I was a catering server at a venue that primarily hosted weddings. At many of those weddings, people wanted shrimp cocktail during cocktail hour, so we would load up a whole tray of shrimp and walk around offering it to the guests.

I would often try to use the bathroom at the end of cocktail hour, while the guests were being seated, because it was a natural lull in service. One evening, I was washing my hands when a guest appeared at the sink next to me.

Guest: *Gesturing to her neck.* “Does this look red to you?”

Me: “Not really, but it’s sort of dark in here. I certainly wouldn’t have noticed if you hadn’t pointed it out.”

At this point, I assumed she had rosacea or something and was feeling self-conscious.

I left and started taking care of the beginning-of-service tasks. A little later, I noticed that the guest was sitting alone on a bench near the entrance, so I went over to see if she needed help.

Me: “Is everything okay?”

Guest: “Could you find my daughter? I think I’m having an allergic reaction, and she has Benadryl.”

Me: “Oh, no. Do you know what might have caused it?”

I’m worried that someone might have f***ed up when announcing the allergens in the passed hors d’oeuvres.

Guest: “Yes. I’m allergic to shellfish, but I had one of the shrimps because I thought one would be fine.”

Obviously, instead of searching for her daughter, I got my manager and explained that a guest was having an allergic reaction, and I didn’t know what to do, seeing as I was an inexperienced teenager.

By the time I returned with my manager, the woman’s daughter and a doctor who happened to be attending the wedding were also with her.

Guest: “I’m fine. I just need my daughter to drive me to the pharmacy so I can get some Benadryl.”

Doctor: “Yeah, that’s the first thing the paramedics are going to give you when they get here, but your throat is closing. You’re going to the hospital.”

The woman was ultimately fine, but I will never understand why she ruined both her and her daughter’s evening and risked her life for a single piece of mediocre shrimp cocktail.

It wasn’t even an accident. She took an entire shrimp from a large pile of shrimp that I carried around while repeatedly saying, “Shrimp cocktail?”

Madness.

I work for a catering company. A coworker is taking a call from a possible customer, and he asks the manager:

Coworker: “Hey, this guy is asking if we could do a job for 130 people?”

Our usual max is a hundred, but we can push it more if we’re given enough notice and the venue is appropriate.

Manager: *Who is currently stirring a big pot of ingredients.* “Put him on loudspeaker and let me talk to him.”

As a result, the caller and manager start talking about the job so that we can all hear. So far, everything seems to be going okay, until:

Manager: “Okay, so the price per person is [price], and for 130 people it would be [total]. We’d need a deposit of—”

Caller: “—Wait, why are you charging me for 130 people?”

Manager: “Didn’t you say the job was for 130 people?”

Caller: “Yeah, but… instead of increasing the cost to 130 people, can we only pay for 100 and spread the food out to feed 130?”

Manager: “You want to feed 130 people, using enough food for 100?”

Caller: *Sounding chipper.* “Yeah!”

Manager: “Sure, why not? In fact, why not make it bigger!? Invite more people, we’ll spread it to 150 people. Why not 200! 250! Let everyone only get a f****** olive and a crouton!”

For a moment, everyone in the kitchen is silent, including the caller.

Manager: *Still stirring, talking to the coworker who took the call.* “You can hang up now, [Coworker].”

The call ended, and we all laughed.

Manager: *To all of us.* “Okay, listen up, everyone. Anyone tries that s*** with us, tell them where to stick it, and hang up. Whenever anyone at these events is disappointed with the food, it’s not the host they blame, it’s the caterer. We have a reputation, and we don’t need f****** cheapskates like that ruining it for us. Clear?”

All Of Us: “Clear!”

Our manager was still stirring this entire time, and due to the call making him so angry, was pleasantly surprised he’d finished stirring the pot in half the usual time.

Many years ago, I worked for a cafeteria/catering company. The catering was much more lucrative of the two. Between mealtimes we would work on catering projects. This would often run us past the end of our shift, resulting in overtime.

One of the management team, recently promoted, decided his thing was going to be eliminating overtime. He held a meeting and announced to the staff:

Manager: “There will be no more overtime. Clock out at shift’s end, no exceptions.”

After, he pulled me aside and told me that as a supervisor, I was expected to set an example.

Me: “Okay, sure.”

A couple of days later, I was working on a cheese display. When my shift’s end came around, I put everything down, walked to the clock, and swiped my card.

Manager: “Hey, where are you going? That’s not finished!”

Me: “No, but my shift is. I’m setting an example.”

Manager: “Well, go finish it.”

Me: “I can’t. I’m off work now.”

And I left.

The next day, it was announced that all projects underway at the time would be allowed to be finished regardless of time, as long as it wasn’t abused. In other words, no foot dragging. 

Turns out all the hourly employees also left, and he had to finish several projects by himself. Since he was on salary, there was no overtime for him. I understand he stayed quite late.

I work in customer service for a company that helps set up catering orders. Organizations pay us, we pay the vendors, and the vendors handle the food. Most of the time, everything runs smoothly. Most of the time.

Today wasn’t one of those days. A customer called, saying their catering order never arrived. I checked with the vendor. Sometimes the vendors have driver shortages, so they outsource; in this case, they told me the order had gone out through [Delivery App]. No problem, I figured I’d just get proof of delivery and sort it out.

I reached out to [Delivery App] with the caterer, and instead of a standard delivery confirmation, they sent me a picture of the driver eating the food. Just sitting there, enjoying what was supposed to be the customer’s meal like he had ordered it for himself.

The vendor was hysterical. Let’s just say they weren’t happy, to say the least. When I asked [Delivery App] what was going to happen, they said the driver would likely be deactivated. As for why he took the food? His golden response:

“I don’t get paid enough, and this looked mad delish. Consider this my resignation.”

This wasn’t some small order, either; it was worth several hundred dollars. There was no tip on it since the customer’s organization does not allow them (some kinda contract, yadda yadda), but even if there had been, I doubt it would have made a difference. [Delivery App] covered the cost. All I can say is I hope that guy enjoyed his meal for fifty and the vendors learned their lesson.

I used to do freelance web design. I met with a new client one day, and we talked about her website. The site in question was supposed to be for an online catering service.

Me: “Okay. I will need the product descriptions for each one of your dishes.”

She takes out a large notebook.

Client: “I have the text right here.”

Me: “But this is all handwritten. I will need this in DOC format.”

Client: “Can’t you just scan it?”

Me: “No, it has to be typed on a computer so I can paste the text into the site.”

Client: “Well, here you go. You type it.”

She tries to hand me the notebook.

Me: “There are more than fifty pages in there. My job is to make websites, not to transcribe notebooks. You’ll have to transcribe it yourself and hand me a DOC file with—”

Client: “But this will take me at least three days! Can’t you just do it?”

Me: “Well, I’m not going to transcribe a notebook of handwritten text for you. I’m assuming you won’t even pay for a job like this, as it will cost you more than your budget affords.”

Client: “Can’t you just do it for free?”

Me: “No.”

Client: “But it will take me a lot of time to type all this on a computer. I’m not a fast typer.”

Me: “I’m sure you understand that I am also not thrilled about the idea of wasting my holidays transcribing all that text.”

A week later, she called me and accused me of ruining her holidays with boring transcribing.