'Extra extra extra pickles': Chef shares his stories of petty malicious compliance to absurd customer requests

Author image for Brad Dickson
Brad Dickson • Managing Editor
Jul 26, 2023 12:00 PM EDT

Restaurants see no shortage of demands for customization and demanding customers, with the latter uttering the former with surprising frequency. Dealing with these demands from the demanding is no picnic, but learning to handle them can be. Not in the literal sense in that you're going to sit down in a nice grassy spot with a blanket, basket, some nice cheeses, a bottle of prosecco, some ripe fruit, and your favorite pal—more so in the sense that like a picnic is a pleasing and relaxing experience for everyone involved, so too can dealing with entitled persons. Oh—and there is food involved in both instances. 

This phrase is, of course, not taking into account the experience of the person responsible for planning the picnic, who may not be relaxed at all and may, in fact, be very stressed out due to all the planning, organization, and coordination necessary to pull off a successful picnic in the first place. For this person, a picnic is no picnic at all.

And still—the original point stands. If you're going to survive in the restaurant environment or retail—or any customer service role—learning to handle demands in low-stress ways is essential. One of the best ways to do this is by maliciously complying with suitable requests, technically fulfilling the rude customers order even if it's not exactly what they meant.

Read on to see this post originally posted on Reddit's r/pettyrevenge subreddit by a chef who shared some of his best examples of maliciously complying with customer requests.

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  • 01
    Font - Posted by u/AngryChefNate 6 hours ago 4 * $ 35 (S) Examples of how I've gotten petty revenge as a chef. 2 I'll start by saying I take my career and food safety very serioulsy. Even if I was livid over a customer, I would never do anything gross, dirty, harmful, etc to their food, and I would shut down someone else trying to. I prefer my revenge to be petty, but noticed.
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  • 02
    Font - The restaurant I work in is located in an upscale area. As a result, our customer base is full of entitled, elitist, insufferable people most days. If you have a problem with your food, that's fine. But if you're an asle or being petty, you'll get served by chef petty. The king of petty.
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  • 03
    Font - 1. The crouton debacle. This pair of older women came in, were immediately rude to the hostess and server from what I was told, so the server came to give me a heads up that they seem like a problem. Sure enough, they each start with a caesar salad and send it right back. Their reason? Some of the croutons were big and some were small, and they'd like croutons that were all roughly the same size. Heard. I put the new salads in the window. One had equal sized very large croutons, one had e
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  • 04
    Font - 2. In a pickle over pickles. We had a gentleman come in and order one of our burgers. He said extra extra extra pickles. We normally do 3, so each extra was 3 more, 12 total. When it went to his table he said he wanted more. I gave him 3 more. He sent it back. At this point, it was time to shut this sh✪ down. I took off all the pickles, and scooped through the pickle bucket to find 20-25 of the smallest slices I could find. All about dime sized. Loaded his burger up and it didn't come bac
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  • 05
    Font - 3. Could I get some more onions? This regular always comes in and orders her burger with an obnoxious amount of onions. Normally we do 2 rings, she always initially asks for about 30. No bullsh Then proceeds to send the server back 3-4 more times for a small plate of about 15 more. It's disgusting. One day, we were busier than usual when she tried to pull this. Rather than have to keep stopping to accommodate her, I took the biggest red onion we had, pushed it through the slicer, didn't s
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  • 06
    Font - 4. What am I supposed to do with this? We had a regular nightly customer place the same order for pickup 15 minutes before close every night for 4 months straight. We hated her, because she treated all staff she dealt with like shit, made ridiculous demands, then no matter what, would send it all back to be refired even though nothing was ever wrong with the order. One particular thing she'd do
    via u/AngryChefNate
  • 07
    Font - is order 6 shrimp pasta dishes, and request 3 additional portions of shrimp for each one. But she didn't want the shrimp on top like it comes. She wanted it on the side. No big deal, other than how she wanted it. She didn't want it all together. She didn't even want the 4 total portions for each order together. Nope, she wanted each of the 4 portions for each of the 6 orders separately packaged. That takes a long ass time to do,
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  • 08
    Font - way more than necessary, all because she gets off on being difficult. So I wasn't having it one night. We knew she was coming, so all total I knew I needed 288 shrimp. Which she got, individually packaged in 288 ramekins. She was pissed. She said what am I supposed to do with this? GM said make sure they're all there. So she proceeded to count 288 ramekins as I watched from the kitchen with a grin. After that, she had no problem allowing us to start packaging it the way it was made to be,
    via u/AngryChefNate
  • 09
    Font - o Talmaska +1.4 hr. ago Putting all the shrimp separately, in ramekins...brilliant. This is the way. 186 ve is the bridg between you and everything. AngryChefNate OP 4 hr. ago Thank you. My boss says pettiness is my hidden talent lol. 113 Reply Share ... 24 Reply Share summerrose1981. 1 hr. ago I was going to be a "snarketer" for a local healthcare system I was working for. To keep myself amused on night shift I would come up with "snarketing" slogans for the company of the parts no one s
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  • 10
    Font - CoderJoe1 +4.6 hr. ago I humbly bow to the master. Keep training them customers. o 674 AngryChefNate OP Heard 282 Reply Share ... 151 5 hr. ago Reply Share piddlesthethug - 3 hr. ago I'm an exceptionally petty bartender and always wanted someone in the kitchen to be this petty with. Someday I hope to work with someone like you. Reply Share
    via u/AngryChefNate
  • 11
    Font - PSquared1234. 6 hr. ago Loved the sliced onion one. 194 128 Reply Share AngryChefNate OP 6 hr. ago I actually got the idea from a video I saw a while back of some South Korean restaurant advertising American style burgers, but putting a slab of onion on them. Like no, we don't do that lol. ●●● 62 Reply Share scritchesfordoges · 4 hr. ago I want that! You've tapped into a new market out of spite. Like how potato chips were invented by an irritated cook whose customer kept demanding crispie
    via u/AngryChefNate
  • 12
    Font - dave7892000 - 4 hr. ago . I near soiled myself thinking about people caring what SIZE CROUTONS are on their salad. 56 Reply Share AngryChefNate OP 4 hr. ago It was the most baffling shit I'd ever heard. I swore the server was messing with me at first. 39 Reply Share
    via u/AngryChefNate
  • 13
    Font - OkeyDokey234 +2.5 hr. ago That crouton request is killing me. Reply Share 73 AngryChefNate OP O 5 hr. ago These people make so many ridiculous requests for no reason. One lady wants her burger on a square plate instead of a round one, one guy wants his salad on a plate instead of in a salad bowl. One lady asked if we could make her fries less crispy. I said tell her to go to five guys if she wants soggy fries. Reply Share 95
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  • 14
    Font - elizabethjanet +2.5 hr. ago I so enjoy petty chef's. I never worked in a restaurant, but I have a friend who is a trained chef and she worked a mid range chain steak house during her work placement at college. The staff told her about a customer who was very particular. Very. Particular. About how their steak was cooked. See, they wanted it perfectly medium rare. He even brought a food thermometer to test the temperature of the centre. It couldn't be too rare or too cooked and if there we
    via u/AngryChefNate
  • 15
    Font - The only person who was allowed to cook this customers steak was the head chef and one night, Mr. My Steak Must Be Perfect comes in but the head chef was off for a family emergency, and my friend grabbed the order, cooked the steak and the server took it out. The BS that happened for the next hour was beyond. That steak came back so many times and the restaurant policy was you had to refire the steak every time (because of the medium rare status). She went through fifteen steaks before th
    via u/AngryChefNate
  • 16
    Font - Then left a terrible review on the website and the next week when the head chef was back, the chef had no more fucks to give and there was dinner and a show for the rest of the restaurant staff & customers. The head chef gave him more than he ordered and told him he can either trust the staff to cook the food to order or not come back and any further bad reviews will mean the customer is now banned. There was never another incident. This was sadly before cell phones were so prevalent so t
    via u/AngryChefNate
  • 17
    Font - AngryChefNate OP 5 hr. ago The customer is rarely right. I had a lady send back a MR ribeye one day. She sent it back saying it was too pink. There was no way for her to know, because she hadn't even cut into it. So I flipped the steak over and sent it back out. Never touched the grill. The server came back saying she said it was perfect. Yeah, just like the first time. 116 Reply Share 21 ... Difference-Potential 4 hr. ago My stepsister would do this all the time when she was a server. Re
    via u/AngryChefNate
  • 18
    Font - Counter_Guilty. 3 hr. ago I once had a chef from Spain who could be somewhat temperamental. One day, we had a Redneck from Hell come in who apparently came into a lot of money, this restaurant wasn't cheap. The man proceeds to order our most expensive steak, filet mignon WELL DONE. That was enough to set the chef off. When the steak was taken to the table, it was sent back; not cooked enough. The chef almost lost it. I take the steak back out and the guest asks for ketchup. As I was walki
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  • 19
    Font - AngryChefNate OP 3 hr. ago Well done and ketchup is painful for me to watch, but to each their own. 23 Counter_Guilty · 3 hr. ago I am now a chef, and unfortunately I cannot behave like Chef Paco did. Even though I would LOVE to. I finished school in my 40s after a bad tour in Afghanistan and I actually love what I do ↑ 17 17 ↓ Reply Share Reply Share
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  • 20
    Font - 3lm1Ster +1.4 hr. ago I work fast food, and I had a regular who would always request extra tomatoes on his sandwich. I joked with him that one day I was going to just give him the whole tomato. My boss (area coach) lost it when I served the guy his sandwich with the correct amount of tomatoes PLUS a full tomato on his tray with a plastic knife. The customer and I had a good laugh, but I thought my boss was going to have a stroke. 24 Reply Share
    via u/AngryChefNate
  • 21
    Font - geraltsthiccass. 4 hr. ago You beautiful asole. Please come work with me. I would kill to have someone like you in the kitchen with me, particularly to see how you deal with this one family that comes in, orders everything separately leading to hold ups and a shit load of tickets and guaranteed always sends at least one plate back (bacon too crispy/not crispy enough, too much/not enough sauce, this is cold because we waited til everyone's plates were on the table before eating, why didnt
    via u/AngryChefNate
  • 22
    Font - EmergencyAltruistic1 · 3 hr. ago I had someone do the pickle thing to me. Fast food place, I asked for a crap tonne of pickles. I got 3 (theses are the chip kind, not the long slices) sent it back & showed the receipt saying extra. It came back with a pickle layer the size of the whole double burger. I could feel the malicious compliance coming off that thing. It was like I could hear them saying "if she wants extra, we'll GIVE her extra! muah Hahaha!" Joke was on them, that's how I wante
    via u/AngryChefNate
  • 23
    Font - EquivalentOk6028 · 3 hr. ago I worked salad station at a steak house that made their own dressings. Everyone loved the ranch and all night I kept getting requests for more ranch and one server did it like ten times in a row and I asked him if it was for the same customer. He said yes. I went and grabbed a mug filled it to the brim handed it to the server and said throw a straw in it and give it to him. I saw him off to the side pouring it into ramekins and took out like ten of them. I was
    via u/AngryChefNate
  • 24
    Font - o factchecker2. 4 hr. ago I applaud you for not doing anything unsafe with their food. I've worked in restaurants (in my former life) and would call out people for doing that garbage. I don't care how frustrated, angry, or irritated you are, that sh!t is NEVER appropriate. 16 Reply Share AngryChefNate OP 4 hr. ago Absolutely not. I've had food poisoning, and I have a food allergy (mushrooms), and I'm a decent human being. I would never even dream of doing something unsafe with anybody's f
    via u/AngryChefNate
  • 25
    Font - Lonzo58 5 hr. ago OP is an artist and his medium is petty revenge. 12 Reply Share
    via u/AngryChefNate

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