Pound of Wings? Ok, you got it.

Malicious Compliance over on reddit has to be my new favourite feel good place to read a great story or two, especially this one posted by u/advocatus_ebrius_est

I worked as a cook at a chain restaurant that had a ‘wing night’ where you could get a pound of wings at a discounted price.

We didn’t actually weigh the wings, our specs said eight wings to a pound. Four drums and four flats.

One night a table comes in and everyone orders a pound of wings. A little while after the wings go out, the server comes back a little flustered and explains there has been a complaint.

Apparently, one of the guys at the table complained that it was ‘obvious’ that he didn’t get a pound, because it would be a huge coincidence if everyone’s pounds led to the same number of wings on each plate. He insisted that the server go and weigh these (already discounted) wings to make sure he was “getting what he paid for”.

So we weighted it. Sure enough it was not a pound. It was a pound and a half. We tell the server to bring it out and tell him he’s getting more than a pound. She says “fuck no. He paid for a pound, he’s going to “get what he paid for”” and threw two of his wings in the garbage and re-weighted the food. Still over. Throws another one out. Bang on 1 pound of wings.

So she brings back out his 5 wings and calmly tells the gentleman “here are your wings sir. You were right, there was more than a pound there. So we threw the other ones out. Good catch”.

When they ordered a second round, he didn’t complain that everyone got 8 wings to a “pound”.

Edits: Obligatory thank yous to everyone. I’ve never had a post generate this much discussion or get this much attention. Nor have I ever gotten anything like this number of awards. Thank you kind strangers.

On the size of the wings: You can buy 6-8 count wings if you shop around a little bit. Like shrimp, for example, wings are sold by their “count” of pieces per pound. This place made wings (and burgers) their signature items. Yes, they were very large wings, which were then double breaded.

On the fact that they ordered a second round: This is not unusual. If you’ve ever worked at a wing joint, you would know that people will order round after round of wings. Minus the bones, there is not a lot of food there compared to, say, a steak or a chicken breast.

On throwing the food out: we got staff meals and no one was terribly interested in eating food that was already pawed over by someone else. Plus, cooks rarely go hungry. There was plenty of fresh food on the line. We certainly were not going to put them on some other customer’s plate.

Thanks everyone. Glad you all enjoyed this so much.