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?

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Island is the longest name in the UN, (from my mine of useless facts!).

I once worked with one of the most militant vegetarians I've ever known, constantly harangued other members of staff about their choices, yet still tucked in to fish and chips on Friday!

The one about the rare vs hard to find steak sounds like an urban myth too.

I wonder what people think 'blue' steak is if they're not familiar with the term?

The case was found broadly in her favour, 80% of the liability was found to be McDonalds because the coffee was around 88c, and the woman recieved 3rd degree burns that took 2 years to fully treat after an initial 8 days in hospital.

She did have the coffee cup between her knees, however she was a passenger in a stationary car, and the whole cup went over her legs as she tried to take the lid off to add sugar/creamer.

The courts awarded (eventually, after a lot of faffing around) $640'000 in total, but I think the eventual total she received was a private settlement before all the appeals were done (the original punitive damages suggested by the jury was over $2million!).

It's a commonly misquoted/misattributed case, attempting to make the victim out as stupid and foolish... however there had been multiple reports of coffee being hot enough to cause severe burns (suggesting McDonalds were well aware of the issue and therefore held some liability), and it was McDonalds derisory offer of just $800 towards a medical bill of over $10'000 that really kicked things off.

It also turned out that whilst McDonalds claimed their coffee was so hot because customers wanted it to stay hot whilst they travelled, their own market research discovered the majority of customers wanted to and intended to drink their coffee straight away, which again, McDonalds quality control person conceeded, would cause severe scalding to mouth and throat at the temperatures they served it at!

I saw an interesting documentary a few years ago about the British distaste for horsemeat. The gist of it was that horsemeat compared to the quality of beef for a similar cost, is of higher quality and healthier because it's leaner. The documentary team produced and sold some horsemeat burgers at a street stall, which people were eating quite happily.

I had a braised horsemeat steak once in France and it was fine; I wouldn't rave over it but nothing wrong with it.

.. Coffee is brewed at somewhere up to around 96c.

Have you attempted drinking a liquid a few degrees off boiling point? Even with the addition of milk/creamer, it doesn't drop that much and if the milk added is also steamed as it is in many drinks, that won't drop the temperature at all.

Hot drinks are drinkable at around 50 to 70c. (The large range there is down to personal preference of course, not just whether it will burn you).

Fair enough. I always find coffee served in cafes to be not hot enough (latte) so I was using that as a guide.

the whole cup went over her legs as she tried to take the lid off to add sugar/creamer.

I can imagine this happening. With the lid on a paper cup can be pretty rigid, and she could have been applying a certain amount of pressure (even unconsciously) with her thighs. Then when she finally got the lid off it would have collapsed quite violently. Also, some of those lids fit very tightly indeed, and you sometimes have to lever them off half a millimetre at a time, working your way round. They can be buggers to get back on, too.

I read a while back that McDonald's had changed its policy on lawsuits a couple of times after that incident. First they decided to try and settle as many cases out of court as possible, to avoid publicity and reduce the multi-million dollar awards. Then they worked out that this was making them a target for scammers, and so they changed to defending every suit, including the ones that it would have been cheaper to settle, because it was cheaper overall.

they need to rely on a certain high margin from every drink they sell to cover it all before they can even break even.

Well, it's either one thing or another. Either the wine itself has quite a low margin, in which case replacing the glassful has a significant cost to the pub, or it has a high margin, in which case replacing it is not going to hurt the pub so much. Of course, the markup is needed to cover overheads, but if the glass of wine costs the pub £1.50 to buy in and they sell it for £7.50, by replacing it they're still making £4.50 margin (and maybe the chef can use the wine for gravy). Whereas if the wine costs £5.50 to buy in and the pub makes all its money on food, a new glass of wine will make the transaction an overall loss (although again, a business that insists that every single transaction must always be profitable, even at the expense of keeping a customer, might be considered a little extreme.)

Anyway, I don't know which of those two cases (high or low margin) is true, but my point is just that your post and PP's actually sort of contradict each other. And I sat down to write this, so I'm going to post it, which probably proves that I am not good at the "sunk costs" fallacy. 🙏 🤪😂

What's wrong with it is that americano's are made with boiling water. It can't be extra hot

This perhaps explains what happened to friends of ours, who told a restaurant in France that they were vegetarians and were offered a choice of fish or lamb. To be fair this was in the 1990s and it's actually just about possible to be vegetarian in France now!

For what it's worth, I think a lot of the discussion about the bee in the wine in the pub garden is due to the fact that while it's outside and "in nature", it's also on the pub's premises.

We expect the pub to take responsibility for environmental hazards inside, and we don't expect them to do so if you choose to take your drink down to the pier and a seagull shits in it, but the garden is kind of a halfway house.

I'm not sure what "ought" to apply, or even if "ought" is the right question to be asking, but maybe this will explain a bit of why this debate has been quite so heated. Or not. 🤷‍♀️

We once asked the waiter to change the pot of mango chutney in an Indian restaurant because there was a wasp in it.

During the war, my grandmother was cooking horsemeat for the dogs, thought it smelled delicious and asked if my grandfather wanted to try a bit, at which point he disappeared to vomit at the very idea.

I read somewhere (and this could be rubbish) that people of Anglo Saxon descent thought it perfectly OK, Celts not so much, something to do with how horses were viewed in the respective societies way back. As I say, could be utter nonsense but fits with what I know about their probable antecedents!

They are often tepid by the time they are served!

They live amongst us.

Feel free to send them to me.

Yes, what about the old men in Wetherspoons?

You've forgotten the bee in the wine! Much more debate needed about that too 😉

OK, what if you have no cutlery: how are you going to get rid of the bee in the wine?

This replace wine with bee in thing seems surprisingly heated. It depends would be my view. How about this one to add into the mix - my brother on holiday in Hawaii with his wife and two children were sat inside a sea front restaurant near a window. A sea bird (presumably a youngster new to flying) clattered through the window and landed on their table, sweeping their (very expensive) meal to the floor. The restaurant replaced their food, gave them the meal on the house, and offered a voucher. How's that for customer service? :-)

On a less salubrious note my worst hospitality experience - glass collecting in a bar at the end of the night and finding an almost full pint on a table in the corner, a very unusual occurrence. Went to pick it up and found the glass to be warm. Body temperature in fact. Shudder. 😫

Holiday Inn guest. Hotel has a policy of a full refund if you don't get a good night's sleep. Wanted a refund because they were woken up by an earthquake.

Pint 'o' piss is quite common in less erm, classy places, I've dealt with that a few times.

One that impressed me though was vomit, in a pint glass, and not down the sides or on the table, I mean it was not a pleasant task disposing of it - but better than trying to get it off the table and the floor I suppose and quite an impressive aim.

Ah hospitality, so glamorous 🤣

But do they offer the refund if you don't have a good night's sleep owing to their poor service/management/fault; or is it just an all-inclusive guarantee, regardless of the cause of it?

It might seem cheeky, but if it's a blanket, all-encompassing guarantee, they maybe only have themselves to blame for not setting conditions with it?

Apparently it is possible to get TCA contamination (the corked taint) in a screw top wine bottle....though he may just be an arse.