When a woman asked a Starbucks worker to cut her sandwich in half so she could share it with her husband, she could have never guessed the state in which her lunch would be given to her.
On Nov. 6, in the subreddit r/starbucks, Vivian Hargis (u/natasbby on Reddit) posted a photo of an oddly oblong sandwich she got from Starbucks, sharing the context behind it.
“Hubby and I wanted to split a sandwich. I asked if it was possible if they could cut it in half. The barista said ‘of course no problem!’….. guess I should’ve been more specific,” she captioned the photo.
The image shows half of a Turkey, Provolone & Pesto on Ciabatta sandwich — cut in half lengthwise, rather than crosswise, creating two very tall and skinny halves.
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Some members of the subreddit, who, like the original poster, are current or former Starbucks employees, shared their experiences doing the same thing. Others just broke out in laughter.
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“ngl ive done this before,” commented one Reddit user, to which the OP replied, “We got a good chuckle out of it. Watching him shove half of it down it one bite was quite the picture.”
“I’m sorry but This is so funny 🤣,” wrote another person, to which someone else replied, “I literally busted out laughing when I saw it.”
“I love this because it was so much harder for them to cut it like this,” observed another.
“To be fair, it IS cut in half 🤣,” commented someone else.
“It’s giving malicious compliance lmfaooooo,” noted yet another user.
“One time someone asked for a spinach feta wrap cut in half and my coworker cut it like this and then forgot to give her the other half 😭,” commented one apparent Starbucks worker.
In response to someone asking her if she requested her sandwich “cut in half” or “cut in 2,” Hargis offered a theory as to why she and her spouse received their sandwich this way.
“We actually got two sandwiches, both cut in half. (He couldn’t decide which he wanted so we split both) and I asked for them to be cut in half. The other one was cut in half like I expected,” she wrote. “I expect whoever was on food was irritated the barista on (drive thru) told me they would cut them.”
But, Hargis says, it was all in good fun.
“It was hilarious, we both had a good laugh about it, and my parents thought it was hilarious, too,” Hargis tells TODAY.com, adding that after she texted the image to her parents, they encouraged her to share it with the world. “They were like, ‘Put that on Reddit!’ That's when I put it on.”
TODAY.com reached out to Starbucks for comment.
In comparison to sandwich fails, cake fails seem to be a bit more common — at least in terms of internet virality.
In April, a man’s order for a Costco birthday cake went viral when the bakery took his instructions too literally, decorating it with his own diagram of the request. In May, a Texas baker misread an order for an Elmo cake in the most hilarious way imaginable.
And more recently, in October, a mom who wanted to throw the perfect Minions-themed party for her son’s birthday had her H-E-B cake request fulfilled in the most abstract of ways.
This story first appeared on TODAY.com. More from TODAY: