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

746 replies

KnopkaPixie · 07/11/2024 18:30

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?

OP posts:
Thread gallery
10
Washingupdone · 09/11/2024 08:00

If I don’t understand what it is I always ask.
Same thing as tartar, my friend showing off told me of her meal in a very posh restaurant where she said she had to complain because the food wasn’t cooked she had food that was ‘carpaccio’.

TheHangingGardensOfBasildon · 09/11/2024 08:01

BlueFlowers5 · 09/11/2024 03:03

The correct format is;
United Kingdom of Great Britain.

And Northern Ireland is part of it.

Isn't it technically 'The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland'?

Rather than just the GB bit and then NI tacked on at the end as an afterthought?!

TheHangingGardensOfBasildon · 09/11/2024 08:06

ThisQuickLeader · 09/11/2024 06:26

Not hospitality but almost 30 years ago I worked in a call centre as a student. It was a soul destroying job with nasty aggressive people on the 'phone more than half the time.

A highlight was being shouted out by what sounded like an older man, because he wanted to know how to get an email address and when I told him it involved needing a PC he absolutely refused to believe that was what was needed and ranted at me or a good 5 minutes in a nasty, sneering tone saying I was insulting his intelligence while mocking mine and taking great pleasure in telling me he was going to get me sacked.

Twat.

What a nasty, nasty idiot.

However, I recall reading ages ago about an elderly man who had been given somebody's email address and didn't really get what it was or how it worked... so he got some paper and a pen, wrote out his letter in longhand, put it in an envelope, wrote the email address on the outside, stuck on a stamp and popped it into the pillar box Grin

UtterlyButterly2048 · 09/11/2024 08:09

I have a relative who loudly announces that she is vegetarian in every restaurant she ever goes to. She peruses the menu saying, “no, not the beef croquettes, can’t have those, I’m vegetation” etc etc. Waiter comes to take the order and she says “I’ll have the aubergine to start. I fancied the lamb kofta, but I can’t have that, I’m vegetarian” Then for main course, she orders chicken. Every time. They all look at her like she’s barmy and in fact, she is.

Bewareofthisonetoo · 09/11/2024 08:26

MiddleAgedDread · 08/11/2024 11:34

I was in a restaurant once and the guy at the next table sent his wine back because it was apparently corked. He chose another off the menu, the waitress brought it, a couple of sips and he complained that one was also corked. The waitress returned with the bottle for him. The screw top bottle.

😂😂😂😂😂

TheHangingGardensOfBasildon · 09/11/2024 08:29

UtterlyButterly2048 · 09/11/2024 08:09

I have a relative who loudly announces that she is vegetarian in every restaurant she ever goes to. She peruses the menu saying, “no, not the beef croquettes, can’t have those, I’m vegetation” etc etc. Waiter comes to take the order and she says “I’ll have the aubergine to start. I fancied the lamb kofta, but I can’t have that, I’m vegetarian” Then for main course, she orders chicken. Every time. They all look at her like she’s barmy and in fact, she is.

Utterly bizarre! Why do people like that go out of their way to put on a big show of being vegetarian/vegan when they don't even make the slightest attempt to follow that diet?

Nobody is forcing or pressuring you to present as vegetarian - if you eat meat, that's a perfectly normal, widespread dietary choice; so why try so desperately to blatantly misrepresent it?

It would be like randomly telling everybody that you're Belgian when you clearly are not - what's the point of rejecting an accurate (neutral) label in favour of another that most obviously doesn't apply?

In fact, I highly doubt that people who ARE actually Belgian go around all day repeatedly insisting on telling everybody about it!

I'd be very inclined to sit her down and ask her if she knows exactly where chicken comes from - and if she does, how that makes people who eat it in any way vegetarians. Does she think it grows on trees?!

WeddingBlues12 · 09/11/2024 08:38

I worked in a smokehouse which housed a big American smoker for meat, mainly all beef and pork on the menu aside from one half smoked chicken. The way they work is like a spinning ferris wheel inside and all the meet is on shelves and the juices all drip down onto one another.

guy comes in ‘I’m DEATHLY allergic to beef and pork, I’ll have the smoked half chicken please’

I stepped away for a few minutes to gather my thoughts, but came to the conclusion I just did not feel confident serving him anything we had on the menu and apologised.

He obviously started arguing with me and said he’d had it before, many times and the allergy was more of a preference. 🙄

anyway, they ended up leaving which I did feel guilty about but he’d declared deathly allergic so I wasn’t about to play around with that, I’d rather not go to prison 😂

OPRM1919 · 09/11/2024 08:38

I worked behind a bar at a posh-ish event venue.
1 - really busy night and the glass wash couldn't keep up with the amount of pint glasses we needed. Also a party of mostly men were all drinking pints.
We were down to half pint glasses only for about 10 minutes until we caught up.
A man orders a pint of larger; I tell him I am really sorry but we don't have any pint glasses for about 10 minutes; he can either have two half pint glasses, or wait 10 minutes.
His reply was so rude that I refused to serve him for the rest of the night and his friends made him apologise so my friend could serve him later.
2 - same place- a different event - a customer was on double vodka and red bull all night. Was way too drunk to keep serving so we told him this. He thought he was being clever and asked someone else to get his drink and passed over his card... the same card we'd seen all night. We just poured a red bull into a glass of ice and charged him as if there was vodka in there. The original man took the drink off the friend, looked at us behind the bar dead in the eye and drank thinking he'd cheated the system and won. 🙄

WeddingBlues12 · 09/11/2024 08:39

UtterlyButterly2048 · 09/11/2024 08:09

I have a relative who loudly announces that she is vegetarian in every restaurant she ever goes to. She peruses the menu saying, “no, not the beef croquettes, can’t have those, I’m vegetation” etc etc. Waiter comes to take the order and she says “I’ll have the aubergine to start. I fancied the lamb kofta, but I can’t have that, I’m vegetarian” Then for main course, she orders chicken. Every time. They all look at her like she’s barmy and in fact, she is.

Is your relative Pam from gavin and Stacey? 😂

Namechangefordaughterevasion · 09/11/2024 08:48

@UtterlyButterly2048 and @Bewareofthisonetoo

i couldn't agree more. My DD is a strict vegetarian and has been since she was about 7. I have lost track of people offering her chicken or crab sticks or prawns because people like that have muddied the water about what a vegetarian will or won't eat.

@UtterlyButterly2048 what your aunt should be saying is 'I don't eat red meat' which is a perfectly valid dietary choice.

The worst offender for not understanding vegetarianism was my MIL who tbf, having grown up in poverty in rural Ireland in the 1930s, just didn't understand the concept of picking and choosing what you ate. DD came back from her house once delighted with the delicious new veggie food her granny had given her - it was white pudding! When DH mentioned to his mum that white pudding was actually made from she got very confused and said "but it's white!'

Bewareofthisonetoo · 09/11/2024 09:06

riceuten · 08/11/2024 18:10

In Germany, I saw a family (2 adults, 2 kids) make numerous filled rolls at a hotel for a packed lunch (as well as snaffling fruit and yoghurt), and THEN took - I shit you not - 20 rolls from the bakery tray into a large plastic bag, and made an enormous fuss when they were stopped.

In Montenegro, I saw Russian and Ukrainian babushkas approach the buffet with large Tupperware bowls to denude the area of game and cheese. The hotel had bolted the trays to the table because previously they would carry the whole tray away (and sometimes pinch the tray as well).

Yes saw this with Russians in Red Sea resorts in Egypt numerous times

Elphame · 09/11/2024 09:35

GiveMeTheFormula · 08/11/2024 15:07

"Can I get an extra hot black americano?"

What’s wrong with that?

As I’m always being asked if I want milk in my Americano, I’ve taken to asking for a black one. I also want mine hot as those thick dish shaped cups beloved of coffee shops suck all the heat out of a drink within seconds. At least if I ask for extra hot , they generally pre warm them. I still hate them though.

Fifteenofus · 09/11/2024 09:44

BlueFlowers5 · 09/11/2024 03:03

The correct format is;
United Kingdom of Great Britain.

And Northern Ireland is part of it.

Northern Ireland isn’t part of Great Britain.

It’s part of the UK, which as a pp said stands for the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

TeabySea · 09/11/2024 09:53

SilverChampagne · 07/11/2024 20:52

That’s fair enough?

Asking for another glass of wine is fine. Expecting a free replacement because of an unexpected bee in it is not.

Fifteenofus · 09/11/2024 10:09

PyongyangKipperbang · 09/11/2024 01:51

So dont drink it, but you will be charged. Been in the business for years. I can spot your sort a mile away.

"Do you know how much I am paying for this?!!!" Yes love, a hell of a lot less than it cost us to pay for everything you have consumed this evening, including the minute by minute rate of the time the staff spend with you, the time it took the chefs to cook, the overheads, the cleaning costs, maintenance, upkeep and last and very much least, what the owners get paid. Why do you think that the only hospitality venues left are very very high end or chain places? Independents have all but given up.

But because you choose to sit outside and refuse to accept the consequences of that, we should lose more than what the pot washer earns in an hour to replace your wine? Really?

I’m sorry your business is finding things tough, truly, and I do appreciate that.
However, it’s not the customers fault and they still need to be treated well and fairly. You seem to almost resent them?

I’m obviously not talking about scammers, there will always be those, and they don’t deserve any consideration. But if a genuine mishap happens to a customer dining at a restaurant - such as the sort under discussion - I do think they should be assisted if possible. And I don’t think I’m unreasonable in that and I know many would agree with me.

I’m going to leave it at that. Haven’t time to continue arguing about this today.

Good luck with your business.

Trambopoline · 09/11/2024 10:19

Worked at a soft play with a cafe that served food, had way too many shitty experiences to remember them all!

Woman said yes when I asked if she wanted chocolate on top of her cappuccino. Was confused that chocolate sprinkles were on top, and not hot chocolate. Didn’t want a mocha, but wanted half a cappuccino topped up with hot chocolate?

A group of mums used to call me ‘the dog’. It was never to my face but I could hear them sniggering. I was a very shy 17 year old with already low self esteem so never said anything but they were so rude in general that I’d get nervous every time they came in.

Told an Italian dad not to order the pizza. Said it won’t be what he’s used to, just have a sandwich or chips or something. Nope, insisted on the (frozen, from Brakes) pizza. Came up to the bar shouting at me that it was vile, wanted a refund. Well yes it wasn’t a great pizza but he had fair warning!

Got told to clean up people’s kids shite and puke very regularly, by the parents. As a parent now myself I’d clean the bulk of mess or spills myself and inform staff just so they can sanitise properly.

Fifteenofus · 09/11/2024 10:30

Namechangefordaughterevasion · 09/11/2024 08:48

@UtterlyButterly2048 and @Bewareofthisonetoo

i couldn't agree more. My DD is a strict vegetarian and has been since she was about 7. I have lost track of people offering her chicken or crab sticks or prawns because people like that have muddied the water about what a vegetarian will or won't eat.

@UtterlyButterly2048 what your aunt should be saying is 'I don't eat red meat' which is a perfectly valid dietary choice.

The worst offender for not understanding vegetarianism was my MIL who tbf, having grown up in poverty in rural Ireland in the 1930s, just didn't understand the concept of picking and choosing what you ate. DD came back from her house once delighted with the delicious new veggie food her granny had given her - it was white pudding! When DH mentioned to his mum that white pudding was actually made from she got very confused and said "but it's white!'

I can kind of understand this. Black pudding is famously blood pudding. Also cereals, onions, spices etc and some pork…but blood is the thing people know it for.

White pudding is made without blood. Your MIL probably didn’t realise pork was part of the recipe too (though it tastes meaty, but that depends on brand too).

I think the pork bit is regional too and, in the past especially, there were white puddings made without pork to suit Lenten fast requirements in some areas.

ThreeLocusts · 09/11/2024 10:39

Not a strange thing said, but a very strange thing happening due to one tiny mistake.

Big corporate hotel in the US; I was there for a conference, had booked the cheapest possible deal w/out breakfast. On arrival got my key card in a little sleeve with the room number written on it in ball pen. Went to the room; card would not open it.

Went back to reception; explained problem to a different staff member who re-magnetised the card for me. This time it worked.

I walk into the room: the radio is on. there's a jacket on a hook, a macbook on the bed, even a wallet lying somewhere. Light on in the bathroom and fan going. I'm standing there thinking 'I'm burgling someone's hotel room?!' Luckily the person wasn't actually there; judging by their things they would have been a bloke quite a bit bigger than me.

It took me a couple of minutes to process the situation and slap down a momentary mad desire to inspect the inhabitant's wallet - I guess just because I was curious whose life I'd accidentally stepped into.

Back at reception, I spoke to the person who had dealt with me first. It turned out that he had got one digit wrong when writing down my room number, leading to his colleague then magnetising my card for the wrong room.

I'm not sure I have ever got an apology as fulsome and lengthy from any person who actually hurt me as I got from the receptionist. I must have been stood there for five minutes, nodding in embarrassment while he expressed his regret. I suspect his job would have been on the line had I complained.

So to minimise the chances of me complaining, he gave me breakfast on the house for the three nights of my stay. The whole lot, eggs any which way, five kinds of bread, a jug of fresh, chilled orange juice on the table, bottomless thin American coffee... and staff uttering pleasant phrases at regular intervals, entirely transactional but still enjoyable.

Luckily I clocked just in time, on my last morning, that the custom was to leave fat tips at the exit of the breakfast room, and had enough cash left to do so myself. Would have felt like bad karma otherwise.

KnopkaPixie · 09/11/2024 10:39

TeabySea · 09/11/2024 09:53

Asking for another glass of wine is fine. Expecting a free replacement because of an unexpected bee in it is not.

This is what I would do. Politely ask for a new glass of wine, stating that I will pay. I may imply that it's not my wine but a more fussy looking member of the party to garner sympathy, or that I'm alright with it but MIL is going to cause a scene or whatever.

The wait staff will see straight through this but dining out and the restaurant trade is in part, performance theatre and you are playing the game.

When the new wine is proffered, say nothing apart from ''Oh, thankyou, thanks great!" with your best smile. They may say, "No charge, or on the house" at the time or just not bill you for it at the end as goodwill.

If they don't, by this time you've drunk the wine and a bit more besides and have mellowed out.

OP posts:
Wtfdude · 09/11/2024 10:41

Woman said yes when I asked if she wanted chocolate on top of her cappuccino. Was confused that chocolate sprinkles were on top, and not hot chocolate. Didn’t want a mocha, but wanted half a cappuccino topped up with hot chocolate?

Standardly a chocolate powder (hot choc powder or cocoa) is used not sprinkles. I would also be confused tbh

ThreeLocusts · 09/11/2024 10:45

LemonadeSunshine · 08/11/2024 00:15

I have one where the restaurant were bizarre...Heavily pregnant with DC, we'd gone out for a Chinese dinner. Independent but well established restaurant on a popular tourist city.
We'd ordered and were waiting for our starters when a man from the neighbouring table collapsed onto the floor, coughing up huge amounts of blood. My husband went over to assist with first aid along with another Customer, but it became clear when doing CPR that the man was very unwell, when large amounts of blood sprayed out with each chest compression. The area looked like a crime scene, blood soaked into the carpet and up the walls. I was trying to support the family who were distraught, apparently the man had advanced lung cancer, which explained the blood volume.
Just as husband and other Customer were persevering with CPR and talking to the emergency services, both covered in blood, the waiter started bringing our meal out. Lighting the warmer and starting to place food into bowls. About two meters from the man who was almost certainly dead at this point.
The waiter was most put out when I asked him to take it back to the kitchen for a while.
After the paramedics arrived and the man was very quickly taken off, the restaurant were again put out that my husband didn't exactly feel like sitting back down to a full meal. Next to an area that was soaked in blood, being covered in blood and bits of lung tissue, he couldn't get the blood off his hands and arms, it was ingrained and dried.
Very bizarre experience!

Big wave to you and your husband for trying to help. My dad died in a similar way, also from lung cancer. I hope you've processed it all OK.

KnopkaPixie · 09/11/2024 10:52

Persianpaws · 08/11/2024 05:13

I worked as a waitress at 15 and I’ve never forgotten this…

A man came into the department store cafe I worked in at lunchtime, he was in his late forties in a suit with a briefcase and very well spoken. He took his menu a big dismissively but still polite and I left him to choose his food.

A woman came and joined him who was also in a suit and lots of serious murmured conversation and paperwork being pulled out of briefcases, I was a bit shy and didn’t want to interrupt so sort of hovered until they waved me over to take the order.

The women ordered a salad and sparkling water, the man said “ah yesss I’ll also have the salad” and the woman starts to hand me back the menus.

Suddenly this buttoned up man grabs the menu back and shouts “and CHIPS! DO YOU HAVE CHIPS?! I WANT CHIPS!”
The woman looks at him surprised and says slowly “okkkkk if you want chips then have them” she’s staring to look a bit uncomfortable.
The man says “ohhhh goody gum drops, we are having chippies, CHIPS CHIPS CHIPS”
He was actually holding his knife and fork upright and banging the ends into the table in excitement chanting the last bit.

After we established he was getting his chips he suddenly became professional again and said “Well very good, thank you” and went back to looking at documents with the woman.

The restaurant was quiet and I stayed in the kitchen waiting for their order, I was too confused to even laugh about it. When it was ready I took the meals out and this man literally threw all the paperwork onto the floor and shouts “yayyyy chips! Chips are here!” And nudges the woman who is now looking so embarrassed and uncomfortable. She picked everything up and I had to run back to the kitchen to hide and laugh hysterically.

I didn’t witness him eat the chips but when I cleared the plates he was back to being posh and buttoned up except to say “Bloody lovely chips!” I got a £10 tip which was a lot in 1999!

I started to tell some other staff about it later and they all looked at each other in recognition and said “oh yes we know the chippy man”
He came in a few more times whilst I worked there and it didn’t happen every time but sometimes there with a similar performance about his excitement for chips.

My partner has probably been the topic of one of these conversations after we ate at a restaurant in London. I can’t stand tomato and cucumber, if I pick it off I can still taste where it’s been so where ever we go we always stress when ordering not to include it - if I don’t mention it then it gets added to everything, if not as a main ingredient then as a garnish. You don’t realise unless you hate it how disappointing it is.
I ordered a burger at this restaurant and we did request a few times not to include the tomato and cucumber, unfortunately when the burger came it had a huge tomato on.
We had already had starters and I’d had two cocktails so when the meals came I actually was happy to share DP’s meal and he had the burger and tucked in and said it was really nice. When the waitress came over and asked if everything was ok he said “not really” and went on to complain about the almost finished burger 🤦🏼‍♀️.
I apologised, DP has ASD so when I told him it didn’t matter and we were happy with swapping meals he also apologised and we all had a laugh about it, they actually removed the burger from the bill so we tipped the cost of the burger and extra. He explained he wasn’t asking for a refund he’d just taken the question “Is everything ok with your meals?” very literally.
I was worried they thought we were after a refund for an almost finished and clearly enjoyed meal!

My friend is very difficult to eat out with, she’s 40 and the only fish she has ever had anywhere is fish fingers or cod battered from a pub or chip shop. She also has ASD and is a restrictive eater with only a few things she will eat, she always orders fish and chips whenever we eat out anywhere.
She ordered fresh cod on holiday and when it came in it’s natural form without batter she argued with the restaurant owner about what cod was supposed to look like, she absolutely refused to believe that the fish in front of her was cod.
He had to point to the sea and remind her that it had been caught from there and just hadn’t been battered and fried.
The worst part about this is it was recently as well, it was June this year 😂.

I'm pretty sure that Chippy Man was some kind of Old Etonian or Harrovian of some description.

Didn't this incident happen at about the time when the likes of Anthony Worrall Thompson were opening restaurants which served basically boarding school food?

Sue Townsend wrote a later Adrian Mole book wherein a grown up Adrian became a celebrity chef. It was adapted for television I seem to remember with the promotional pictures showing a typically world weary Adrian holding a pig's head.

Twenty years before the infamous David Cameron in the Bullingdon Boys club scandal, btw.

OP posts:
HospitalitySux · 09/11/2024 10:54

It’s different if you’re eating or drinking at the establishment you’ve purchased at and not at the park, you must see that. It’s also different if you drop something yourself rather than an insect flying in/ bird destroying it etc.

No, it's not different, you've chosen a drink and you've chosen to drink it outside, the result of that may well be an insect gets in on the act, regardless of who owns that section of outside, because insects don't respect the ownership of any bit of the outside.

No I’m not a knob about it, truly, but I do think if a restaurant is offering an outdoor area it’s something they should take into account.

And if a customer chooses to use an outside area, they should also take it into account and not try to shift the concequences of their own decision on to someone else.

If, while eating indoors, a fly or bluebottle flew out of a light fixture and landed on your dessert or in your coffee, would you just spoon it out and continue on too? I mean, a fresh coffee or pudding would be nice in those circumstances imho. I don’t see a huge difference in the circumstances really. It’s the restaurant’s decision to offer outdoor dining, not mine.

It's reasonable to expect that inside somewhere is subject to forms of pest control, for things like insects or even birds (we've had birds and even frogs come in through open doors and windows because we're near a nature reserve) people choose it because of the nature surrounding it, it's reasonable to expect a level of control inside a place, but not outside.

I’m never a knob about things, but I kind of resent your suggestion that you almost need to suck up to staff to get them to behave reasonably too. I’m always nice to people but I shouldn’t need to be extra nice or apologetic to get decent service iyswim? That should be standard. It shouldn’t depend on what whether the staff think I’m deserving of their goodwill! What if they’re just having a bad day and not feeling the goodwill thing at all?

Thing is, I'm not suggesting that you 'suck up', be 'extra nice or apologetic' to get them to behave reasonably. All you need to do is behave reasonably yourself, and have some awareness that you are relying on goodwill to get a drink changed in those circumstances, because it's no more their fault or responsibility than yours.

They've fulfilled their part of the transaction by delivering the product you ordered in good condition at the time of ordering and if something happens to it after that point, that is not a member of staff knocking it over or dropping something in it, then what else are you relying on to get a replacement without charge, other than the goodwill of the company through it's employee?

Because the 'transaction' has already taken place, you've ordered and paid, or agreed to pay, for an item served to you in return for the advertised price, that's already happened if you have the wine and a bee lands in it.

Acknowledging that isn't sucking up or having to be extra nice or extra apologetic, it's behaving like a decent human being. Not being a knob about it isn't being extra nice or apologetic or sucking up, it's just again, being a decent human being. Interesting that you resent that suggestion.

As @PyongyangKipperbang said, it's about the attitude you approach the situation with, and coming across as demanding and entitled isn't going to get you far when you want people to do something 'nice' for you, that they don't have to do.

KnopkaPixie · 09/11/2024 10:55

KnopkaPixie · 09/11/2024 10:52

I'm pretty sure that Chippy Man was some kind of Old Etonian or Harrovian of some description.

Didn't this incident happen at about the time when the likes of Anthony Worrall Thompson were opening restaurants which served basically boarding school food?

Sue Townsend wrote a later Adrian Mole book wherein a grown up Adrian became a celebrity chef. It was adapted for television I seem to remember with the promotional pictures showing a typically world weary Adrian holding a pig's head.

Twenty years before the infamous David Cameron in the Bullingdon Boys club scandal, btw.

...Adrian made things like Spotted Dick from a tin and lumpy Birds Custard for these chaps and the restaurant kept having to close due to the owner's coke habit.

OP posts:
Fifteenofus · 09/11/2024 11:03

I assure you I don’t present as a demanding and entitled customer @HospitalitySux. However, I do like people to help out others when they can and that includes at restaurants, and it works both ways.
I’ve always had very good service at restaurants/cafes locally when I eat out, which isn’t too often actually. It’s a treat and the staff are lovely and helpful.
So as I said, I’m just surprised at some of the attitudes on this thread. Ah well.

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