[RAS1187]

I've had people order and send back textbook medium steaks and ask for them to be well done now.

Also getting back to the split plate thing. People also do it for breakfast. "Coffee and hot tea for us please. Can we get the All-American breakfast, split. 1 egg over hard, the other poached. I want bacon, she wants sausage. Can you get me grits instead of hash browns, and she wants oatmeal instead also. Oh Oh, white no butter for me, wheat with butter for her."

All of this trouble and their check is a whopping $10.35, leaving $11 on the table and walking out.

[greyeaglem]

I loved the one about the extra grease for the onion. Can't wait to tell the guys at work. I had someone send back hot wings the other night because they were....spicy!? We do not plate entrees separately if someone wants to split. They order what they want and we give them an extra plate as I won't be responsible for "he got the good end of the steak". I wouldn't dream of cutting a steak in 1/2 and cooking it two different ways. We used to have a plate charge (previous manager's idea) which I dropped due to the economic times we are in. We have a promo where if you come in on your birthday you can get anything on the menu at 1/2 price as it's an incentive to bring people in and people usually celebrate their birthdays with other people, so we come out all right in the end...usually. We had a couple and their kid come in one night. One had a birthday and they ordered a seafood platter and an extra side of fries with two extra plates. Three people ate that meal that cost them $12.50. That's how we make the big money, catering to people like that. The extra plate thing is intended as a courtesy to older people who don't eat much. The ones who split because they're tight can go somewhere else with my blessing. They're not worth the trouble. I know I'll catch heat for that opinion, but we have limited seating and they're not worth the space they take up. I used to tend bar at a place that was back to back with another bar. I used to get all these jerk cusomers who would come in and they always had drink chips but acted like they'd never been there before, so how did they get the chips? Finally found out that my buddy who worked at the other bar would come down on his day off and buy drink chips from the place I was at. Whenever he'd get a problem customer, he'd give them a chip for the bar I was at and send them down to me. Then he'd sit and laugh about it. Too bad we can't do that. Give chips to the tight wads and send them over to the competition!

[Sultan]

Originally Posted by RAS1187

I've had people order and send back textbook medium steaks and ask for them to be well done now.

Also getting back to the split plate thing. People also do it for breakfast. "Coffee and hot tea for us please. Can we get the All-American breakfast, split. 1 egg over hard, the other poached. I want bacon, she wants sausage. Can you get me grits instead of hash browns, and she wants oatmeal instead also. Oh Oh, white no butter for me, wheat with butter for her."

All of this trouble and their check is a whopping $10.35, leaving $11 on the table and walking out.

This is an example of my favorite situation. You go out of your way to satisfy customers (after all, they are the reason why we have jobs, and i respect that and appreciate that....most of us dedicate our entire lives for this profession, because well, we love it. Of course, most of our customers don't know the **** we live through working in a kitchen, but then on the other hand, no one pointed a gun at our head and forced us to work in this profession. So i guess the best attitute to have about these akward situations is to just "grin and bear it" The funny thing about most of these customer complaints is that most of these dumb-asses are repeat customers. So even though they may fry your nerves, just remember, these are the same people who go home and attempt to fry an egg and end up burning it, thinking that they did a wonderful job. This reminds me of one time on a very hot summer day last august, where it was 100+ degrees plus humidity, I was the only chef working that shift, and a server asked me to speak with a customer because she had an issue. As it turned out, it had nothing to do with the food, but rather the temperature of the dining room. She thought it was too cold. I explained that it was extremely hot outside and we had to turn on the A/C to full blast because it was miserable in the kitchen (as well as in the dining room). She insisted that she didn't care and told me to turn the A/C off. So I did. Then I turned the heat on.........to full blast. We have not seen her since.

[GreaseTrap]

lessee...the first place i worked was a pretty upscale joint on Lake Michigan. had a customer come in and order a 24oz T-bone with the strip side mid rare and the sirloin side well...same place, a guy wanted his strip dry and crunchy...we had a 15-minutes-or-it's-half-price policy...so after 5 minutes in the nuker, 5 in the deep fryer, and 3 minutes on the grill for marks, he gave my boss and i each a $20 tip for being the first ones to get it right. i've got many others, but it's too much to type out on my phone whilst driving.

[treehugger057]

Med well ya can I get that a little pink? Can I get my MR filet butterflied?
I had someone return my house soup( a creole whiskey shrimp soup) saying it was spicy! It says on the menu a cayenne spiced creole soup!

You just cant help some people!

[RAS1187]

Oh man, I love the people that order (and servers that actually take the order) "Medium, no pink".

Also the margin of doneness from medium to medium well is rather minute. Just pick one or the other and stick to it. I dont see the point in ordering medium to medium well.

[GreaseTrap]

...or the guy who orders his eggs over hard, then sends em back cuz the yolk's broke and cooked hard? and let's face it...there's really no way to screw up country fried steak. ya throw it in the fryer till it floats, slather it in country gravy and charge the defib paddles...yet i've had em sent back for being underdone. so i did what any self respecting line cook would do in that situation...i threw another one in the fryer, went to the bathroom, smoked a cigarette, got something to drink, chit chatted with one of my regular customers, and then went in to plate it up...**** thing wasn't even sizzling anymore...it was just sitting there floating, staring up at me like "what?"

[ljokjel]

I really hate you guys right now for your timezone. Wish I could stay up all night/ to read/write and so on....
But its 4:47 right now..
BTW: When your steak is going "What?", its probably done. Medium+

[leeniek]

When I cooked at the cafe we had this one customer who had to find fault every time she came in. One time she ordered a southwest sandwich made a ton of mods to it (subbbed out cheddar for feta, asked for no mayo just chipotle sauce... and on) and at the end of the meal said it was the driest sandwich she had and she could barely eat it because it was so spicy. The owner brought her plate back to me, told me what she said and said... she really had a hard time with it look at the CRUST she left behind! It was true.. this person had eaten the entire sandwich but for a little bit of crust.

Fast forward a few months... she comes in again and orders etc. I had to jump on cash because the servers were super busy. So I wash my hands and go back to cooking. I had the unfortunate pleasure of serving her table and she said to me.. you should wear gloves... to which I responded, Ma'am while gloves give the illusion of safe food contact, they are a closed environment and that is just a breeding ground for bacteria. I was my hands constantly and I can tell you that my hands touching your sandwich are much cleaner than either the gloved hands and the surface of the gloves or my hands after I remove the gloves.

After that she shut up and never complained again when I was in sight!

[leeniek]

We had a good one this week.. lady asks for eggs poached medium.. sends them back because they're too runny.. .we remake, she sends them back again and this time server says.. maybe you would prefer them poached well.. we poach them well and she is happy! People!! I sooo could not be a server!

[greyeaglem]

I find that to be a regional thing. I like my eggs over medium which is just past over easy because I want the whites cooked but the yolk fairly runny. I had a friend who ordered them medium and would complain they were too runny. What she wanted was over hard but don't break the yolk. Or what people around here actually call med. well. If I go somewhere where the cook is from a south central or southern state, they will make over medium eggs the way my friend likes them. I've learned to order over easy but make sure the white is cooked. Avoids me getting upset when I get a rubbery egg with a hard yolk.

[iconoclast]

Originally Posted by eloki

Ridiculous customer complaints

i had a customer request an entire meal with out any salt, then complain 'it was bland'...

[leeniek]

Originally Posted by iconoclast

i had a customer request an entire meal with out any salt, then complain 'it was bland'...

No salt would do that do a meal!

[leeniek]

Originally Posted by oldschool1982

Oh I remember a couple more......well maybe ridiculous requests more than complaints.......

Had a guest order a baked French onion soup.....no onions please.

I cooked an omelet for Gene Simmons once...back in 1993. I was at a place at Colony Square in Atlanta. He wanted all egg whites with a ton of veggies but absolutely no oil. Not even food release. Same with the hash browns. Took me 6 tries to get the dang thing out of the pan in a condition that even closely resembled an omelet. Finally I walked the omelet out to the table and explained to him what it took. He said he was ****ing with me and just wanted to see if there was a Chef that could get it done. He said I was the first and invited me to sit with him for a while. Made the effort entirely worth it!

I snickered at this one because last week I had a special order for an omelet made just that way. I fired up the teflon pan on the stovetop (all of the grills are seasoned with margarine and they wanted no traces of margarine at all with it) and waited till it got nice and hot before I dropped the omelet on it. Flipping it went reasonably well considering I was using the silocone turners we use for crepes and then I arranged it nicely on the plate so it resembled an omelette, garnished it and sent it out to the table. The server came back and told me that the customer had enjoyed their omelette and it was the best one they had ever had in a restaurant. That made my day for sure!!

[CThompson]

Its very easy to mark your steak and finish in the oven. I don't know why the dreaded well done steak is such an issue. It never takes a well done steak longer than 20 mins to cook at 450 (which is what we keep our oven at). Microwaves dry steaks out. Ovens make you a well done hero.