Woman's Server Shames Her For Ordering Too Much Food When All She Got Was A Soup And Salad
The server took an enjoyable meal and made it awkward.
baranq / Shutterstock For many, going out to eat is a treat. As the economy continues to look bleaker, eating at a restaurant is becoming more and more of a luxury. The last thing someone wants is to be shamed for their choices when going to their favorite eatery.
Unfortunately, that’s exactly what happened to one woman.
A woman only ordered soup and salad but was shamed by her server for doing so.
TikTok user Ashley Kenney posts lifestyle content that she claims is “for the entertainment of me and my two friends.” However, one of her recent videos reached far more people than she was expecting. With over 270,000 views, the video has gone viral on the app.
“Imagine you get a soup and salad, and the food runner says, ‘These are both for you? You’re going to finish them both?!’” she shared.
In the video, Kenney shows her soup and salad, which are relatively small.
Despite this strange comment, Kenney was quick to defend the server. “To be clear, she was very sweet,” she said in the caption. “I don’t think she meant anything bad by it, but it did not translate well.”
Fellow TikTokers were quick to point out that this was unprofessional behavior for a restaurant employee.
“I really feel like it should be an unspoken rule in any sort of restaurant to not comment on how much someone is eating,” one person said. “It’s so strange!”
“Bro, why do they criticize food intake like they don’t get more money the more food you buy?” another person asked.
A third person shared an equally strange experience they once had. “I had a waitress at a Thai restaurant refuse to serve me two entrees because it was too much food,” they said. “I told her that’s what I wanted and that I’d eat it all and pay, but she refused to serve me.”
Kenney experienced a form of food shaming when her server made those comments.
When Kenney’s server commented on the size of her meal, she was food-shaming her. Whether it was intentional or not is unclear, but it’s not a good thing.
According to the Cleveland Clinic, “Food shaming can come in many different forms. It could be comments about the type of food you’re eating … Food shaming can also be defined as commentary about the quality of the food, calorie/fat/carb counts, or just examining portion sizes.”
There are a variety of reasons that one person may food shame another. Psychologist Ninoska Peterson explained in an article for the Cleveland Clinic, “These judgments could come from your own experience or the culture you grew up in. They could also be generational and framed by the trends of the time. Currently, it seems like a lot of these thoughts are influenced by social media. But family history, your relationship with food, or even childhood eating patterns can play a role in food shaming.”
Regardless of how much someone is eating, it’s never another person’s place to comment on the amount of food, especially not a server who is a complete stranger.
Many servers who commented on Kenney’s video expressed concern over her server’s behavior and said they would never do such a thing.
One server noted, “I work at Olive Garden, and we have unlimited soup and salad, and one time, I had a man eat seven bowls of soup.”
Even if you silently judge someone else for what they’re eating or how much, it’s best not to verbalize those thoughts. We really have no right to comment on another person’s eating habits, and, often, regardless of how close we are to them, we really don’t know exactly what they’re going through.
Mary-Faith Martinez is a writer for YourTango who covers entertainment, news, and human interest topics.