Had a customer yell at me for 10 minutes about their cold fries, then I realized the heat lamp was unplugged the whole shift

I was working the fry station at Chili's last Saturday and this guy is screaming his food is cold, I go check the pass and sure enough the heat lamp cord was kicked out by the busser, so I just gave him a fresh basket and comped his meal, has anyone else had a dumb equipment failure that made you look bad?

2 comments

2 Comments

valgibson12d ago

...and of COURSE it was the heat lamp, because that's always the culprit. I once had a similar thing happen at a place I worked, but it was the entire fryer battery that decided to die mid-rush. We had to pull the emergency gas shutoff and everything, while the manager was running around like a headless chicken trying to explain why every single order was taking 20 minutes. I ended up just giving out free soda coupons like candy to calm people down.

christophermorgan12d ago

Dodged a bullet there buddy, heat lamps are at least cheap. You lose a whole fryer battery during a rush and you're basically running a salad bar at that point. Hope the manager had some good excuses ready because "our grease is on fire" doesn't usually calm people down. Those soda coupons probably saved your ass more than the fire department would have.