relative who is generally lovely but awful when it comes to dealing with hospitality staff. We have told her that we enjoy her company but if she wants to eat our with us, we don't want her to make comments/complaints/requests of staff. She makes a big thing of telling staff that she's 'banned' from asking questions/checking with us if she's 'allowed' to answer their questions etc. I'm sure people think we're controlling and awful. Some of her moments are:

• Ordering a sandwich in a local cafe, that does not have chips on the menu and even has signs up to say they don't service chips. She is aware of this but asks for chips anyway, then argues with them when they say no. They serve jacket potatoes so she thinks they should be able to make chips). When they explain that they don't have chip fryers she asks why they can't just cook her some oven chips. When they say they don't have any, she asks again because she only wants 'a few' so surely they might have 'a few'. She then insists on asking for chips again on future visits, even after we have reminded her of the previous time- because she's told them before that she likes a few chips with her sandwich so they'll probably have some in by now.
• Visiting a pizza restaurant. She wants to share a pizza with someone else, but wants meat on it and we're vegetarian, and the pizzas are not sold as sharing plates. We suggest she just orders what she wants, but she doesn't want to have a full pizza. They don't have different size pizzas on the menu but agree to serve her smaller pizza from the children's menu and add the extra toppings she wanted. Children's menu comes with a small starter and ice-cream, which she does not want but insists they must bring to the table 'in case anyone else wants it'. After she's eaten, she spots a sign for a 'kids eat free' offer, so (even though we are paying, not her) she asks to see the bill and argues with the staff because there is a charge for hers, on the basis that it was a children's meal so surely it should be free if it would be free for a child.
• She orders a slice of (lovely looking, made on the premises) lemon meringue pie but complains that the meringue is soft, not hard and brittle like a 'proper' meringue. Staff agree to get her something else with no extra charge but explain that it's supposed to be as it is. She continues to argue and tells them that they should throw the whole thing away.
• Waitress pops over to do the 'is everything alright with your meal' standard check. By this time she has eaten every last bite. Everyone else mutters 'lovely, thanks etc'. She gives a long list of things that were wrong with what she has just wolfed down.

There are too many more examples, so to anyone who has ever encountered her I apologise on her behalf.

On a nicer note, I once took an elderly aunt for a pub lunch. They were advertising pre-booking for Xmas meals but she didn't really understand this and asked for Xmas pudding (it was about September/October). I was trying to explain it to her when a member of staff overheard and said that she thought they might have some in the store already. They did, and they served it with a Xmas cracker and some Xmas shaped chocolates on the side. Aunt loved it, wore the hat from the cracker for the rest of the afternoon and didn't stop talking about it for weeks. She didn't get many more Christmases, so it was lovely that someone out there gave her a 'bonus' extra Xmas lunch!

I don't know as I've witnessed a few of these myself. I was on holiday in Italy where the man at the next table ordered the "Courgette burger" (listed as the vegetarian option" turned out to have no meat.

... and at another place where someone complained about the "Portabello Steak" (listed as a vegan option) was a grilled mushroom. She had expected a steak in mushroom sauce (as a vegan option!!!)

I think many people just don't bother to read

Who told you that you can’t eat an omelette if you’re breastfeeding?

Yeah, don’t do that. Mince needs to be cooked. You have to buy a whole fillet steak and cut it up.