Mess around with making life more difficult for service workers, and you just might walk out the door unhappy with your order.
A viral TikTok seeming to lightly make fun of people who order french fries without salt from a fast-food restaurant inspired @swimminglyfish to tell their own story dealing with customers like that in the past.
“I got so tired of customers asking for salt packets at the window that one day, during our lunch rush, someone asked me for fries with no salt and then they asked, at the window, for salt packets, and I just looked them dead in the face and said, ‘I’m sorry, we’re out of salt packets,’” she recalls in a video that was viewed over 245,000 times. “Like, have a good day, goodbye.”
@swimminglyfish #stitch with @willdonis ♬ original sound – SwimminglyFish
While @swimminglyfish makes it clear that this incident happened years ago, customers making unnecessary special requests that require a disproportionate amount of extra effort from workers just to slightly change how a food or drink is prepared, or to save a dollar, remains a point of frustration and a frequent topic of TikTok videos among fast-food workers.
And many viewers supported this particular TikToker’s way of dealing with customers.
“As a former Wendy’s employees I absolutely love this,” wrote @sammyjo_89, while @ta_goblin admitted, “I would always hand them pepper packets instead.”
It was also suggested that the reason some people do things this way is to ensure that the fries are made fresh, which is a whole other conversation to be had.
“I give them one single packet and close the window. literally just ask for fresh fries,” @angrybirdsleatherdaddy suggested.
But others pointed out that there may be valid reasons customers would ask for no salt on the fries and then salt them on their own.
“I was just watching a tok with a woman who tried to get a separate salt packet for her blood pressure,” claimed @seamonkeysarenotr. “She had to describe her medical condition to the drive thru just to get a salt packet.”
“Some people just don’t like as much salt. My grandma did this and I’ve worked at McDonald’s and it’s not even a lot of work,” @yasmine.watts added.
“Most people with super specific orders would come inside and order through the lobby,” @swimminglyfish told the Daily Dot. “It’s very appreciated when they come inside because the bosses look at the drive thru times and want them to be as low as possible.”
She also added that the particular customer with whom she had the interaction about the unsalted fries “came back the next day for lunch and instead of asking for no salt fries he asked for fresh fries,” suggesting sometimes passive aggressiveness does, in fact, get the message across.
