Just curious as I’ve never been on the other side of the counter, how does this sort of thing tend to work at restaurants? Fast food and fast-casual places are where I’ve heard customers say things “pile as much lettuce on there as you’re allowed to” - is there ever a limit your supervisor instructed you for things like that?
Now obviously with up-charge items like extra meat or certain toppings I know the sizes tend to be pre-portioned to a serving utensil, but something like extra onions or tomatoes that goes uncharged - has anyone gotten into trouble for giving “too much”?
It’s been a long time, but I used to work at a corporate dining place that did a lot of take out business. I once had a man ask for “as much thousand island dressing as possible”.
I was going to just give him two portions, but my coworker convinced me to fill a large soda cup instead. Why not? We worked for tips after all.
The customer was pretty bewildered. He clearly didn’t really want that much dressing.
Man was lying to you. He deserved it.
I doubt you or anyone here will disagree with me, but it still needs to be said: that man was 100% in the wrong.
Asking for a bunch of extra dressing is one thing, but asking for “as much as possible” means when they actually go out of their way to accommodate you, you better show you’re ecstatic, thank them, and tip them well. I don’t care if you have to lug a bucket of dressing home, maybe you’ll learn that words have meanings…
I agree! And I like to think that, as he looked over his several bottles worth of dressing in a beverage cup, he did learn to consider his words more carefully.
But I didn’t mind the whole experience. It’s not my dressing and it made for a pretty funny story.
When you work for tips, you are actually working for the customer since they’re paying you more?
It certainly creates an incentive to act in ways that please the customer at the expense of the business. But the restaurant controls your access to the customer, so it’s best to tread lightly.
A friend of mine managed a pizzeria and said all the parts were portioned out. Extra usually meant an additional portioning of that topping / fixing would be added to the assembly.
There is an upper limit when a large party walks in expecting food, but it could feed like twenty people. For anything larger you had to request in advance so he could have the supplies on hand.
This was Texas in the 1970s which involved frequent people wanting to work an hour for a slice so he’d require them to wait for a rush (they wouldn’t have to wait long) and then would get a meal of food for their hour.
Wait, so like a barter? I’d work for an hour and get a slice instead of the hour’s wage?
That sounds amazing. I’m sure there are still places like that but with so much red tape nowadays I’m sure someone would… I don’t know… “get in trouble”? For what, I don’t know, but I’m sure it involves a straw man.
I want pizza.
The answer is yes. Before the 1990s, there were was a lot of casual business. My San Francisco residence was rented to my flatmate entirely on a verbal contract (which created problems in the aughts, when utility companies were modernizing their service). This kind of casual business works well when everyone is friendly or acting in good faith, but it leaves fewer protections from fraud.
In rural parts of the US, there were regions in which there was little enough cash flow that barter was routine. And then farms often would have enough extra produce they would look for neighbors to give food to, rather than dumping it.
I’d say we’d have organized crime to thank for the necessity of making transactions a lot more secure and a lot less anonymous, but that’s really only the justification. It’s law enforcement that has turned to the same rackets that were the purview of mobsters. Not only are grocers no longer able to give away one-day expired food to homeless and impoverished folk, but kids risk legal trouble just by running a lemonade stand on a hot day.
Thank you for sharing your experience and insights!
Worked at an ice cream store. We had a regular that wanted the largest ice cream with a whole banana and absolutely drowned his order in caramel. Not a huge deal we just charged him for like 8 extra toppings or so
I’m not a fast food worker, but made the mistake of ordering the biggest order size of nuggets at a McDonald’s in college. I waited 30 mins to get 150 nuggets. I didn’t think I was going to get so many. I had enough to share with an entire class of mine on campus.
Where I worked, servings of fries were proportioned in advance, so I would only get to pick which bag of fries to cook. Even with no request, I already went for the largest bag when I had the time to do so, in order to ward off complaints on my orders and get better tips.
Generally speaking, we had no obligation to fulfill requests, although sometimes we would if they were simple enough or we had downtime.
Hey it’s not exactly what you asked for, but at Carl’s Jr. there’s a whole ass list of cool substitutions you can make for free. You can order “whole leaf” lettuce instead of shredded. If you ask for a “large bun” on one of the smaller sandwiches and they’ll give you one that’s usually used for one of the big burgers.
I mean anything is possible if they’re willing to pay for it
depends on how busy it was and/or how good of a mood i was in. i worked at a pizza place and would usually try to hook people up as reasonably as possible (not charge someone if they were taking off a topping then adding a topping even tho you were meant to, giving like 8 cheese cups if they ordered 5 (mood/rush/etc dependent), ample extra toppings if they were nice, etc)
I worked at a Canadian burger place with notably orange trays. Got asked for all sorts of things. Tons of pickles was probably the most common–I think I piled a good 3 inches on one once (probably 30 or so long slices). It didn’t occur often enough to be a problem.
The worst kind of trouble is the troubled heart of a person who avoids getting in trouble their whole life.
