Certain customers are always finding ways to squeeze a free meal out of a restaurant establishment, and the more extreme of these guests will find reasons to complain about their food that are downright bizarre.
Below, servers share the absolute weirdest reasons someone has tried to get a free meal from them.
(Content has been edited for clarity.)
Too Easy To Push Around
“My significant other is a waitress and she tells me something ridiculous nightly. One time, a customer came in and complained before she ordered that the food was too expensive and wanted to know what the restaurant was going to do about it.
She then proceeded to demand the manager because my significant other refused her request to give the customer her employee discount, and the staff had to accommodate her. The worst part is the management reprimanded her for saying no to the customer’s request and comped the meal.”
Around And Around We Go
“In high school, I worked at a regional Texmex franchise and the guy who trained me on drive-thru was the owner of the store. While he was taking someone’s order, he missed an item, so when they came back through, he offered the woman the item he missed for free. She wanted the whole meal refunded. He refused and she demanded to see the manager. His said, ‘Sure! Let me get him for you,’ and turned in a full circle before saying, ‘Hi! I’m the manager.’
She flipped and demanded to see the store manager, so he repeated his little circle-turn schpeel, and when she went nuts demanding to speak to someone above him, he replied, ‘Well, the owner is here, I can get him.’ Turned one last circle, leaned out the window and said ‘Hi, I’m the owner. Get out of my drive-thru.'”
Don’t Mess With Keith
“My buddy works with a server named Keith.
In his free time, Keith enjoys bodybuilding, steroids, and going on dates with women. He’s also hilarious and was on a dating show once.
An older gentleman once came into the restaurant and ordered a margarita. ‘Right away sir,’ Keith replies as a good server should, and fetches the margarita.
‘What? I didn’t want salt on this!’
‘No problem sir, let me take care of that for you sir,’ Keith responds and goes back into the kitchen for a new margarita.
He comes back and places it on the table when the man blurts out, ‘That’s not a new margarita!’
‘Why yes, it is sir, a new margarita with no salt.’
‘No!’ The man persists. ‘You’re a liar! You just wiped the salt off the rim!’
Keith’s smile drops from his face, and in an instant, he SWATS the margarita off the table, sending it shattering onto the dining room floor.
‘Nobody calls me a liar, do you understand that? Now you’re paying for that one,’ he yells, pointing at the pile of broken glass. ‘Would you like another one, sir?’
The man nearly crapped himself. Trembling, he meekly asks for another margarita, agrees to pay for the original, and even leaves a nice tip on top of it.
Nobody calls Keith a liar.”
No Tomato, But With Tomato
“My family owns a small diner, so we have had many odd incidents over the years. The one that sticks out in my mind was a lady who came in for breakfast and ordered a Texas omelette without tomato. She got her omelette, and ate it all, along with the toast and home fries that came with it.
My sister was the server, I was the cook, and my father was at the cash register. She was served promptly, and the food was made to order, so we were all surprised when she said she wouldn’t be paying for the food when she got to the register because there was no tomato in her omelette. We went through the typical we will offer you a discount stuff, but she wouldn’t let up, even though she ordered no tomato.
As the conversation went on, she kept getting louder, thinking that if she made a scene she would get her way. My father, at this point, was angry and he wasn’t going to let her get the best of him. He went back to the kitchen grabbed an empty pickle bucket and said, ‘If you’re not going to pay for the food we made you, we want it back.’ At this point, she had the attention of the whole place, many of whom are regulars, she got pretty embarrassed because no one had ever asked her to puke in a bucket. The girl finally paid, and I haven’t seen her since.”
All Pig Everything
“My dad owns a traditional German restaurant where I was a server in school. We had several regulars, the most memorable was German couple in their mid-30s. One day, the man called my father and asked for a table for the next day. No problem. He asked if he could prepare ‘head cheese.’ No problem. Then he asked if he could put a pig’s eye on the plate when serving with a tiny pink flag in it that said, ‘Will you marry me, my piggy?’
My dad laughed and wanted to know whether he was kidding or not.