I’ve never had the pleasure of working in a restaurant, cafe or bar, because I’m crap at mental arithmetic, clumsy as an albatross and I absolutely hate the general public.

Dealing with your average Joe is always a ball ache, they forget that you are a human too. As soon as you are in a uniform people seem to think it’s perfectly fine to unload on you for the smallest (perceived) error.

I’ve had jobs where I’ve had to deal with customers in other lines of work though and, from a survey I conducted in my head, around 87% of people are morons, 27% are ming-mongs and the remaining 32% should never be allowed to interact with other people, ever. (Yes, you can quote me on those figures, they’re 200% correct).

I recently found a bunch of first hand stories written by people who’ve worked in cafe/restaurant jobs and been forced to deal with idiotic customers. I’ve popped a few here so that you can laugh at the customers expense and grieve alongside the long-suffering employee. It’s basically a selection of literary face-palms.

(Use your arrow keys/slide on mobile to read the stories.) 

1) Fish Based Idiocy

I used to work at an English pub style restaurant, and our specialty was beer battered fish and chips. One day a woman came in with her young son during my lunch shift. The woman looked over the menu and then asked me if it was alright if she ordered the fish and chips for her son. I asked her what she meant, and then she looked me and asked “Like, will they get him drunk?” I explained that the alcohol in the beer batter cooks out when we fry the fish.

The kicker is, this lady was actually there as an undercover shopper (where is the screening process for these things?!) She gave me a bad review, which went to my management and I ended up getting fired. FIRED! I lost my job because of a lady who thought beer battered fish would intoxicate her toddler.