Footage from earlier this year showed a massive food fight breaking out between a handful of angry customers and Waffle House employees during a late-night conflict at the beloved breakfast diner. The video is just the latest example of chaos erupting during after-hours disputes at Waffle House, which have increasingly gone viral over the past few years.
The clip begins with a conflict that is already in progress, where a cook appears to have had enough with one of her patrons. The employee hurls what seems to be a liquid or food of some sort at a group sitting at the countertop. This ignites a back-and-forth exchange of dinner plates, food, and other dining essentials being repurposed as offensive projectiles.
The customers were pelting the employees with plates, glasses, and anything else that could be found on the countertop. Amid the breaking of glass, what appeared to be a “Caution: Wet Floor” sign came flying across the room from an unseen individual. After the group had exhausted their ammunition of objects to throw, they peeled out of the restaurant one by one.
There has been substantial debate online as to what has led to the evident decline in social decorum, which has led to the outbreak of late-night fights at Waffle House. Some have suggested it is the product of the COVID-19 lockdowns, which strained the fabric of society and altered social behaviors. Others have claimed it is simply the result of staying open late, where many drunk customers stumble in.
One person commented in a Reddit thread about the topic, “The violence at Waffle House isn’t just post-pandemic. That’s how Waffle House has always been. If you were to rank late-night restaurants, it’s Denny’s and I-Hop, and then much lower down on the ladder is Waffle House. Denny’s and IHop avoid some of the issues by having high-backed booths that separate customers, and a kitchen in the back. There are still fights at those other places, but not at the same frequency. Waffle House stuffs everybody into too tight of a space and they’re often located in sh*ttier parts of town. So by saving money, Waffle House increases the chances of conflict.”
Watch the food fight below:
Another person claimed, “Waffle houses are highly mismanaged from a restaurant perspective. Top down, they don’t have the best staff and things don’t get done making the job harder and more frustrating for everybody else working until the machine grinds to a halt and a single waffle takes 1 hour to get to you and you probably never even got your drinks in that hour wait. Mix that with alcohol and late nights and you get violence.”
“I’ve lived near and experienced many waffle houses in my time and the issues and shenanigans there existed way before covid. I think there likely is a relationship between the two. Something in how we interact with others in “dire” or non-ideal situations. With WH it’s that you are very drunk and you are willing to kill to receive that omelet and waffle. The other circumstances I think are similar as in with retail you can run into issues trying to return an item and in air travel pretty much everything sucks,” another person weighed in.
Note: The featured image is a screenshot from the embedded video.
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