If you’ve ever worked in a restaurant, you know how some conversations sound like a glitch in the matrix. If not, TikTok creator Marianne (@its.marianne.faith) is here to explain exactly how a back-and-forth between a server and a diner goes.
In a video recounting one of her experiences dining out, Marianne shared a witness account of a dessert order that went spectacularly nowhere. She laid out the whole conversation she heard between a server and a diner, and it captures every server’s collective frustration.
The video has racked up over 4.1 million views and it hilariously captures the grueling mental gymnastics servers have to perform daily. The caption says it all: “Did we just enter a wormhole? I swear we just did this.”
The server and diner were stuck in ‘Chocolate vs. Peanut Butter Chocolate’ loop
The “insanity-inducing” interaction began when a diner told her server she wanted the same chocolate dessert she’d enjoyed the previous day. When the server politely asked which one she’d had, the diner was baffled to learn there were actually two chocolate options.
The server provided a very clear breakdown. Though it was lengthy in real, Marianne made it easier for her viewers for the sake of the video. Option A was “just chocolate,” and Option B was “chocolate and peanut butter.” For the next several minutes, the table became a site of total logical collapse.
The diner stated that her dessert yesterday “didn’t have peanut butter.” And the server concluded, “Okay, so you had the chocolate one. Would you like that one again?” But despite the clear explanation, the diner would then ask, again, what the difference was between the two. And it kept going on for what felt like an eternity. Yes, the same two lines from the diner, then the same two lines from the server.
The server finally used the ‘Menu’ as an escape strategy from the wormhole
As the conversation circled the drain for the fourth or fifth time, the server’s “tight-lipped smile” began to waver. Every time the server confirmed that the “just chocolate” cake was the one the diner liked, the diner would reset the conversation by asking if there was more than one chocolate dessert.
Eventually, the server reached her breaking point, put her hands down, and offered the only possible solution left. “I’m going to grab a menu for you,” she told the table and left. It was a tactical retreat disguised as customer service. Thankfully, it broke the “wormhole” before the server’s soul officially left her body.
The diner actually scoffed after the server left her with a menu
If you’re already feeling the server’s frustration, wait. The diner didn’t stop there. As Marianne put it, “the real bulls—t about the customer” happened the moment the server walked away.
Rather than realizing she had been running in circles, the diner actually scoffed at the server. Projection, much? She looked after the departing employee with a look of “the audacity.” She even complained that the server couldn’t answer her simple questions and that she “didn’t ask for a menu.”
For Marianne, watching from the next table, it was the perfect encapsulation of why service industry burnout is at an all-time high. It wasn’t just that the diner was confused. It was that she blamed the server for her own inability to process a two-ingredient distinction.
Common sense is a rare side dish, but please have it
Even though the server gave the diner an answer in the first ten seconds, it turns out the diner was just stuck in a cognitive loop. And the server was the only one trying to find the exit. Several users under Marianne’s video admitted that they could never work in customer service.
Most of us would have snapped at the second “What’s the difference?” But kudos to the server who kept her cool and her smile until the very end. And also to all servers who have to explain the same concept three times to a “glitching” adult every day.
For the diners planning their next outing, if your server tells you there are two options, maybe pick one before you both enter a permanent wormhole.
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