STORIES OF UNBELIEVABLY EVIL RESTAURANT CUSTOMERS

Welcome back to Off The Menu, where we bring you the best and strangest food stories from my email inbox. This week, we have the classic tales of customers who were pretty much just trolls in human guise. As always, these are real emails from real readers, though names have been changed.

I want THIS sandwich at THIS price "I had a former co-worker that was almost always a customer from hell. This guy could be described as aggressively sociopathic, I think. He would seriously go out of his way to insult, belittle, ridicule, etc. anyone who came in his path, and would even alter his path as needed to find fresh victims. My first day on the job, his first words to me were, 'That necktie sucks.'

"Our office was right out of Office Space, although it predated the movie by several years. Every day, lunch hour became a hide-and-seek/avoid-the-troll as we tried to sneak out to our cars without attracting the attention of InsultBoy. In addition to being an abrasive prick, he was a HUGE cheapskate -- he never drove to lunch one single time.

"Anyway, we frequented a local bar/restaurant for lunch, usually one to two times a week. One day, we were unable to avoid InsultBoy, so he tagged along. He ordered a veal Parm sandwich. When the check came (separate, of course), he was THRILLED to see that they had undercharged him almost a full dollar on the sandwich. He giggled and gloated the whole way back to the office.

"The VERY NEXT DAY, InsultBoy caught us at lunchtime and INSISTED that we return to the same restaurant. We did, and got the same server (a young lady, maybe 19-ish), and he ordered the same veal Parm sandwich.

"Of course, this time he was charged the correct amount for the sandwich. He then proceeded to raise holy hell with the server, 'Why is this sandwich a dollar more than yesterday? Do you think I'm an IDIOT? We are your BEST CUSTOMERS…' and on and on. She stammered something along the lines that he was likely charged incorrectly before, to which he responded, 'I came here for THIS sandwich at THIS price! If you charge me more, it's coming out of your tip!'

"The poor server started to cry, then threw his check down and said, 'I don't care! Do whatever!' then ran off. The rest of us started pulling bills out and throwing them on the table to make up for Mr. Cheapo, who did indeed deduct the dollar from her tip -- which means he left zero. Bastard." -- Alan DeMarco

[Editor's Note: A quick word here: if you’re reading this and going “HOW DARE ALAN NOT CALL OUT THE ASSHOLE TO HIS FACE,” you are an idiot. Thank you!]

Michelle doesn't like beets "My high school's marching band was invited to march in the St. Patrick's Day Parade in Dublin, Ireland. We all had an amazing time, but the one truly awful thing about the trip was being in a group with someone who I will refer to as 'Michelle.'

"Michelle was placed in my group because no one wanted to have to deal with her whining and complaining. Not only was she a militant vegetarian who constantly chastised the rest of us for eating meat, she was a picky militant vegetarian. Here's a short list of foods that vegetarians normally eat to survive that Michelle refused to even make eye contact with: tomatoes, mushrooms, tofu, beans, and most cheeses. Most of our meals were served at the hotel where I could eat with my friends and not have to see her. Mercifully, there was only one time I had to witness the extent of her nitpicking, crybaby, all-around abhorrent dietary 'needs' at a sit-down restaurant.

TWEET In the middle of her spiel, Michelle, without breaking eye contact with the waitress, spat the chewed-up beets back onto the plate. "On one of our last days in Dublin, we finally got a chance to explore the city in small groups. The first thing we decided to do was grab lunch. Most groups ate together in big restaurants, but Michelle insisted on us finding a strictly vegetarian restaurant. There were a few problems with her request: 1) we had limited time to search for the restaurant in Downtown Dublin before we had to leave for more sightseeing (and had no use of smartphones because of roaming data and whatever), 2) she was so picky she rudely refused any helpful suggestions we made since we were getting hungry, 3) she didn't even know the name of the place or if it even existed. She had only overheard a stranger say something about it the day before!

"At this point, we were all getting pretty hangry with her, so I pointed to a farm-to-table restaurant across the street, telling her that there would probably be plenty of fresh vegetarian options for her, and she begrudgingly accepted. The restaurant staff was kind, the menu was filled with pun-based names for meals, and the food was delicious. No one complained… except for Michelle. While all of us were enjoying our meal and making small talk about how great the trip had been, Michelle just stared at her plate. We asked her if she was OK, and she responded, 'I don't like beets.' Her dish was comprised of mainly beets, and its name was 'Don't Beet Yourself Up,' so I'm not sure how exactly she missed that. I offered her some of my risotto, but she snapped at me, 'I don't eat mushrooms!'

"She finally made an attempt to try the beets when our waitress came back to check on us. In the middle of her spiel, Michelle, without breaking eye contact with the waitress, spat the chewed-up beets back onto the plate. We were all mortified. Our waitress, feeling very awkward, asked her if anything was wrong, to which Michelle replied, 'This is disgusting. I didn't know there would be beets in this.' The waitress apologized and offered her a different entree. Michelle said there was no time and just asked for a basket of bread. When the waitress left, we all leaned in and berated Michelle like she was literally a 4-year-old having a tantrum, telling her that her rude behavior is unacceptable and made us and the school band look bad to a country we'd been graciously invited to march in. Of course, she didn't understand how her actions could possibly have consequences and tried to pin the blame on me: 'This is all your fault! If we had just gone where I wanted to go this wouldn't have happened!'

"Before I could respond, she threw her money on the table and ran off to hide in the bathroom as we finished eating in peace without her. When we went to get her after we paid, she acted as if the incident never happened.

The guy who thought he was Dirk Diggler "I was a bartender/server at the local watering hole, which was popular with tourists and locals alike because of its proximity to the highway and golf course, which also has a campground. It was a Saturday night and we had already called last call when this table I had been serving all night decides they want to go back to their campsite… in their cars… drunk. In an effort to prevent a potentially dangerous situation, my manager offers to drive their vehicles to the campsite and have one of our cooks follow him in his car. This way said drunks could wake up with their cars and didn't have to endanger anyone with their stupidity (it was a one-cab town and the driver was generally drunker than his patrons).

"The problem with this scenario is that it meant I was staying alone in the lounge with those waiting for a ride. I decided to chat them up and attempt to keep them out of trouble. One man I was speaking with asked if I had seen the newly released Boogie Nights and did I know who Dirk Diggler was. As I had not been living in a cave, I answered in the affirmative. He then asked if I wanted to 'see something.' I'll admit, I was naive. I did not connect his previous questions with his current question and sadly I did not hear the girl next him chanting, 'SAY NO,' until after I answered, 'Yes.'

"The guy whips out his junk, flings it around like a windmill, and says, 'How about this!' I didn't even respond. I just walked away." -- Jess Myers

"Last week, my boyfriend and I went out to dinner. We went to a local '50s-style diner and burger joint called Zebb's. It was around 5 or so -- early dinner rush. An old couple got seated at a two-person table behind my boyfriend. The lady was a typical-looking 'old money' lady: fancy fur coat that was folded in front of her arms, a purple hat with flower, black dress, black stockings. I wish I could more accurately describe the coat she had. Like she walked into ZEBB'S in this getup and I was like, WTF, this isn't church.

"Shortly after being seated, it became apparent that they thought their two-person table was MUCH too small for them. They stood up, shuffled to a nearby four-person table, and sat themselves down -- without notifying or asking a server. After their server returned with drinks, the man got up to go to the salad bar. While he SHUFFLED PAINSTAKINGLY SLOWLY over, the woman swapped his chair with an identical chair from another table. When he returned, she went to the salad bar. He then ROTATED THE TABLE about 40 degrees, which completely cluster****** the walking path of the waitresses (they were now basically seated in the aisles). Waitresses had to squeeze by with trays full of food.

"My boyfriend and I left to pay at that point. I'm glad; not sure I could take much more of the definition of over-privileged old white people." -- Andrea Bilestri

"I used to work as a barista at a Starbucks that was located inside a Barnes & Noble. This Barnes & Noble was in a very busy neighborhood in a fairly large city, so we had our share of weirdos come in. For example, there was a man who would come and order a coffee and sit there with a pile of books, but he wouldn't actually read, he would just hide behind the book and spy on people. I know this because he sat there holding a book upside down for an hour once.

"Among our weird customers was a man who would come in every single morning and order an apple pocket. I think that's what they were called; it was basically an apple dumpling. And I'm talking every. Single. Day. He would pay with exact change, we would microwave the apple pocket for him, and he would sit down and eat it.

"One day, I'm the only person behind the counter, and I really don't feel well. Apple Pocket Man comes in, I put his apple pocket in the microwave for him, and I get that fuzzy, everything's-going-black feeling that you get before you pass out. I weakly slide down the wall and sit on the floor, and way off in the distance, through the roaring in my ears, I hear Apple Pocket Man asking me a question. I was right on the edge of passing out, and I thought that he asked if he should go get help, so I said yes. Dude walks behind the counter, STEPS OVER MY BODY, gets his apple pocket out of the microwave, STEPS BACK OVER MY BODY, and sits down at a table to eat." -- Rebecca DiPonto

The most committed customer complaint ever "I work at a bar/restaurant in Australia and was serving a woman in the restaurant area. She asked me what the petite filet mignons were, so I explained they're basically mini-steaks wrapped in bacon, and that three of them came in one serving. She ordered it.

"After a food runner ran the lady's filets, he came back and found me to tell me she was complaining there were only two steaks. Before going to the table, I asked the chef why there were only two, and he said the only reason we had been putting three on a plate lately was because the sous chef had measured and cut the last batch incorrectly, so they were much smaller than intended. They had been putting three on a plate to make up for it.

"When I went to the table, I passed on what the chef had told me and explained that she was still getting the same amount of meat she would have had with three filets, since these were larger cuts. She made some awkward comment along the lines of, 'OK, just making sure, because I wouldn't want to have to get you fired or anything.' OK, that's an awkward thing to say, but whatever. She finished her meal, even ordered dessert, and had no more complaints.

"Fast-forward to two months later. She and her husband arrived exactly at opening time and requested to speak with a manager. The manager came down to speak with them and even took them up to his office. Later, he came down and took some cash from the cash register.

"Once they left, my manager looked at me and said, 'What ***** psychos.' I asked him what had happened and he told me they came in because of her experience two months earlier. She had mailed us a HANDWRITTEN COMPLAINT and had a photocopied version with her on her return. She said she had given us two weeks to respond before contacting the Fair Trade Bureau about receiving two petite filet mignons and not three, even after I explained it was the same amount of meat. Also, she had seemed to accept the reason I gave her (even though she made that awkward comment about getting me fired). Had she thrown some big fit, I would have asked the kitchen to cook her another one, but she didn't seem angry.

"Anyway, Fair Trade basically blew her off (for obvious reasons), so she decided to just come complain in person. My manager also told me her husband said he had been 'researching contract law' and that legally I would be an agent of the restaurant and blah blah blah all this fake law jargon to try and scare my manager into firing me or something. My manager refunded them the $16 for the petite filets, but basically blew everything else off.

"Later that same day, we received a phone call from this woman. She asked what our address was, and I told her. 'Hmmm, interesting. That's the address that my receipt from today says and that's the address I mailed my letter to, but I can't find that address posted anywhere in the phonebook.'

"Me: 'Um, well, I'm not sure why it wouldn't be in the phonebook but that is our address. It's posted on our website as well.'

"Lunatic: 'Well, that's the address I mailed my letter to, so I don't understand why your manager didn't receive it.'

"Me: 'There are actually several businesses in the same building. Perhaps it accidentally got put in someone else's mailbox?'

"Lunatic (almost screaming now): 'Well I addressed it to the manager of (restaurant).'

"Me: 'I'm sorry, ma'am. I don't really have an answer as to why your letter wasn't received.'

"Lunatic: 'I find it interesting that the receipt I received when I first came in has your address written on it but not your phone number, yet the receipt I received today has your address and phone number written on it. I find it interesting I've been given two different receipts.'

"I have absolutely no idea what point she was trying to get at with the receipts (especially since she already received her refund and there was literally nothing else to be done about the situation). Maybe she should ask her husband with his internet law degree." -- Nora Carter

The worst customer in Canadian restaurant history "I work at a somewhat-local pizza chain that has expanded across the province of Ontario in recent years to about 30 locations, seven of which are in my small city. I make the pizzas, and am also a closer, but most of the time I'm on the cash register for pickup orders. I've had a lot of **** customers but this older lady really took the pie.

"This older lady comes in on a super-busy Friday with her husband and orders two specialty pizzas, 40 hot wings, and breadsticks. OK, good, I say, that'll be about 40 minutes because we are very busy. She pretends to act dumbfounded and declares that she's not going anywhere until she gets her food. I say she's welcome to stay until her order is ready, in approximately 40 minutes. She huffs and stands there, crossing her arms, glaring at me for the next. Half. Hour. She was actually obstructing other customers from getting their pizza or paying for their orders and I had to open my second till down the counter because she just wouldn't freaking move no matter how much I or the other customers asked her. Her husband stood there like a bump on a log.

TWEET 'Well,' she snarls, doing a good impression of Lucifer, 'I changed my mind.' "After a half-hour her food comes out and I gleefully hand it to her, hoping she'll get the **** out of dodge. She smiles venomously and hisses, 'You LIED. You told me 40 minutes so I'd leave, and then when I came back my food would be cold!' I don't respond to that. She proceeds to take up the entire counter, spreading out her food and opening each box to check the contents, hemming and hawing about how the slices weren't exactly the same size, poking the crust, 'There's no chicken on this slice,' etc. When she opens the wing box, however… she lets out an ear-piercing shriek. Alarmed, I ask what the problem is.

"'But… you asked for your wings with sauce on them. You asked for them extra-saucy.'

"I'm completely stunned. I bring the wings into the back and put some fresh ones in the oven and specify sauce on the side, and go back to tell the customer it'll be 10 minutes.

"Ten minutes later, I give her the wings, and lo and behold, there's something wrong with them -- they're not crispy enough. Keep in mind that we put our wings through the oven twice to prep them, and when a customer orders them we just throw them through the conveyor oven in a dish to heat them up.

"OK, so we put them through a second time. AND THEY'RE STILL NOT DAMN CRISPY ENOUGH.

"She's been in the store for an hour now. We put them through a third time, and as I'm turning around to see how they're doing, I hear this ungodly crunch. Slowly, I turn around. Her husband, who isn't a very big man, has broken our bench. Legit, three of the boards are broken and his ass is on the floor. This wasn't an old or weak bench, we had only opened two months prior. Buddy must have literally thrown himself at this bench to break it.

"I stand there, perplexed and horrified, and lady goes ******* POSTAL. 'YOU SHOULD HAVE WARNED HIM! HE COULD HAVE BEEN SERIOUSLY INJURED! I'M GOING TO SUE YOU! THE NERVE! YOU SHOULD HAVE WAAAARNED HIM!'"

"I rush to the back and quickly make a sign, 'Bench Broken. SRY 4 Inconvenience.' And go and stick it on the bench while she watches. I hand her her now-thrice-cooked wings. She starts screaming that they're burnt. I'm about to ****** lose it. I explain that since we have a conveyor oven and we're very busy, she can either have her wings this way or the way they were the second time. She huffs and takes them and grabs her husband by the arm.

"Finally they leave. On her way out the door, she turns around and smiles evilly at me, and says, 'Don't work too hard, you hear?'

"I went into the employee bathroom and screamed for a good, solid five minutes." -- Miranda Sagan

[Editor’s Note: Look, that’s nice and all, Canada, but you’re still not taking America’s terrible customers crown anytime soon. U-S-A! U-S-A! WE'RE NUMBER ONE!]

C.A. Pinkham is a guy who makes inappropriate jokes about Toblerones on the internet. Follow him on Twitter: @EyePatchGuy.

One man I was speaking with asked if I had seen the newly released Boogie Nights and did I know who Dirk Diggler was. As I had not been living in a cave, I answered in the affirmative. He then asked if I wanted to 'see something.' I'll admit, I was naive. I did not connect his previous questions with his current question and sadly I did not hear the girl next him chanting, 'SAY NO,' until after I answered, 'Yes.' "The guy whips out his junk, flings it around like a windmill, and says, 'How about this!' I didn't even respond. I just walked away."

One of the funniest women I've ever known responded perfectly to a similar routine. I knew her enough to keep quiet when a moron made a big deal about whipping his anatomy out. She looked straight at him and said something innocuous, as if she hadn't noticed what he did. He pointed and said, "do you know what this is?"

She looked. No reaction. Put on her reading glasses, bent down for a better look, and acted startled, as if she had just noticed. "It looks almost like a man's _______, only smaller."

Priceless. Whoever married her got a real gem.

Years ago I had a summer job slinging pizzas for Pizza Hut. On one occasion when we were short-handed I was bussing a table and discovered someone had changed a baby’s soiled diaper at their table! After wiping down the booth with Pine Sol I washed for about 5-10 minutes before I would even consider going back to our kitchen.
GROSS!

While he SHUFFLED PAINSTAKINGLY SLOWLY over,

OK, this told me everything about this server I needed to know. She's pissed because the old man didn't shuffle fast enough. What a f@cking sh@t head!

"My boyfriend and I left to pay at that point. I'm glad; not sure I could take much more of the definition of over-privileged old white people." -- Andrea Bilestri

Why did you think they're over-privileged; because they dressed nicely?

Maybe you need to go find employment elsewhere, someplace where old people aren't allowed to go. You know, some rockin' dance club downtown... unless you're working at the local diner because you wouldn't be hired anywhere else.

Let's be honest, your "chosen profession" isn't a career path, it's usually the last resort for people with no education or job skills.

"Servers" come in a variety of flavors. There are those who are quick, friendly and attractive get the good jobs, the rest wind up hustling tables in the local diner. And there's nothing like getting a bitter waitress who knows she'll be there till the day she dies.

In my building we had a meeting, exactly at noon, with people from all over the state. It was awkward but I offered to buy lunch. Everybody said ‘Bacon cheeseburgers and fries.” I ordered them downstairs, paid for them and went back to the meeting room. Had to run back down and asked “Where are my hockey pucks?” Poor lady was so mortified she forgot the hamburgs on the buns,that she wouldn’t let me pay, and gave hot french fries, coleslaw to us. When I told my colleagues, they coughed up a $40.00 tip for her extra service.

This should have been linked to the site rather than copied and pasted in its entirety

And all those parentheses, did they really need to have all those asides? And the caps, the CAPS! If I needed to be yelled at I would call my ex-wife. And they really could have had less captions, the captions were annoying. And couldn't they have gotten less stories from Canada and Ireland? What are they, racists? And another thing, blah blah blah

This should have been linked to the site rather than copied and pasted in its entirety

No way dude. Ask Shibumi or humblegunner, they'll tell you - the acceptable FR way is to steal other sites' content and never link to them because doing so is "link-whoring."

My favorite was in the local paper when I was a kid. A guy went to a grocery store and laid his junk on the counter. The cashier grabbed a can of veggies and slammed it down on the offending member. He was arrested at the hospital. There was a time when people wouldn’t put up with public perversion.

Back in high school I started working in a restaurant. I did line cook, fryer, prep, pantry, busboy, dishwasher, bar back, bartender, waiter, cashier and host by the time I left.

Man, some people are real pieces of work.

And you’re right. Don’t tick off people that bring you food and drinks. Not that I did anything that might be considered unhygienic, mind you; there’s other ways.

When I was a youngin’ I was a pump jockey at one of the last gas stations that gave full service in Tahoe.

There was one old a-hole of a man who loved to berate, scream and yell, and be a general pain in the ass. He especially loved yelling at me. He found a reason and did it every time he came in. He would look for me on my days and drive up. He would get furious.

His problem, or I should say mine since the customer is always right, I didn’t have a snapon tire gauge. This crotchety old geezer would drive in for free tire checks all the time and scream and yell when I didn’t have the snapon tire gauge. He even went so far as to have family and friends (doubt he had any) and have them ask me to check the tires. Out he popped on the passenger side to scream and yell.

I can only imagine how bitter and angry that old jerk was when he died not long after. Imagine going through life with your only goal is to make someone miserable and go out of your way to make others feel bad.... They become politicians.

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