Unfiltered Story #206220

(I’m a line cook at a casual dining restaurant (something akin to T.G.I.Fridays or Applebee’s). One of the servers comes back to the kitchen with a question from a customer.)
Server: “This lady would like to know if our burgers are 100% beef.”

Kitchen Manager: “I’m not sure what else she thinks they might be, but yes, they’re 100% beef.” *The server goes back to the dining room, only to return less than a minute later*

Server: “Now she wants to know if we use pink slime in our burgers.” *”Pink Slime” is a common or slang name for a beef additive that is legal for limited human consumption here in the U.S. and has been the cause of quite a bit of controversy between companies that use it and groups that want it banned. The company I work for had previously declared it would never use the product in any of our beef dishes.*

Kitchen Manager: “No, there’s no slime in our burgers. Tell her they’re all slime free.” *The server leaves again and goes back to her customer, who is apparently satisfied with the answer and orders a burger. I happen to be cooking the burgers that evening, so I proceed as normal.*

Me: *after the burger is on its way to the customer* “Ya know, for wanting a slime free burger, she apparently didn’t mind it being almost still alive. She ordered it medium rare.” *The entire kitchen knows of my distaste for bloody burgers. They all think I’m weird because I have no problem with a medium rare steak, just burgers.*

Kitchen Manager: “Well, maybe she’s perfectly fine with her burger being red. She just doesn’t like pink.”

(Life in the kitchen goes on until about 25 minutes later when the same server comes back to the kitchen)

Server: “So, she said she was able to verify that we don’t use pink slime because the burger fell apart the way a natural burger is supposed to, whatever that means. She instead complained that her side of apples was hot and I didn’t warn her of that. She wants us to warn all our customers now that our baked apples are hot.”

Kitchen Manager: “She didn’t realize that an item with the work ‘baked’ in the item name was hot? What did she think we did to them? Got the apples high before we served them?”

(From that night on, we have referred to baked apples as stoners. I lost count of the number of new employees that don’t get it. The kitchen manager and I laugh hysterically every time though.)