How do you like your salmon prepared? A recent TikTok from a former Red Lobster server has viewers debating customer interactions with food service workers—and a response involving salmon, in particular.
After another creator, @al_the_pal, made a humorous video about her own annoyance dealing with “dumb questions” from customers at her workplace, Teen Mom 2‘s Jade Cline (@jadecline_) shared her feelings on the matter in return.
“I feel like I’ve answered the stupidest questions in my life working in the food industry,” she says in the clip. “I worked as a server for like eight years, but I worked at Red Lobster for a few years, and I used to have people like…I’d ask them, ‘How do you want your salmon prepared?’ And someone would straight look me in the eye and be like, ‘I want it medium rare.’”
Cline expresses incredulity at the response, asking, “Your fish? What are we talking about?”
“No, like, baked, broiled, grilled? What the fuck?” she continues.
@jadecline_ #stitch with @al_the_pal_ #foodserviceproblems #restaurant #server #serverproblems #servertiktok ♬ original sound – jadecline_
Some viewers were confused by the reaction to such a response, noting that “medium rare” is actually a perfectly normal way to request for salmon to be prepared. The Daily Dot has reached out to Cline for further comment, but she later clarified in a response to her video that asking for medium rare salmon is best left for “FRESH high end sea food…not red lobster.”
“You don’t want to eat nothing from a red lobster that’s undercooked lmao,” she wrote.
From there, restaurant workers added their own tales of uneducated requests or bizarre questions—and there were plenty.
“I work at subway and I got asked how big a footlong was,” scoffed one user.
“I was doing take out and someone asked me if fettuccine noodles were made of meant,” another recalled.
Another viewer said she had just received a call that same day from someone who wanted to know her restaurant’s dress code. “After I said ‘business casual’ she said ‘ok so are basketball shorts okay for my husband,’” she added.
Both sincere frustrations with the service industry and general amusement with how out of touch some customers can be with reality have become popular topics on TikTok in recent years, and the stream of comments from folks who can relate to the content creators’ complaints make it abundantly clear that these videos won’t be going anywhere anytime soon.
