14 Wildest Things Customers Have Requested At Fast Food Chains

Fast food is an entire universe of quirk, eccentricity, and strangeness unto itself. The first ones to tell you this are the fast food workers themselves, who regularly come across all types of customer behavior that seems idiosyncratic to this type of service industry. There's just something about the ubiquity and the expeditiousness of fast food joints that gives people a license to be as kooky as they want to be with their meal orders.

Thanks to social media, many of the absurd, hilarious, and, let's be fair, disgusting requests seen at the nation's fast food eateries are captured for posterity — mostly by the bewildered staff, but sometimes by the customers themselves. Some of these orders are just absolute gems of wackiness, each deserving of their own chef's kiss (fry-cook's kiss?).

The following are 14 of the wildest things customers have asked for at fast food chains. We say "things" and not "meals" because some of these are, um, difficult to categorize as such. Maybe you think they're bonkers, maybe not. But hey, it's a free country – feel free to consume food in all sorts of weird ways.

McDonald's, despite its eternal rep as the alpha fast food burger joint, has long been a coffee drinking hub as well. It's been estimated that the golden-arched behemoth sells about 8 million cups of coffee per day (nearly enough to give one to every man, woman, and child in New York City), and has been ranked as the second biggest coffee seller in the world. Second, of course, to Starbucks, with whom it goes toe-to-toe, via competing pumpkin spice lattes and the like.

As such, many in the gargantuan McDonald's consumer base treat Mickey D's as their go-to Joe spot. That sheer volume is bound to have a kooky coffee order or two in its ranks. Although, one of those orders from a particular regular, as a Redditor who used to work there relayed, can hardly be referred to as a cup of coffee at all, really.

"When I worked at McDonalds, a 50-ish year old women ... would order a medium coffee with 15 (fifteen) pumps of cream and 15 (still fifteen) 'pumps' of sugar (our sugar crystal dispenser had a pump, it was about half the box so maybe a half cup or so of sugar)." At least her wrist muscles got a daily work out. Who needs isometric holds?

Ah, Subway. The place where you can dream up any sandwich you want. Or at least, one within the supply parameters of a given store. The one-time most prevalent fast food chain on planet Earth has had its up-and-downs, though customers still flock there to customize their food. And you can't spell "customize" without two-thirds of the word "customer."

And, at least regarding one crazy food order, you can't spell "customer" without "er." As in, "er... what?" Take it away, Redditor: "At Subway someone ordered a salad with bacon, roast beef, chicken teriyaki, pepperoni, and an entire bottle of ranch dressing. Wanted it chopped until it turned into a soup."

Now, this may be an efficient way to get an army of meat and calories down your gullet and directly into your digestive system without all the bells and whistles of having to chew. Or, if you're dead-set on ingesting these sodium-packed proteins with a jaw that was wired shut. Like the way Subway makes big changes to its menu, hopefully that customer made big changes to what they order, at the behest of their cardiologist.

As per the "Merriam-Webster Dictionary,"the very first word in the very official definition of a cappuccino is "espresso." It is fundamental to what a cappuccino is, like salt to the Dead Sea, or tormented fans to the New York Jets. Going into, say, Starbucks, and ordering a cappuccino without espresso, and without accompanying air quotes, defies both reason and lexicography. Yet ...

"I work at Starbucks," regaled a Redditor. "We have a regular who gets a Cappuccino with no shots of espresso, 10 pumps of Vanilla, made with half and half, and foamed completely. He eats it with a spoon, and we call it The Prolapse."

Funny. You could also call this a logic puzzle akin to The Ship of Theseus, except every piece of wood in that ship was replaced by another piece of wood. Whereas the components of this Cappuccino of Theseus are replaced by complete madness.

Weird as some of these entries may be, there are one or two you come across that you almost have to applaud. Especially one that just so beautifully combines simplicity, eccentricity, and blithe disregard of both the self and society at large; turning a wild fast food order into a kind of poetry.

We have nothing less than KFC's famous gravy to thank for this inspiration. As a former acolyte of the Colonel told it on Reddit: "Worked at KFC once had a guy come through the drive thru and order a large gravy and a straw. And that was it. He got his gravy stuck the straw in and just started drinking as he drove off."

This a move you can perhaps call heroic. The implacable cool of the Big Lebowski combined with the instincts of Homer Simpson. Maybe the fact that KFC apparently uses fryer scraps in its gravy technically turns this order into an actual meal. Regardless, drive on, dear friend. Drive on.

Sometimes, a fast food chain just asks for it. Which is also a reason they all keep a team of expensive corporate lawyers readily on hand. For, if a popular eatery makes a bold claim in an ad, you can bet somewhere in America, people will test it. Apparently, during Sonic's "Chili Makes It Better" campaign in the early 2000s, a couple of buddies decided to do just that.

Coming straight from the horse's mouth on Reddit: "I'm not a fast food worker but a few years ago Sonic was running these ads about how chili makes everything better. Me and a friend went to Sonic and ordered a route 44 coke with chili inside the coke. We had three different attendants call us back making sure we wanted chili inside the coke."

Good to see that Sonic has at least a three-level bizarre-order clearance protocol. No word from the chili-soda concocters on whether this turned out to be so-wild-it-just-might-work or so-wild-it-really-is-just-wild. To be fair, you never know, until you try something. Also, to be fair, sometimes you just know without trying something.

The machinations of how fast food ordering works sometimes clashes with the desire of fast food restaurants to make their customers happy. Case in point: Say someone wants to order just a lone pile of pickles for lunch. Because this actually happened at a McDonald's.

One probably doesn't feel like — or at least this customer didn't — they can walk into Mickey D's and straight-up order that. So, this customer instead requested a double cheeseburger, telling the staff to hold the onions, ketchup, mustard, cheese, bun, and patty, while "adding" extra pickles. End result: pile of pickles. A roundabout means to a curious end.

This particular order from McDonald's went viral after it was leaked (not unlike pickle juice), and the reactions predictably ran the gamut. Some were horrified (because people can get easily horrified), some were incredibly amused, some were angry (just a guess, because that always happens for whatever reason), and some were completely on board. A mystery remains, however. Was it a joke? A dare? Maybe it's better not to know.

There was a time when Subway had round sandwich bread. Revolutionary, right? Unfortunately, this inspired innovation was mostly out of the sandwich artist rotation by the early 2000s, leaving millions to somehow find these mythical "rolls" elsewhere. Before that happened, however, as told by a Subway worker on Reddit, one customer used the bread rounds as a vehicle for a very unique order.

"Dude comes in and orders a BMT on one. Pepperoni, salami, ham, provolone, mayo, lettuce, tomato, banana peppers, all normal. Then this UNGODLY b**tard asked me to put a chocolate chip cookie on the sandwich with a drizzle of sweet onion sauce on top."

Ungodly may be a bit much as a descriptor. Granted, it's one thing if you don't want Subway's poorly regarded Italian sub on its own, and there are plenty of other options besides sweet-onion-cookie BMT. But, who knows, maybe the guy just didn't have time to have a separate dessert and decided to streamline his operations. Wise business.

Now we finally know what would happen if Rocky Balboa ordered at Jack In The Box. (It is, of course, the pop culture mashup everyone's been asking for.) After he ran hundreds of miles all the way from Philadelphia to the nearest Jack In The Box location, in his soiled, matching gray sweatsuit, he would no doubt pull up to the counter (or the drive-thru, to keep running) and order what this Redditor claimed someone once ordered: "While at Jack In the Box a guy asked us to put a raw egg in his milkshake. My coworker told him no since that was a health violation." Health violation? Ha. Maybe to someone who wasn't taking on Apollo Creed.

Like with a lot of these bizarre orders, there are questions. Did the customer just like that? Was he trying to meet his daily keto protein count while sneaking in a sweet treat? Did he want to displace the onion rings as the worst item you can order from Jack In The Box? Motives are always tough to discern when a raw egg is involved.

We've thus far underestimated the effect of alcohol on any given left-field fast food order. Especially since booze is often a factor in decision-making that befuddles the sober mind. Mix that in with a group of dudes and late hours, and you'll get something like what this former Taco Bell worker described on Reddit.

"One night after bar close, a group comes through the drive thru drunk as heck. They order a bunch of $1 burritos and three Strawberry Frutista Freezes. One of the guys yells into the speaker that he wants a scoop of beef in his Frutista Freeze."

After confirmation that this indeed was what had to happen, the supervisor got in on the fun. "The closing manager is helping me out with drinks during the post bar close rush, and decides to personally hand out the order to this car. The driver is taking the food/drinks and handing it to the passengers, someone from the back seat yells 'I hope you didn't forget my beefy freeze!' My manager replies 'We didn't, but good luck figuring out which one is which.'" Take that, ya lushes!

As mentioned, there are a couple of orders on this list you can perhaps call inspired. At least, in terms of fast food monstrosity meals. Thinking outside the box can be a generous way to describe a few of those mentioned, yet in this case it might be apt. In a lightning bolt moment, one Sonic customer thought, "what if a mozzarella stick wasn't just a mozzarella stick?"

An ex-worker let it fly on Reddit with the eureka instance in question: "I worked at a Sonic and a guy came and ordered a large mozzarella stick, but he wanted it in the one of the boats we use for footlong coneys and for us to add Fritos, chili, cheese, jalapeños, and ranch (so basically an Extreme Tot but with mozzarella sticks and Fritos)."

Not only did the staff oblige the order, they took inspiration from it. "We made it, he seemed really happy with it, and since we were slow at the time, we decided to make another one and try it ourselves. It was incredible. It became a staple for employees to make for themselves at that store after that." What a beautiful epilogue.

The Caniac Combo from Raising Cane's is the largest value meal on the chicken chain's menu, and it is indeed a beast of a chow-down: six chicken fingers, crinkle-cut fries, Texas toast, coleslaw, and a large drink, not to mention two hits of Cane's Sauce. Regardless, one customer looked this meal up and down and decided to do a bit of, shall we say, modifying.

"Some guy substituted everything in a caniac for Cole Slaw," a bemused Cane's worker explained on Reddit. "Basically he got like 10 cups of cole slaw and a lemonade. As a generational cole slaw hater I couldn't believe it."

And this employee was not the only person affiliated with the eatery who is not a fan of the side order. The irony being that the very founder of Raising Cane's doesn't even eat his own chain's coleslaw. Well, in this case, the customer was undeterred by that, and the slaw was no mere side. It was the everything. Would it have been easier just to ask for a bunch of coleslaw and a lemonade? Probably. But where's the game in that?

Many McDonald's customers have their own, very personal relationship with Chicken McNuggets. Some will only eat the round ones. Some prefer to order them extra crispy (at their own grease-enhancing, employee-irking risk). Some like to make copycat recipes at home. And one customer in particular likes to dip them in their own, head-scratching, customized sauce.

What was this sauce order a McDonald's worker on Reddit fulfilled? "A man asked for a bag filled with mayo and caramel to dip chicken nuggets in." Yep. Sure, it's important to remain objective and non-judgmental, but just the sound of this makes one scratch their head.

It is kind of great though that the guy just asked for the caramel and the mayo to be thrown in a bag. Like, why even bother with any sense of decorum when you're requesting something like this? Hey, if you're gonna do you, do you without apologies, and without the hoity-toity embellishments of paper sauce cups.

For anyone that's a parent, this singularly odd fast food request might not be as deserving of scorn or mockery as others. Rearing young children means you often find yourself in a world where nothing makes sense, and your will has been broken past the point of trying to fight it. Instead, you embrace it.

"We had a lady come through at Taco Bell once who wanted a cheesy fiesta potatoes container filled with shredded cheese because her son would ONLY eat cheese from Taco Bell," went one Reddit worker report. "My manager walked me through pricing the transaction, and then laughingly advised the woman to 'keep the container' and just refill it with store brand cheese once it was empty."

Can we take a moment to applaud the manager for not only understanding and acquiescing to the mom, but providing a brilliantly simple solution that, presumably, only an experienced parent would share. Well done, sir.

Breakfast can be many things to many people. Yes, the conventional repertory of cereal, eggs, bacon, toast, pancakes, oatmeal, and the rest are often the parameters for that first meal of the day. Then there are those whose morning-time palates have a much wider range. Then there is the outlier who adds an unholy condiment to a breakfast food and suddenly the walls of perception feel like they're collapsing.

The condiment in question? We can't even bring ourselves to type it out, so we'll let this McDonald's worker who experienced the barbarity firsthand tell it: "Somebody ordered two SEC McGriddles the other day with butter and tartar added." You read that right. Tartar sauce. For breakfast. No, just no.

Sure, mayonnaise is not at all unheard of on a breakfast sandwich. But its tangy offshoot, made for fried fish and other sea fare, feels so wrong in that arena. Especially on a McGriddle of all things, with its maple-y sweet pancakes that are already perfectly calibrated with the savory sausage patty, egg, and cheese. Even the addition of butter seems unnecessary, but extra butter is never the breakfast crime tartar sauce is.