“They Somehow Thought Free Spaghetti Was A Reasonable Request”: 45 Of The Most Peculiar Requests Waiters Have Ever Heard

I worked at a national pizza chain for a while as a manager. We used to get this guy who would order all the time. He was lactose intolerant so couldn't have cheese, and had severe heart burn when he ate red sauce. He would order an XL Supreme with no sauce and no cheese. I told the guy if i did that, the toppings would just fly all over the box but he didnt care. We ended up just baking the dough separate from the toppings and put the toppings in a small wing box on the side for him. Guy said no other pizza place would do that for him and he turned out to be a great repeat customer who always tipped well.

Barista here. We had a Narcotics Anonymous convention in town once. I had someone order a 16oz cup with as much espresso as would fit. It was something like 18 shots, cost about 25 bucks, and he downed it at the counter and went "woo!" Another NA guy wanted a 16oz cup with half vanilla syrup and half espresso. A lady regularly asks for a cup of regular coffee with a large spoonful of butter stirred in. We do breakfast sandwiches on bagels and croissants, and a businessman with a group of his colleagues had ham/egg/cheese, but he wanted it on a chocolate croissant. I think my favorite incident, though, was a lady that wanted a latte with half nonfat and half soy, a triple shot with one regular shot, one decaf shot, and one half-caff shot, heated to a specific temperature, double-cupped, one Splenda an one Equal stirred into the shots. The works, basically. The guy behind her thought it was as ridiculous as I did, and he loudly asked for a "mocha b******t drink" with one third goat's milk, one third cashew milk, and one third giraffe milk, cooled with a chip of ice from a Norwegian glacier and topped with nutmeg and gold flake. Then he said, "wait, is your giraffe milk fair trade? Ok never mind then, I'll just have a cup of coffee." He still comes in; I love that guy.

I had a lady tell me it was impossible to make the dish too spicy. When I told the cooks they took it as a personal challenge.

I don't remember what they put in it, but I do know that someone ran to a grocery store for another ingrediemt. It was literally the spiciest thing I have ever smelled. Just being an arms length away from it for 30 seconds while I delivered it had me coughing and treats steaming down my face. Guests at nearby tables complained about the smell; just so much capsaicin in the air that people 15 feet away were uncomfortable.

But....

She ate everything. She ate every single bite and then scraped up the remaining sauce and ate that too.

Edit: Obligatory holy cow thanks for the gold.

Edit2: I know that I said treats steaming down my face, but I'm not correcting it. You will just have to deal with my autocorrect just like I do.

I had a 4 top once that one of the gentlemen was ordering and asked for extra onion, and he made extreme emphasis on EXTRA ONION. So I go to put the order in and I have to talk to the chef to make sure he understands EXTRA ONION. So when the order comes out, I get a side plate of a cut WHOLE ONION. I giggle and take the order to the table. I put the orders of food in front of all the other guests and leave onion man for last. I set his plate of food and extra onion down, he looks up at me and starts laughing. The whole table is now laughing. Im like dafuck? Apparently wherever they go, no matter what he always has to ask for MORE onion, and this time my snarky chef nailed it.

Oh how I miss my old regular.

We are not a fine dining establishment, it's a small family style Italian restaurant.

This lovely gray haired gentleman would call ahead so that we could put a salad bowl in the freezer for him. After that I would go to his spot at the bar (or the closest one open to it) and set a large dinner napkin down (that he placed his salad/meal on). I would then place an empty wine glass with a napkin over it (per his request), just in case the dinner napkin didn't specify that the seat was taken.

Once he got there I would go to the back and make his specific salad: Very little lettuce, extra mushroom, extra tomato, extra onion, no shredded cabbage, and no cucumber.

That would be after I get him two ice cold beer glasses for his 70/30 sweet/unsweet tea mixture with an extra glass of ice.

He would then attempt to engage in a 5-10 minute conversation about our specials for the evening, and how he could alter them.

The guy came in between 3-6 nights a week and always tipped fairly. He was the kind of nice old guy that would get you and your wife birthday cards because that stuff was important to him.

He then moved 45 minutes away and we never see him anymore. Miss the hell out of that old man though.

Not a waiter, but when I was a kid my little brother hated cheese but loved pizza. He was only 4 or 5 at the time and didn't fully grasp the concept of pizza yet so when we ordered a pizza my dad would always have to order a "plain" pizza. One time we were at a Pizza Hut and my dad ordered a "plain pizza" and the waiter responded "okay, so a large cheese pizza." My brother immediately started crying so my dad started winking at the waiter going, "No, a large *plain* pizza". Evidently there was a breakdown in communication between my dad and the waiter and we ended up getting a circle of dough covered in sauce.

Edit: My dad is catching a lot of flak, rest assured when we got home he put my brother in a burlap bag and beat him with reeds, which was standard protocol for situations such as this.

I used to work at Whole Foods as a juicer and this one guy would come in everyday and order 12 ounces of garlic juice to go (which is like 20 dollars btw). After a couple weeks of seeing him order the same thing I asked him to drink it in front of me because I didn't believe it was humanly possible to ingest that much garlic. He downed it all in front of me and said this "along with much garlic comes much loneliness" i laughed and he said "no seriously I work from home".

I worked for a while in a vegetarian/vegan-friendly buffet restaurant. Now, the great majority of people were actually really nice, not particularly haughty about their diet or anything, but I had two customers that were, let's say, different.

The first one came up to me with a plate already filled with various salads (that she, being a buffet, had personally selected). She showed me the plate and asked me: "Do your salads have any raw ingredients in it?" And before I could answer: "Because I'm pregnant, see, so I can't eat anything raw." While still showing me her plate of definitely-raw, various-veggies-and-fruits salads.

I was so dumbstruck that all I could say was "Let me ask the kitchen to make sure". And I actually did, because "is salad raw" is one of these questions that make you question even the most basic things, such as what a salad is, or what hats are. I asked the chef if our salads had raw ingredients in them, he looked at me and said: "Is she familiar with the concept of salad?"
We ended up switching her plate for another one because yes, our salads had raw ingredients in them. However, all in all, she was really nice about it and didn't mind waiting a bit more for us to fix her plate.

The second one was, however, a bit more rude. She came up to me and told me that she could only eat raw, vegan stuff. I thus directed her to the salad buffet (because, hey, now I was pretty sure they were made of raw ingredients), and that's when she scowled at me and said: "Uh, yeah, but I'm getting a bit tired of salads, you know?"

You tremendous twat - you bestow upon other people the task of finding you food that fits your incredibly narrow criteria and then you b***h that it's a tad unoriginal? She later complained that we didn't didn't have any raw cake (the cake was already vegan, mind you, but yeah, we had baked it).

This is the only time I really thought "You are an insult to natural selection".

Not a waiter but a cook. Had a lady order her tofu scramble burnt. So I cooked it hard. She sent it back because it wasn't burnt enough. So I cooked it harder. She sent it back again and the waiter said she really wants it burnt. So I got a wok super hot, put too much oil in and proceeded to burn the c**p out of it. My chef came by and lost his s**t. I explained it to him and he watched me burn just ruin the thing. It was black and smelled like a tire fire. She ate all of it and said we were the only place to get it right. She came back every weekend for it and we had to train new cooks how to burn the living f**k out of her food for her. I still can't comprehend why she would eat that.

It wasn't so much the order that was disturbing, but the post order request. He asked me to chew up the food and put it back onto his plate. No medical reason. No missing teeth. Not old. Just creepy as f**k. He got very upset when I declined.

I also am an og alum. We had a old woman that would come in and say "for every bean I find in my minestrone soup I'm deducting 10 cents from your tip" even after you explain that it's pre made she would say that the server has to pull them out. Then she would separate out all the beans and show them to you before she ordered her next bowl and be like "look, you lost $2.20 on that bowl". Not in a nice joking way but a rude bitter old bitch way. Most servers just gave her as many beans as they could in the bowl.

Had this skinny guy order two full lobster plates and a ribeye steak. I just sat back and watched him dominate it all.

I worked at a pizza parlor, and the most ridiculous request was one that could have been so simple.

A lady calls and orders a "small pepperoni pizza with no pepperoni" I clarify and ask her "So just a small cheese?" To which the woman, clearly annoyed by my lack of understanding , says "NO. A small pepperoni with no pepperoni." I again clarify and ask "You want a pizza with sauce and cheese only?" "Yes." "Ok so a cheese pizza." "NO I WANT A SMALL PEPPERONI WITH NO PEPPERONI."

We made her a cheese pizza. She didn't call and complain. Still not sure what the f**k she thought she was ordering.

Customer asked for a spaghetti with a side of more noodles and extra sauce because they were going to share. So, I said "you'd like one spaghetti and then an additional order of spaghetti?" They told me I wasn't getting it and they just wanted extra noodles and some sauce on the side. I told them we would have to charge for extra noodles, and they ended up not wanting it. They somehow thought free spaghetti was a reasonable request.

I had someone ask me how many wings are in your 10 count wings. I simply replied somewhere between 9 and 11.

I worked in fine dining for a while.

I had one lady order creme brulee french toast with a fruit loops crust and a bottle of champagne with 2 carafes of orange juice.

We made it. Actually we made a whole batch and the workers ate it. It was actually really good.

It was a hotel restaurant

This is my thread! I don't care if this gets buried, I love this story.
I used to work at Olive Garden. At Olive Garden, there's a dish called the "Five Cheese Marinara". You know, essentially a plate loaded up with cheesy magic with a little bit of pasta thrown in.
One day, a stupid man with his stupid wife come in, and the man says "I want the Five Cheese Marinara, but I don't like cheese." I look him dead in the eye and say "Then don't order that, you're not going to like it." Instead of being a sane, rational person, the man says "Oh, can't you just have them take some of the cheese off?" Again, I repeat "You will not like this, it's almost all cheese." But he insists. I just accept it, curse this stupid man, ring the dish in, and immediately run to the kitchen. I let the kitchen, and my manager, know that he's going to send it back. Of course, my manager is the nicest man in the entire world and refunds his ENTIRE MEAL and brings him a new one once he, unsurprisingly, sent it back because it was "too cheesy". He left me four cents as a tip. Stupid a*****e.

I had a customer send back well done prime rib 3 times because it wasn't "well done" enough. The cooks said fuck it the 4th time and dropped it in the deep fryer for at least 5 min. Then the customer asked for a side of ketchup.

I worked at a restaurant/fishmarket type of establishment, where we sold raw product but would also prepare the food on the spot. One day I was helping an old asian lady out and she told me had never had a whole lobster and would love to try one. As she was shopping in the fishMARKET portion, I assumed she wanted it live. So we went over to the lobster tank and she picked the happiest little lobster out there. I asked her if she wanted to pay $16.99 for it alive or $22.99 for us to cook and serve it to her. She decided to take it alive, so I took some time to weigh it out, and wrap it up in a takeout box for her to take home. I put it down on the table and walk away. A minute or two later I hear a commotion and come out to see this little asian lady with a knife trying to cut off the claw of the lobster... Apparently she thought that she was supposed to eat this thing live. I cooked it for her.

**TL:DR Asian Lady didnt know you had to cook lobster before eating...**

EDIT: I'm aware that lobster sashimi is a popular dish, but typically in that scenario the lobster is freshly killed and the meat is presented to the consumer un-cooked. This lady was not eating it "sashimi" style, but rather trying to fight with a lobster in order to eat it. She clearly had no idea what she was doing.

Worked at Red Lobster, we had three frequent customers with specific needs that we always catered to.

The Lemon Man: Always wanted a bowl full of lemons. Normally we don't give people multiple lemons because they just use it to make lemonade. This guy used lemons on everything from his biscuits to desert.

No-Garlic Lady: Always wanted the cheese biscuits without the garlic/butter coating on top. We would make a whole batch just for her.

Crispy Biscuits: This lady wanted her biscuits extra crispy, or she'd turn them away. Only a few people were ever able to make them to her satisfaction on the first try, and you prayed to God they were working that day if she walked in.

All three of these customers were of the elderly kind and tipped extremely well. Can't say there was any "how did you deal with this" other than just doing it. Never understood why the managers let this be a thing.