Avoid Visiting Waffle House During This Time For The Best Experience

At a time when 24-hour diners appear to be going the way of the dodo, it's heartening to see Waffle House continue to do what it does best. At any time of day, you can mosey on inside a Waffle House location, order yourself a hearty breakfast (including, but by no means limited to, waffles, hash browns, and coffee), and tuck into a deeply satisfying meal. This is a chain that takes its duty to provide satiating grub at all hours so seriously that it aims to keep locations open even in the middle of natural disasters (hence the creation of the Waffle House Index). But just because you can go at any time doesn't mean you should — and if you want as calm and orderly a dining experience as possible, it would do you some good to avoid Waffle House in the wee small hours of the morning.

In the parlance of our time, Waffle House after midnight is a "PvP-enabled zone" — a period where people are at their surliest, least inhibited, and most violent. We've all seen those clips of fights going on at Waffle House, whether it's between employees or customers (as you might have seen in that SNL skit where Jenna Ortega is having an earnest conversation with her boyfriend in the foreground while all hell breaks loose in the Waffle House behind them). It's the sort of thing that's inevitable when the bars and clubs all close, and if you'd rather not deal with it, that's perfectly understandable.

Like we said, if you don't want to find yourself with ringside tickets to an impromptu boxing match at 2:30 in the morning, we don't blame you. But with that said, there are some people who might embrace the liminal nature of a diner after dark, no matter how strange it might get. Maybe you're an inveterate people watcher who wants to check out who else might be around late at night. Maybe you've reached the point of the evening where everything just tastes better, especially when served beneath the soothing fluorescent glow of a diner interior. Maybe you're just messy and live for drama, like that one guy who couldn't stop fighting with a Waffle House cook – we don't judge.

So yes, if you want as easy and drama-free a dining experience as possible, you'll want to avoid Waffle House once the bars close. But if you have a high tolerance for shenanigans and you want to see what else the night has in store for you, well, we certainly can't stop you, can we? Just make sure to save us some of your free order of hash browns.