Few things test a food service worker’s patience like a customer who insists on doing all the talking.

When one particularly animated customer came in ordering multiple pizzas but barely let the employee finish a sentence, chaos was inevitable.

You’ll want to read on for this one!

NO PORK

Working at Pizza…Shack? years ago, a gentleman came in to order carryout.

We had a special going on one-topping large pizzas.

This customer had quite the outsized personality.

He was a bit… loud.

Not mean, exactly, just very forceful, and didn’t like it when anyone talked except himself.

He had this way of waiting for a question, then loudly answering it halfway through.

“OK, and wh…”
“MEAT LOVERS!”
“And the si…”
“LARGE!”
And so on.

His voice had a way of… projecting.

So I got the order, and so did everyone in a three mile radius, of three large Meat Lovers pizzas.

I don’t think he was deaf; he seemed to hear me just fine, but it seemed like he just could not stand it if anyone else said more than three words.

“And the cr….”
“PAN CRUST! With NO PORK!”

The employee immediately had some reservations about this.

Umm… now that was a bit of an issue. The Meat Lovers came with pepperoni, pork sausage, Italian sausage, beef, ham, and bacon.

I thought perhaps he meant specifically he wanted to leave off the pork sausage, but it was hard to tell when I was unable to form an entire sentence.

Eventually, after half the windows in the place had shattered, it became clear that he wanted no pork products on his pizzas at all.

The employee tried to reason with the customer, but they couldn’t get a word in edgewise.

So that left… beef. Everything else on it is pork, apart from the cheese and sauce. I attempted to explain this.

“NO PORK!” he mentioned once or twice.

OK then.

I tried to tell him the price difference, but my head started to hurt.

The pizza the customer was left with was a real head-scratcher.

So he paid for three Meat Lovers, which cost a lot more than one-topping pizzas, and they came with beef on them. Basically burger pellets.

I left any further explanation up to my manager, who had heard the commotion from his home three states away.

This interaction would have left anyone exasperated.

What did Reddit have to say?

Some customers are just too exhausting.

Turns out, lots of people don’t have a great understanding of what certain pizza toppings are made of.

Older people have a bit of a reputation for being noisier than most.

Some people just march to the beat of their own drum.

This story made it clear that even the most mundane miscommunications can complicate any interaction.

At the end of the day, there’s no one more perplexing than a customer.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a rude customer who got exactly what they wanted in their pizza.