The Fast Food Secret Menu Rule Of Thumb To Follow So The Staff Doesn't Hate You

Everybody wants to feel special sometimes. When you order off the "secret menu" at a fast food restaurant, it feels a little like you're part of an underground club of people in the know, even though you probably learned about it from TikTok like everyone else. When you enjoy the loaded fries at Five Guys or the grilled cheese at In-N-Out, you become a part of something bigger. But with great power comes great responsibility, so it would behoove you to avoid ordering from the secret menu when the restaurant is too busy.

Working in a fast food restaurant is hard enough when you're only working off the official menu. It's hot, it's chaotic, and your managers may very well be measuring your productivity every step of the way (even docking you in cases where it may not be your fault, like when someone takes too long ordering at the drive-thru). How would you feel if a customer came in at the very busiest time of day and asked for something called a "Land, Sea, and Air Burger?" In the best case scenario, it's still a not-inconsiderable inconvenience for the employee; in the worst case scenario, you've confused them with a menu item they don't know and made them assemble some unholy concoction based on half-remembered Instagram shorts.

If it sounds like fast food employees aren't necessarily thrilled about the existence of secret menus, there may be some truth to that. It was one thing when the trend first started 10 or 15 years ago, but we live in a post-pandemic world. These employees are generally overworked and underpaid, working a thankless job as part of a skeleton crew and dealing with customers who have grown increasingly entitled. And not for nothing, customers may be growing weary of it, too: Commenters on Reddit sounded off against the fast food trend, complaining that it's much less impressive than it sounds.

Does that mean you should never order from the secret menu? No, we're not saying that. There are all sorts of extenuating circumstances where it's not so big a deal: if it's quiet at your local Taco Bell, for instance, or if for some reason you've developed a rapport with one of the employees. And really, a lot of what's referred to as "secret menu items" are just pre-existing items arranged in a slightly different way. So long as you know you're not making them go out of their way, it couldn't hurt to ask, right?