A server’s job is a never-ending source of amazement, be it customers’ kindness, colossal sense of entitlement, or their bizarre requests that evoke it. When it comes to the latter, they range from completely reasonable to bewildering, often leaving the staff with their mouths agape.

Quite a few of such wild requests have been discussed by the members of the ‘Ask Reddit’ community. Redditor u/Repulsive_Compote955 started the thread by addressing the restaurant servers in the group and they didn’t disappoint with their answers. Having witnessed everything from people pouring soy sauce in their Pepsi to fearing certain colors in their salad, they certainly had plenty of stories to share. Scroll down to find them on the list below and enjoy.

You will also find some of the OP’s thoughts on the matter, which they shared with Bored Panda during a recent interview.

#1

Honestly, I'd say the weirdest thing was that while I was a server at a restaurant in the Royal Hawaiian, a guest asked me to book a shark adventure tour. It had nothing to do with my job or even the hotel. Those tours were entirely separate businesses. I took his black card, went to guest services, picked up a pamphlet, and booked the tour. He tipped me $250 dollars. Totally worth it!

Image credits: jreed356

#2

I had this couple come in with their own tea set. The man asked me if had a few minutes to "learn a few things"? They were the second table sat so I humored him. He showed me a very specific way of steeping and pouring the tea over a sugar cube and had me try it a couple times with water. The whole thing was sort of neat. He then asked if I would mind serving them their tea this very particular way. They were super kind, even tough the man had sort of an intense vibe to him. I filled the pot with hot water carried it out like he showed me and poured their cups of tea exactly how he showed me. He seemed extra pleased but never said a word or even looked at me. It was no problem and I felt super fancy doing it. I did refill their tea one time while they were there, and he also asked that I keep his wife's water glass full at all times. I knew it was going to be a good table when the first time I came by and refilled her water glass and inquired if they needed any more tea, the man handed me $20 and sort of dismissed me. He did it twice more that afternoon. At the end they paid with no tip (I thought) but $60 and a cool lesson was enough for me. My manager found me about an hour later and handed me and envelope and said they told him they only will come in when I am working from now on. The envelope had $100, business card, and hand written thank you note. Apparently they had put this request up for many fine dining places and I was the only to get it right and do it "graciously". It was very odd, because after the first lesson they treated me as if I was almost invisible, backed up by the fact they didn't tip me in person. On every return trip it was the same. If you didn't know the deal they would seem like cold a******s, but they tipped really well and I treated them like VIPs everytime.

Image credits: Sub_pup

#3

Once a very thin, middle aged woman came in. She couldn't have weighed more than 100 pounds soaking wet. She asked what our biggest steak was. I told her it was the 24 oz. ribeye. She said, "okay I'll have that." Our steaks came with two sides, so I asked which ones she'd like. She said "I don't want sides." I told her they were included in the price, and she still refused them.

I bring out her steak and she begins eating. She's about a third of the way through when I ask, "How is everything?" She says, "Great. Bring me another steak." I say "Is there anything wrong with that one?" She says, "No, it's great. I want a second one."

I go back to the chef and tell him, and he couldn't believe it. But we served her another steak. She ate all 48 oz. of steak and left me a $40 tip.

Image credits: shadowgnome396

The surprises servers face at work often call for lots of patience and nerves of steel, especially when it comes to rude customers. The OP told Bored Panda that they have worked as a server themselves for four years, and the main reason stopping them from quitting earlier was their co-workers.

They added that unbearable customers can be both, though, a pain in the neck and a source of entertainment. “I think the best thing [about the job] is the crazy customers that just are so crazy it's funny. Worst thing is rude customers acting like I'm the reason they didn't get their burger three minutes earlier,” they said.

#4

I used to work at a family restaurant and we had this regular we called the “iced tea guy”. He would come in and order a meal with iced tea and the iced tea was always refillable. Long story short everyone knew after his meal was done he would camp (stay for a long time) and continue to ask for refills of the iced tea. Iced tea guy would then ask permission to get up and go to the restroom.. and if you said no he would give you $5 each time. In retrospect I think it was some sort kink dom s**t. It started getting getting weird lol eventually he wasn’t allowed back because of a certain situation…

Iced tea guy was in my station one day for a couple hours and he had a new request for me. Iced tea guy wanted me to choose a piece of pie for him to eat with his hands… but he wanted to do it with shoes on his hands! He asked me to help him buckle the straps on a pair of Mary Janes he busted out of a backpack and put on each hand. So then he ate a piece of Dutch apple pie a la mode with the shoes that were buckled on his hands. Anyways he wasn’t allowed back after that day and I never saw him again.

There that’s my story of the strangest thing someone has ever asked me for when I was a server.

Image credits: lioncorazon

#5

We had a woman send a grilled chicken salad back because it was cold. So we cooked some new chicken and made sure to send it back while still warm. She sent it back again. The entire salad wasn't hot enough for her.

We microwaved her salad. She ate it. I don't know man.

Image credits: Honestnt

The OP said the story in the thread they loved the most was a person asking the server to take all the purple-colored food out of their dish. When it comes to their personal stories, they recalled someone asking for “a burger without the bun or thick stuff” when they worked as a server themselves.

#6

A grilled cheese, atkins style (this was like early 2000s)

My boss told me to microwave 3 slices of cheese and charge her $8 for it.

She was thrilled

Image credits: jjwax

#7

Two guys came in looking like they were from the CIA. The fat one ordered four fried chickens and a coke and the tall one ordered plain white toast.

Image credits: m48a5_patton

#8

Academy award nominated, Hollywood Walk of Fame Star, Father of Jamie Lee Curtis, actor Tony Curtis...the single most miserable a*****e I ever had the honor of waiting on.

He was staying at the resort the restaurant I worked at was in, so I had the privilege of attending to him several times over the week.

He was Insufferably smug and condescending, several times saying ""this isn't' what I ordered"" even though his order had been read back to him and confirmed. How many times can you order in a restaurant and get something you don't think you ordered, before you start to ask if maybe it's you?

The most ridiculous was that he ordered a hamburger, wanted it cooked rare. So the chef cooked him his burger and when I brought it out to him he said ""it's too overdone, redo it"". so I told the chef and he made a more rare burger, Curtis sent that one back too. Now the chef is pissed so he made a patty of raw hamburger and waves a torch over it so it's barely brown and ice cold in the middle.

F****r loved it. said it was the best burger he ever had. Still complained about how long it took to get his meal

I still remember the chef saying ""If that's what he wanted, he should have ordered a tartare aller-retour, is it too much to ask that people learn the name of the weird thing they like to eat?"" (I have to look up that name every time I tell this story)

tony curtis is long dead now, and frankly I'm not missing him much

Image credits: McFeely_Smackup

According to Zippia, there are nearly 1,700,000 restaurant servers employed in the US. It revealed that despite women comprising the larger share of employees (59.2% vs 40.8%), they earn 96 cents for every dollar made by their male counterparts.

It also pointed out that the state with the largest demand for servers is New York, while Arizona is considered to be the best one of them all for servers to work in. When it comes to the worst ones—unfriendly customer-wise, at least—Forbes pointed out that Missouri, Oklahoma, and Georgia rank among the top.

#9

A middle aged lady insisted she didn’t like soda water or sparkling water so instead asked for a white wine spritzer without the white wine… there are two ingredients to a white wine spritzer. White wine and soda water.

Image credits: rohothemadlad

#10

I once had a lady ask for chicken medium rare. I told her we can’t do that and she responded with,

“But they do it at other restaurants for me.”

I promptly told her to go to other restaurants then. I ain’t catching that lawsuit.

Image credits: Strasshole13

#11

Worked at Bob Evans 20 years ago and there were a few.

-Parsley woman, she would order a glass of Milk and a large soup bowl full of Parsley and eat it. No salad dressing or anything just straight Parsley.

-Apple Pie woman, she would order a piece of Apple Pie with a scoop of Vanilla Ice Cream on it, but the pie was almost never hot enough. We finally figured out how to make her happy, instead of Microwaving the piece of Pie for 1.5 minutes you'd Microwave it for SEVEN minutes.

-Fan lady, not food related but the lady would come in every Sunday morning (our busiest time of the week) and demand that the speed of the fans for the whole restaurant be slowed down. She claimed she had a medical condition and got away with it for two months. This stopped when one of the managers determined they also had a medical condition, but it required the fans to be left on at normal speed. This made fan lady very mad and never came back.

-Deep fried bacon guy, no complaint really, turns out deep fried bacon is delicious!

Image credits: balljoint

#12

Once had a dude order a large garden salad looked me dead a*s in the eyes and very seriously said "No purple in it" and I just acted like ya sure ok with no followup questions. Ended up picking out anything purple colored in the salad and very nervously watched him pick through it. Was satisfied enough and left a decent tip.

I can never unsee purple things in my salad now, but I eat em

Image credits: waffle-house420

#13

House salad.... Hold the lettuce and all other vegetables. Extra croutons, extra cheese, extra dressing. Literally a plate of croutons cheese and dressing.

Image credits: jsphwllr

#14

This man told me he couldn’t have anything that has been “ground up” at some point. So like, can’t use anything with flour in it. Not because the gluten, but because it was made small at one point.

My man, that is not a thing.

Image credits: Saltyseabanshee

#15

The place I worked at had little water cups on the table and we kept them filled for customers. I sat a party of two women (who said they were waiting for a third person) and went to fill their water cups. When I asked if I should fill the third one or wait for the third person to arrive, one woman said "Oh, no need, he's trying to quit." I thought it was a joke, and when the third person (a man) got there, I went to fill his water. He said "No, don't fill it, I'm trying to quit water!"

Image credits: horton_hears_a_homie

#16

"Chicken is vegetarian."

Lady orders pizza with chicken, for the table. Rest of the table argued with her that they're vegetarians. She can have chicken on her own pizza with chicken. She replied chicken is vegetarian... refused to understand that her friends were trying to get a vegetarian meal.

Image credits: Sunless_Tatooine

#17

I used to work at a Japanese restaurant and I once had someone come up to me and ask me if we had any low sodium soy sauce. The request itself was not so strange and I gave him the bottle we kept behind the counter. The strange thing was what he used the soy sauce for, which was pouring some of it into his Pepsi.

Image credits: -eDgAR-

#18

I had a couple that told me to wait before I prebussed their table so the man could lick every plate clean first. They had multiple apps and entrees between them and he licked every single one CLEAN before I was allowed to take it.

They weren’t in a private booth or anything. The other guests could see this happening.

Image credits: tehvillageidiot

#19

Years ago I worked at this amazing Breton French creperie in San Francisco, phenomenal food with a pretty small menu. Guy comes in and orders a sweet crepe with vanilla ice cream. No biggie. Then he wants to add a sunny side up egg and parsley to this crepe. I ask him a number of times if he’s sure he knows what he’s getting and that it’s not 2 separate crepes (1 sweet and 1 savory). He assures me. Of course when I ring it in, the kitchen thinks I made a mistake to which I assure them, it’s not a mistake. I bring out said “vanilla ice cream with sunny side up egg” crepe and the client DEVOURS it.
Weird.

Image credits: cannotaccessorize

#20

A tablecloth! A gentleman shat himself at a booth and asked for a tablecloth so he could walk out with it wrapped around him, I still serve him to this day and that was around 15yrs ago, no shame. Back he comes once a week. We never asked about getting the tablecloth back…

Image credits: mrfancypantsssss

#21

Guacamole without avocados - the whole reason behind my name.

She was completely serious too...

Image credits: Guacamole86Avocados

#22

I once had a woman order a glass of red wine, with a side of creamer. I actually didn’t think much of it at first, but when I brought them to her, she proceeded to pour the cream into the glass of wine. I told her I’ve never seen that before. She said “you’ve got to try it!”

I’m not going to try it.

#23

i used to work at olive garden. there was a lady that would come in at least once a week and she was dubbed by us staff as "pepperoncini lady". she would want you to open a new bag of the pepperoncini's we used in the salads and pour out the juice in a cup, she would literally straight up drink the juice. she would also get a bowl of pepperoncinis and just eat them.

Image credits: himechans

#24

Steak boiled in milk with a side of jelly beans. I'll never work in philadelphia again

Image credits: oooooooooowie

#25

I had a regular that would eat an entree size plate of pepperoncini for lunch. That's it with some soda water. He would take a bite then pour the juice in his soda water. He had to eat like 40 or 50 every time he came in.

Image credits: lookssharp

#26

Guy ordered spaghetti, after he finished it he complained that it tasted like cinnamon. I told the owner (who is Greek) and he yelled saying **THATS THE SECRET INGREDIENT AND HE ATE IT ALL** so I had to tell him he couldn’t get a refund because he cleaned his plate, and also that he picked up our secret ingredient :-)

#27

Chili dog, sub chicken noodle soup for chili. She took a bite and said "oh, I made a mistake."

#28

I was at a salad bar and a lady put lettuce on her plate and then covered it in ice. She ate it with a fork, attempting to stab the ice like croutons. No one else seemed to notice. She was chatting with the staff like any regular would. I felt like I was in the Twilight Zone!

#29

Years ago while leaving a restaurant I saw a guy sitting at the counter seats pouring ketchup into his Sprite, straight out of the glass Heinz bottle. He glanced around to see if anyone was looking and then started pouring it in.

Image credits: humancanvas79

#30

French onion soup with no onions.

Image credits: Bigpoppacheese14