Patronising note on food truck leaves customers in stitches in Melbourne

A ‘bold and condescending’ note on a food truck specialising in loaded and ‘curly’ potatoes has sparked strong reactions.

The note, from a market in Melbourne, gave patrons some basic consumer etiquette tips and made digs at younger customers.

Many are fixated on the matter-of-fact and no-nonsense tone the note adopts. 

‘When you get to the register and pay you will be issued with a ticket. One ticket is one spud. If you lose your ticket, the staff will not give you a spud,’ the note read.

The note specifically requested customers have money ready to pay at the counter – and chastised Gen Z for holding up lines by having to perform bank transfers before paying. 

‘When you hand your ticket to the staff to collect your spud, you will then be asked what seasoning you would like.’ 

‘Gen Z: please have money transferred into your account so you don’t delay the person(s) behind you.’

The food truck also answered frequently asked questions about popular flavours and spice levels. 

‘The most popular flavour is chicken salt. The Hot & Spicy is hot. When you ask us how hot, remember that your taste buds are different to everyone else’s.’

Hundreds in the comments agreed with the note’s sentiments. 

‘My work needs the notice about money transfer, so annoying.’

However others mocked boomers.

‘This is exactly why I still write cheques.’

‘The millennials are so impatient,’ another complained. ‘When I get to the cashier and they tell me how much, that’s when I open my handbag and go looking for my purse.’ 

She added, ‘When I eventually find it and go looking for the right card – and then when I find that I need to slide it out of the slot in the right way . . .’

One made a joke about Gen Z’s short attention span.

‘Gen Z won’t have the attention span to read that,’ he said. ‘You need to have a video of someone reading it for them, but the video also needs to have someone playing Subway Surfers or they will have a panic attack.’

Two men even made a play on the popular Boomer refrain that young people need to stop eating out so much if they want to save up for a home.

‘If they didn’t eat so many potatoes, they could buy a house instead of rent one.’

‘This is real life. This is what renters don’t understand. They just order eight servings of avocado and except to get through life like the rest of us!’

Customers cannot stop buzzing about a particularly bold and condescending note that was stuck to the front of a food truck

But some seemed genuinely frustrated.

‘I’m so sick of waiting for Gen Z in front of me to transfer money.’

‘Why can’t they just have enough spending money in one account if it’s going to be used anyway?’

One man recalled an event from his childhood that turned into a core memory – where similarly snarky people ran an eatery he went to after school. 

‘When I was about eight-years-old, I used to get burgers and chips at a local bowls club near school that was run by a bunch of oldies.’

‘I always hated tomato, but liked it as a sauce. I declined raw tomato on my burger but requested some tomato sauce, when an old man turned his head and yelled, ‘IF YOU RECKON YOU DON’T LIKE TOMATO THEN YOU SHOULDN’T WANT TOMATO SAUCE – IT’S STILL TOMATO. YOU’RE NOT HAVING ANY’ and it made me cry.’

‘The old lady just put the sauce bottle down out of submission and handed me my burger,’ he finished his story sadly.