Idiotic orders... - Page 2

my favourite thing ever was an order we got into the kitchen for a large table (around 8 poeple, small restaurant) and i looked at it... and i swear the ticket was nearly 3 feet long...

now the longest ticket ive ever seen was for 30 people, starters, mains and desserts, and it was about 2 feet long...


these people had practically used ever button on the till to virtual send in a recipe.

i laughed so hard i nearly choked, asked the sous-chef if he and the confiseur were ok for a few minutes and walked out plus one ticket to this table and said (and i kid you not this is pretty verbatim)

"so which one of you wants to come cook this here recipe you sent through?"
*laughter*
"no im not kidding you, youve come in at the busiest time and you've asked for things that im gonna have to make from scratch and take small pieces out of pre-prepped ingredients... (its not a fresh kitchen) one of you is gonna have to come and help... or you can trust me to make nice food... is there anything here on this ticket for allergy reasons?"
"mumbling to each other.... only the garlic"
"right... no worries, ill handle your meals personally"


sent them out with most of what they had asked to have removed and got cool compliments and a sweet tip

a list of what i remember to have done

salmon and brocolli fishcakes - the salmon (not gonna happen, they come in pre-made)
gammon, egg and pineapple, rare... (uhh... one worming tablet coming up!)
seafood medley, no seafood
chicken caesar no ceasar, which i did and it came back "wheres the dressing"
hot fudge cake, no cake
garlic bread, no garlic (i melted some butter and put some salt and some onion salt into it over chiabata... seemed happy with it)

and a few other things...

if it was a fresh kitchen i probably would have done half of it... but its not so i was stuck... i took the food out myself rather than have a waiter do it... i did say id take care of it personally

it was a laugh though... and the young girl at the table was flirting with me so i didnt mind... she was cute :cool:


my pet peeve, is people who ask for medium and then after repeatedly sending it back accept a very well done steak! my mom is one of those... if she wants rare, i give her medium, medium is well to very well done

and she never asks for rare

i personally eat my steak blue

My favourite lately was an irate lady, screaming at her waitress because her creme brulee wasn't screaming hot. What am I missing something here? There are places that serve hot creme brulee? After the waitress very politely sugested to the lady that creme brulee is in fact not a hot dessert the lady actually said " I fly to New York once or twice a year just to satisfy my craving for creme brulee and it is always served hot".

I have also worked for Chefs where the food is as is period, you want a substitution well F**K off and go eat somewhere else.

I have also worked for owners who would walk into the kitchen at 9 pm on a Friday with some guests recipe for beef tartar. I was an apprentice back then and it was an asianesque restaurant so we had no capers etc. "well the nice market down the street does and you better get back quick so you are not to far in the ***** when you get back"

Some customers are just plain mean. If they want to argue, that's one thing, but its all about the approach.

In a summer job as a teenager I worked at a very popular cafe in NYC. This other girl working with me was new and came from some other state. A local orders a "regular coffee" from her. She asks, "Do you want milk or cream with that?", b/c we served both coffee and espresso-drinks, so the question was totally fair. The customer gives her a dirty look and impatiently answers her: "I've lived in New York for 40 years, and 'regular coffee' has ALWAYS meant coffee with milk and sugar, now go make it!!!" Needless to say, this girl was so shocked she had to step away to cry. I guess the stupid customer didn't realize that our cafe happened to serve mostly tourists, who didn't like milk in their coffee and that most people who ordered 'regular coffee' meant no espresso. He never apologized. jerk....

In contrast, I once got a holiday card from a customer in the dining room who had enjoyed whatever it was I cooked for them. It was nice to be recognized!!

I'll say one thing: all of these experiences have made me appreciate the service industry all the more. So, much applause to all of us for our hard work!!! Happy Holidays!!!

Well, clearly the woman likes drinking a ramekin of egg custard at the end of a meal... no worries at all :).

I have to admit that I've been pretty lucky with regards to receiving strange orders... I've had them, but nothing quite so interesting as the ones you guys are referring to. I guess that will come with time.

oh man... hot creme brulee.... fair enough, mistakes are made "ooh it has custard in so... hot is ok..." simple mistake... but to argue!?

When its just me on the bar and the one soft waitress who take criticism harshly... i would have asked them to apologise or failing that ask them to leave.


i dont mind, i really dont if a customer asks for something difficult, i get told off when im on the bar for doing things we "dont do" if i know we can do it then i dont see why we shouldnt.

"your too customer oriented" was what the manager said...

hehe.... still rake in £30+ tips in 3 hours on a thursday afternoon on the bar (on a good day anyway)

I love it when I get an order for something not on the menu that is not even directly related to the style of cuisine that the restaurant is oriented with.

*Contributing*

Someone thought they were slick by trying to order a $2 childrens cake and then ask it to be substituted with a $9 chocolate ganache cake, while still trying to keep the $2 pricetag, the server tried to reason with me, saying $2 is what we pay for the cake anyway, no dice with me.

That reminds me of customers who demand that they pay less if they choose not to have complimenatry cream/icecream with their cakes.

We had this lady customer who ordered hors d'eouvres consisting of anchovies, smoked herring and cod roe spread without any drinks. After she finished most of them, she complained that they were very salty!!!

I think I've cooked for these people too!:bounce:

Anyhow....

I have been know to "re-write" a menu item myself once or a couple hundred thousand times but only at those "Casual Theme" places. Although I guess that comes from many years working at one in particular (hint: Five Easy Pieces Theory) So with that said...

IMHPO I'll do whatever I can to make the guest happy just short of a 'Jig" tableside. Oh yeah, I'll laugh at the requests, look cross-eyed at some of the ludicrous but it's the requests from those guests that scream out to be "beaten like a redheaded ________" that really make you ask yourself why they even attempted to go out for dinner and why did it have to be from my kitchen.:D

I must say I enjoy getting "idiotic orders" for 2 reasons: 1) They kinda make you laugh, and 2) They present a challange, nothing says "I win" more than recieveing a compliment from one of these gastronomicly impaired customers despite the fact that they obviously dont know what they are talking about...wait in all fairness sometimes they just have difficulty expressing themselves.

You want what?

Here are some of my idiot orders and complaints:

"There were too many blue berries in my blue berry muffin..."

UM, HELLO?

"Quiche Lorraine with no eggs..."

THICK WHITE ROUX IN OTHER WORDS?

"Fried eggs sunnyside up and scrambled..."

HUH?

I am sure I will think of more soon enough...

We did a sausage pasta item, the people wanted me to remove the sausage and add meatballs instead...to the entire hotel pan, and if that wasn't enough, they wanted me to do it for them at no charge...

...

...

ok, heres what i'll do for you at no charge, slowly raise my middle finger and toss a few curse words your way...all for free.

From the Other Side

One of my pet peeves comes about due to wait staff who have absolutely no idea of the history or ingredients of the food ordered.

One of my favorite dishes is fish and chips. I would love it if I could get it wrapped in a newspaper, with vinegar for the chips, but I digress. I always get this bubble-headed waitress who stands there, cracking her gum, holding her orderpad with her pen poised above it, and intones the , in my mind, ultimate stupid question. "You want fries with that?"

I don't feel it is my job to educate her to the fact that chips is what the British call fries, and fish and chips comes to us from the U.K.

The only thing nearly as idiotic was the night I went into a Mexican restaurant, and ordered a chimichanga, enchilada style. The waitress, not Hispanic, cheerfully asked me if I wanted them to put cheese on it for me. I felt silly having to tell her that enchilada style means covered with shredded cheese.

I once had a customer ask that that special of the day (fish) not be grilled she was allergic to grill. How in the heck can you be allergic to grill????

Oh my god... that just made my day.

Oh, and tonight, 12 am, I'm the only cook left, the restaurant is empty, no one's ordered in 40 minutes, I wrapped everything up and made sure everything was clean/shut down, then these three people walk in and basically order dinner, utilizing every single section... clearly they were not cooks. :look:

Idiotic Orders

While the ignorance and bull-headedness of the coustomer is legend, we nust remember that sometimes wiat staf can be just as dense. One of my favorite meals is fish and chips, and when it is done right, it is, to me, the greatest gift of the UK to food.

It never fails that when a local restaurant has a special on fish and chips, I order it, and the waitress stands there, her Bic poised over her order pad, cracking her gum, and intones that famous question,"Do you want fries with that?" I have given up on trying to educate the waitresses of the world that what we call fries, the British, who originated the dish, call chips. They always act like it is a total revelation to them that French Fries are anything but French Fries.

Some Uk stories

http://www.chefsworld.net/chefs_foru...a=&FTID=eF8%3D

Some people should just not be let out, I think a book is in order.

Here is a nice one... lamb rack well done... butterflied.

What i ended up doing (based on the little information/interpretation I had) was breaking the lamb rack into individual chops, then butterflying each chop... was a massive pain... but since the restaurant was dead I managed.

To my surprise, the plate wasnt sent back.

when i had a part time job we were selling a rather nice crab sandwhich. anyway, some guy ordered one and 5 mins later the waitress came back saying the guy didnt like crab.

Why order a crab sandwhich then? it clearly says there crab sandwhich...

Most idiotic customer I ever had was the "gentleman" who placed his order with the demand that no "people of color" (and folks that's a euphamism for the word he actually used, one I will not repeat here) be involved in the making of his food, because he didn't want it "contaminated" somehow.

While I have a policy to always try and be accomodating in my kitchen, I also have a low tolerance for certain behavior. I collected up the GM, aprised him of the situation, and the two of us frog-marched this walking pit-stain and his family out of our restaurant with warnings that if he ever showed his racist face again, we'd call the cops on him for trespassing.

Bravo!

I have no problem personally or professionally with "people of color" however, I do get the loudest trouble from them...hate to say it but hey, its college! Everyone is a jerkoff there.

Once, I was working for this bar, and I was right in the middle of my Beverage Identification class (aka Wine). I am working my way up to being a well-educated culinarian with wine and beer, and one night, I had a woman come in and order a white zinfandel. I instantly hated her. All we had was a red zinfandel, and a "rose" zinfandel (some awful box wine that was labeled rose), so I told her, "I can get you a rose, if you'd like, ma'am. We do not carry a white zinfandel." She gives me the snobbiest look she could possibly muster, and said, with the snobbiest voice she could stand, "ALL white zinfandels are pink."

Pink? And even worse, WHITE ZINFANDEL?!?!?!?!

I had another server take her. And I don't work at that bar anymore.

I remember this one now... back from my TGIF days.

I received an order for a burger... special instructions were to: "Prepare exactly like Burger King would"... to top things off there was a BK across the street from us.

ready for this one?

"bowl of chips. 86 red chips."

I promptly looked at the server who asked for it...then filled the order...hiding one red chip on the bottom of the bowl.

I'm sorry, but an idiotic order is one thing... but someone doing that, deserves to be punished.

I find judging people on their admittedly bad taste is not too cool. Maybe she just wanted a white zin because she was in the mood for what is, essentially, a wine cooler. Sometimes I want to drink a crappy beer at a bar because it is vaguely sweet, bland, and quenches thirst. You shouldn't hate on people because they want to give you money for a product you yourself would not pay for.

Also, yeah, white zinfandel is a rose. You could have just given her a glass of box wine and she probably would have been happy with it.

Used to have regulars at a chain restaurant I worked at while in school that would constantly order a slice of our 3-layer carrot cake hot! In order for it to be hot enough for them, we have to nuke it until the cream cheese icing was reduced to a greasy pool on the plate. They loved it, got it once a week.:confused:

Here are a few funny ones I have heard in the past.

Monte Christo -- no egg
Reuben Sandwich -- no sauerkraut
Caesar Salad -- no anchovies
Eggs Benedict -- no Hollandaise
"Can you omit the milk from the bechamel? I am lactose intolerant"

One we got several times at one of the Fridays I worked at was "no lettuce, tomato, onion sub extra burger patty" or how about a "French dip no au jus, no onion sub extra beef, no fries sub extra bread" :confused::eek: Not gonna happen. LOL

Not really Idiotic Order but idiotic behavior

I caught a couple guys stealing food. Now, its night time, I havn't had a break in 10hrs and theres only 2 of us left (me and the cashier). My cashier needed to use the bathroom and the late afternoon rush was over. A couple guys take the pizza from the self serve warmers reading the sign "please help yourself, self serve pizzas" thinking the pizza was free. I politely said "Excuse me but you still need to pay for the pizzas" ...all I got was, [in loud tones] "Theres no 1 to pay to" and "The sign said Just take it" so its free".

Next morning, I get called up to the college presidents office accompanied by the a student council rep. I was blamed for being racist, I'm now being put on review and performance eval. I am fighting this of course, my managers know me better then to do something stupid like that and same goes with the college director who oversees outsourced services plus a couple eyewitnesses.

Why are you supposedly racist, again? For asking someone to pay for their food?