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Just to throw it out there, 86 is also used in the film industry (at least in LA) meaning to cancel or get rid of something. It’s very widely used across the industry. I don’t know of any other slang that is shared between restaurants and film though.
I don’t really care for what, if you are requesting something from someone you don’t know in a way that’s intentionally stupid or roundabout, you need to be prepared to get exactly what you asked for.
Fast food doubly so, they give no shits. Ask for a burger but hold the burger? Expect an empty wrapper.
Technically correct, which is the best kind of correct.
tell me about it! i ordered a cherry π and received three and some bits of cherries instead!
that’s totes the fault of the guy who can’t understand what i mean when i’m trying to be esoteric!
Hey man, I’m sorry… If they handed you a measurable quantity of cherries then you didn’t get what you asked for.
We probably would’ve dragged it at the bar I work at and not serve cherries for the rest of the night lol
Yeah, that’s on the customer. If you write that you want a bunch of fuckin cherries then you’re getting a bunch of fuckin cherries. Now go eat the pile of cherries you ordered.
Honestly I’d work under the assumption that restaurant employees knew what “86” meant. I’d still prob just write “no cherries” lol but the assumption isn’t that crazy. It’s common restaurant lingo.
Edit: people that never worked in a restaurant downvoting me “I NEVER HEARD OF NO 86, DOWNVOTED FOR SHARING AN ANECDOTE” lol this site is cancer. There’s a reason lemmy will never take off, and it’s the user base
least toxic person on the internet
Downvotes mean nothing here. You dont have to get upset. Writing 86 cherries when you mean no cherries on a piece of paper with no context is a dumbass thing to do. Write what you mean and be concise. Nobody writes down the number 86 when they mean no. The separation from the vocal component is enough to be confusing.
downvotes here mean exactly as much as they mean anywhere else
AND FOR THE 9TH TIME, I wouldn’t write “86” when I meant “no”, but expecting restaurant workers to know restaurant lingo isn’t some massive stretch. He’s not speaking Latin. the bigger dumbass is 100% the person who actually put 86 cherries into a milkshake.
nobody writes down the number
um the guy in this post CLEARLY did so. i just proved you wrong pal
And he got his 86 cherries for his troubles.
86 this reply
Bro these are high schoolers working fast food
What does 86 mean?
It’s usually used in the context of a restaurant kitchen. Like if they run out of olives they would yell eighty-six olives. So don’t sell anything with olives without warning and don’t go looking for them.
You’re downvoted because dude. Just no…
“86 cherries” means eighty six cherries, “no cherries” means no cherries… If people learnt to communicate clearly this world would be a better place
Edit: also this has nothing to do with Lemmy being “cancer”? Your argument is poor
It’s even the same amount of characters 🤦
It’s common resturant lingo but fast food is completely different from resturant work. Also “86” literally has the same number of characters as “no”. They could have put down “no cherries” with the exact same ease. They decided to play a stupid game so they won a stupid prize, a stupid amount of cherries.
In my 30s, and while I’ve heard “let’s 86 the _____” numerous times, I honestly wouldn’t have connected that to “86 cherries” on an order.
I’ve worked in food, fast and fancy, and nobody would say “86 cherries” instead of “no cherries”. Clarity is conducive to a smoothly flowing kitchen.
As someone who’s worked a few fast food jobs, no, I’d have no fucking clue what is meant by that. Piss and cry in your edit all you want.
“I NEVER HEARDA 86, DOWNVOTED CAUSE IM FUCKIN DUMB”
It is absolutely common restaurant lingo. I can use it with anyone I know from restaurants seamlessly.
That said, fast food work is a different subculture.
Yeah, I’ve never once heard it when I worked fast food, only full service
You’ve done both? That’s rough, buddy.
But wouldn’t the common restaurant lingo be “86 THE cherries?”
86 is a verb. To 86 something is to exclude it. But 86 alone is a number like any other. Just as 50 alone isn’t pronounced “five-oh” and doesn’t mean the Hawaii State Police. If I said “I’m 50,” you’d assume it’s my age, not my profession.
If I said, “That’s the shit!” I’d mean the opposite of “That’s shit!”
Mileage varies. I’ve seen “86 [thing]” written on whiteboards more often than not, grammatically speaking.
Also, a single cherry is the norm, perched decoratively atop the whipped cream. So “86 the cherry” would have been clear, and they could maybe get away with “86 cherry” according to you, but “86 cherries” might as well be “69 cherries.” You wouldn’t expect that to mean mutual oral sex.
You’re right, that would have been the “correct” way, with the “the.” When spoken it’s almost always said, or in the past tense like “cherries are 86’d.”
Of course, “no cherry” is leagues superior when you’re the customer, I mean really. He was just asking for a high ass employee who fully knew to just do it because they think it’s absolutely hilarious (and that would have been the right move lol.)
The other commenter is also right, the whiteboards in the kitchen always leave out the “the,” but that is a shorthand on a shorthand. They also probably write like “86 B.O” for “We are currently out of black olives,” and you don’t want to know how they abbreviate Jalapeños. The whiteboard is not a reliable source in that respect, it’s almost code, or like a Chef’s Cant.
TIL, cool
But, yeah, I would read it as pretentious little thing even if I knew the lingo. Honestly I approve the person getting 86 cherries. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
Sorry dog I worked in food service as a teenager and didn’t learn what 86ing was until I heard Gordon Ramsay say it in an episode of kitchen nightmares.
I’m 46 and it’s the first time I hear it. I would probably ask a manager what to do as 86 cherries is a lot but my AuDHD is ok with counting exactly 86 cherries lol
I’m 33 and I understood, probably more regional than anything
I’m guessing you’ve never worked in a restaurant? Like I said, in my experience it’s common in the industry
Yeah, but a fast food restaurant run by teenagers is not synonymous with a kitchen full of cooks lead by a chef.
Working in fast food is pretty different from full restaurants. I worked fast food first, never heard the term until I started waiting tables a few years later. In fast food, there’s not as much of a chain of communication that requires pass phrases to get info across quickly. Just one kid with an order terminal and another kid assembling the order as it was entered.
All of that aside, if I hear someone use that term IRL, it does tend to sound pretentious because you’re basically using jargon outside of its typical area of use and expecting everyone to know wtf you’re talking about. It’s almost like you want someone to ask, so you can be like “you don’t kNoW???”
Probably people don’t mean to come off that way, but that is the vibe I catch most of the time.
you’re basically using jargon outside of its typical area of use and expecting everyone to know wtf you’re talking about
I mean, the guy who used the restaurant term was giving directions directly to a restaurant.
Like I said, I would personally just say “no cherries”, but messaging restaurant lingo to a restaurant isn’t some crazy reach. Not enough to warrant the original comment that I responded to, basically saying “fuck that guy, eat your fuckin cherries”.
I mean, the guy who used the restaurant term was giving directions directly to a restaurant.
A “fast food joint” is not a restaurant in that sense. Nobody with any common sense would expect a bunch of kids working their (likely) first job for spending money to be up on, or care about, restaurant jargon.
So many people in here saying teenagers. It’s often older people who work these shit minimum wage jobs. How could McDonald’s be open at noon on a Wednesday if it was being run by a bunch of high school kids?
Didn’t mean to single you out really it’s just the fourth time in this thread I saw someone say fast food is a bunch of kids. It’s really fucking poor adults. Trust me I was one.
Here’s where the ‘86’ came from.
Back in the day, there was a speakeasy with two doors. The entry door was through a small courtyard and the exit door was onto the street. If you knocked on the street door, which had the address on it, you couldn’t get in. If you got obnoxious, you’d be thrown out the street door. That door had an ‘86’ on it.
I have never heard of either 86 nor this speakeasy. What a cool thing to learn! Thanks for sharing this historic nugget!
Edit, autocorrect on grammar
86 your account bud
“…”
“…”
“…”
“…Okay!”
Never heard of it so I had to look
https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/eighty-six-meaning-origin
Eighty-six is slang meaning “to throw out,” “to get rid of,” or “to refuse service to.” It comes from 1930s soda-counter slang meaning that an item was sold out. There is varying anecdotal evidence about why the term eighty-six was used, but the most common theory is that it is rhyming slang for nix.
Yeah 86 doesn’t really mean to get rid of something. At least in my time in the restaurant industry I never heard it used that way. It just means that we were out of something.
“86 the chef special” == get rid of it [from the menu]
No, “86 the chef special” means 'kitchen is out of chef special.
Yes, your task is to remove it from the menu.
But you aren’t 86ing it.
You’re marking it as 86’d because the quantity is below minimum threshold (usually zero).
str 86;str itmTo86;86='get rid of';info(strFmt('%1 %2',86,itmTo86));(This won’t actually work, since you can’t assign ints as variables, but whatever. It was fun)
That was my experience as well. Though we would also refer to a banned customer as “86’d.”
Same meaning in my experience. The patron is kicked out. 86’d is the past tense. ‘they have been 86’d’
You no longer have any of that product, ingredient, or in this case customer.
In a workshop environment I’ve heard “86 it” to mean “get rid of it.” synonymous with “shitcan it.”
And that’s the joke behind Agent 86’s number on Get Smart. He’s a bad agent, and someone should have gotten rid of him.
Was this customer a 1930’s gangster?
Maybe!
But this is still fairly common shorthand for waiters.
Universal expression in the hospitality industry
Why would 86 mean none?
86 is a slang term that means to get rid of something. See the Green Day song ‘86’ as an example. The origin is from a really long time ago, when it meant a menu item at restaurants was no longer available.
It’s rhyming slang with ‘nix’ which is Latin, and means to nullify or cancel. Because there layers of meaning hidden in english, Latin, and arabic numbers is not possible to be confusing.
And not to be confused with ‘deep 6’ which means to destroy, kill orr bury something 6 feet deep.
Instructing kitchen to deep 6 the cherries, the line cooks gonna need a gun and a shovel.
It still means that and is still used in that capacity at restaurants.
Good to know; I only knew that usage from movies and whatnot, had no idea it was still used like that!
Why would 86 mean none?
I like the theory that it’s like Cockney rhyming slang—eight-six, nix.
Like what Don Cheadle’s character do in Ocean’s Eleven.
That portrayal was so bad that the leading theory is his character was actually an American faking it
Jokes on you, I just got a week supply of cherries.
