‘Whats the most pathetic complaint you have heard at a restaurant/bar in the UK?’ – 23 unbelievably petty grumbles

The customer is always right, or so the saying goes, but have you ever been out eating a meal or having a drink when you’ve overheard some petty so-and-so make a complaint so trifling that you wish the staff have the power to eject them immediately?

They’ve been discussing this on the AskUK subreddit after user ShineyWaffle97 posted this:

Whats the most pathetic complaint you have heard at a restaurant/bar in the UK? I was checking Google reviews for a restaurant and ended up going down a rabbit hole of all the bad reviews and most of them made me laugh.

I know some people take joy writing reviews, or making complaints at restaurants, but whats some of the most silly or pathetic things you’ve heard people say to staff?

Plenty of people were keen to chip in with examples of the uber-Karens they’d come across in the wild.

1.

‘I worked as a waitress many moons ago. We had a haddock and pancetta dish on the menu. A woman orders it and then complains because it’s not vegetarian. Kicks off a lot and starts getting a bit abusive, wants her entire bill cancelled etc, as its a disgrace.

She said how is she supposed to know pancetta is meat if we’re using fancy words for bacon, it could easily be a vegetable. I asked her about the haddock, that haddock is clearly not a vegetable. She said she eats fish so it doesn’t count. I told her she isn’t vegetarian if she eats fish, she is pescatarian. This does not go down well. I cannot tell her how she identifies. If she wants to say she’s vegetarian she is allowed to, and who is a waitress to say otherwise.

She asks for the manager to get me fired. I tell her I am the manager (I was not but the manager was not in because he was a raging coke fiend who barely showed up to work). I told her if she didn’t pay her bill I would call the police, including the haddock and potential-vegetable-pancetta (as she had been a dick I did not take it off). She did pay but not without telling me she was NEVA COMIN BACK. Shame.’
–EFNich

2.

‘When I worked in a sandwich bar I had to explain to a very confused vegetarian that turkey is a meat. I think she’d gotten muddled by the existence of ‘turkey bacon’.’
–SplurgyA

3.

‘Working in a club in freshers week, 2013ish, and was told I’d served a drink in a bad glass. I apologised and asked what was wrong with it, to be told I had left a shot glass inside the glass. She had ordered a Jägerbomb.’
–Crannachan

4.

‘Not mine but a friend once got in shit for being sarcastic towards a customer for asking for a ‘decaf non alcoholic espresso martini’.’
–redesigncherry

5.

‘I love telling everyone this but I once had a man complain to me that his ice cream was too cold.’
–No_Top6466

6.

‘A bloke at the next table making a huge fuss that his soup was to hot. Just leave it a minute rather than shovelling it into your mouth then complaining again.’
–Mag-1892

7.

‘I had someone complain that their chicken was too fatty… at a KFC.’
–roddz

8.

‘My fiance was working at a cafe in Robin Hood’s Bay. She asked a young couple if they were enjoying their lunch, they said they were but they were disappointed that the lovely beach wasn’t there anymore like it was when visited late time. It appeared they didn’t know what tides were. Unfortunately she missed the opportunity to blow their minds by inviting them back in a few hours.’

9.

‘I once returned a book saying ‘I didn’t like the way it ended’, which I thought was a very funny joke. But I watched her face as she braced for the fight with me, and realised people must say this all the time! I quickly explained there was a printing error, and the last 40 pages were replaced by a second copy of pages 20-60.’
–kimba-the-tabby-lion

10.

‘Served ice cream in 27° weather and she kept coming back five mins later to complain it was melting so I gave her a new one and told her to stand in the shade or I wouldn’t give her another, and she came back to complain it was cold.’
–Ornery-Woodpecker214

11.

‘A family member wrote an extensive written complaint about bar staff not challenging customers swearing (it was a rough pub in the middle of a football match).’
-DefiantCricket9701

12.

‘In the restaurant of a fairly upmarket hotel in LA many years ago, overheard an English family complaining: ‘What do you mean, you’ve got no Shredded Wheat? I thought this was supposed to be a good hotel’. Later heard the staff discussing amongst themselves – what the hell is Shredded Wheat? And one of them said ‘It’s like little pillows made of straw’.’
–MrsMaplebeck