Taco Bell Employees Hate These 10 Customer Habits

Like any job, working at Taco Bell has its upsides and its downsides — and, as with all public-facing roles, those downsides can often be determined by customer interactions. When everyone's happy and things go smoothly, working with customers can be a breeze for Taco Bell employees. Things can quickly go south, though, when the folks who are buying their favorite Taco Bell menu items are doing so in ways that workers see time and time again, and which can cause more stress than you think.

Certain customer habits specific to Taco Bell can really get on the nerves of the people who work there, and you might even be doing them without knowing it. This can be as innocent as ordering items with the wrong name, or failing to specify what type of menu item you want (there's more than just one type of drink, folks). Elsewhere, customers can be a lot more disruptive and, at times, unreasonable, with rude behavior and poor drive-thru etiquette causing needless stress for employees. Oh, and those viral tricks you've seen online? They may not be received that well by your average Taco Bell worker.

Is a burrito a sandwich? We'd say the jury's out, but in a sense, it's already spoken. As reported by Today, back in 2024, an Indiana judge ruled that burritos are indeed "Mexican-style sandwiches," somewhat settling an online debate that's been raging for years now. It's worth pointing out, though, that the judge's ruling (which was in relation to one specific restaurant owner and his ambitions to open a unit in a shopping center) does not supersede what Taco Bell considers its burritos to be, or what they're called. On its menu, they're burritos, not sandwiches.

This means that when customers ask for a sandwich at the chain, when they mean a burrito, it can be pretty irritating for its workers — and it happens a lot more than you might think. It may not be the biggest deal in the world, but it's certainly something they'd rather not navigate. Additionally, customers have a habit of being rather loose around what burritos they actually want: They frequently just ask for a burrito, instead of specifying the type they'd like to order. There are a lot of burritos at Taco Bell, and no two are the same, people. Check that menu!

Over the years, Taco Bell has developed a reputation as being an affordable fast-food restaurant, but those days may well be over. A study by FinanceBuzz found that its prices rose by 81% between 2014 and 2024, making it the chain with the third-highest increase over that period, and with the cost of its menu items outpacing inflation by more than double. It's no wonder, then, that Taco Bell customers are feeling a little annoyed about its prices of late, and it's perhaps no surprise that frustration bubbles over now and again.

When it's aimed at its in-store employees, though, they really don't like it — and to be honest, it's because they get it. Taco Bell workers are well aware that some of its items feel too expensive for what you get, and that you can probably find more authentic, higher-quality food elsewhere, if you're willing to spend a little more. It's also worth remembering that these prices actually limit how much the staff can get with their in-store food allowance, so they're affected by it too. However, if you're viewing them as the enemy and getting angry ... well, the person in front of you doesn't set the prices. It might be worth putting it in an email to corporate instead.

Viral hacks and trends can influence fast-food restaurants considerably (and can even make them change how you order), but a lot of the time, they can just be annoying for the people who work there. Suddenly, employees have to adapt to the latest fashion and start building items that they'd previously never heard of. It's even worse for them when these items aren't officially on the menu, or when people have simply heard via word-of-mouth that they can get a specific thing at a fast-food franchise if they put in an adapted order. At Taco Bell, this can lead to people trying to buy a bag of its jalapeño sauce, which you can do if you ask for 30 regular portions of it.

Now, put yourselves in the shoes of that Taco Bell employee for a second. They have to stare at a massive ticket with the same order over and over again, count whether it's the right amount, and then go to their manager and ask if they can fulfill it. If they can't, they then have to fill 30 individual cups of sauce. Is all of this really worth it? Can't you live without a bag of jalapeño sauce taking up space in your refrigerator? Sure, you can still go ahead and ask for it — but you're not going to be anyone's favorite customer of the day.

There's more than one type of drink at Taco Bell, and there's more than one type of sauce, too. Apparently, though, customers forget this a lot. Taco Bell employees repeatedly have to deal with diners simply asking for a large drink, or just "a drink," or even a drink brand that isn't on the menu at all. As well as doing that, some people will ask for taco sauce without specifying which one they want, or simply respond with a "yes" when they're asked if they'd like any. You can probably see how this can grate on Taco Bell employees' nerves a little. 

It's not unreasonable not to know what's on the menu, but it's also common sense to know that there's more than one drink available, and that you should probably tell them which one you want. It's also useful to bear in mind that Taco Bell stocks Pepsi products, not Coca-Cola ones, so asking for a Diet Coke will get you nowhere. The sauce question is a little more understandable, but even then, you might want to double-check which flavors and heat levels it sells before you order.

Customizations are a hot topic among Taco Bell employees, and when you ask for them is almost as important as how you do so. When putting in orders, customers will often wait until the very end to ask for changes or customization. Although this might feel logical, employees say that this can create a fair bit of disruption, and that it's much better to ask for the items you want to be removed first.

"If you ask for all the ingredients you want removed first it helps the line people," said one worker on Reddit. Taco Bell's food is made very quickly, and your order and how it's assembled can quickly become confused. An example, from that same employee, is a burrito made with extra cheese and no sauce. If the "no sauce" part comes at the end, one of the workers in the line might have already put it on, leading to a wasted piece of food.

The solution here is simple, though: Just lead with your customizations, and specifically the items you're removing, in your order. If you're determined to hack your Taco Bell burrito, make sure you're clear about what you're taking out.

Customizations are bigger than ever at fast-food chains. Every restaurant out there wants to offer customers as much choice as possible, so they can feel as though they're getting exactly what they want, and Taco Bell's no different. That said, like any fast-food place, there's a limit to how much you can feasibly ask people to tweak things before they'll get irritated. At Taco Bell, people can push things a lot further than they perhaps should by modifying orders until the items are no longer recognizable, and the workers definitely notice.

What's even worse is that customers can then complain that the order they modified to high heaven, which they're sitting in their car waiting to receive, is taking too long to make. For workers, this just feels unreasonable: If you're asking them to alter an item significantly, you need to give them some extra time to put it together. With all that said, Taco Bell workers aren't unwilling to make modifications, by any means. Like anyone else, they understand that doing so can improve an item or make it easier to make. When you start putting in orders that are just difficult to make, though, it gets annoying fast.

It's a fairly well-known fact that Taco Bell doesn't travel well. Despite this, some customers feel determined to try to beat the physical reality of their food and order it from miles away, while expecting that it will somehow arrive at their doors piping hot and looking like it just came out of the kitchen. Well, sadly, it won't, and workers have to deal with people complaining about this fact regularly. It's not just Taco Bell employees who end up bearing the brunt of this, either — delivery drivers are also left fielding complaints from customers who end up with cold food.

Unfortunately, part of this also stems from an issue with Taco Bell's ordering system. When an order comes in, it's made pretty much immediately, and as such, it will instantly start losing heat before it's even been placed in a delivery driver's bag. This is a logistical issue, but not one that a regular Taco Bell worker can solve — complaining to them can just cause both of you stress. Your best bet is to order from a store as close to you as possible, and not to drive your food home over a huge distance.

Working the drive-thru can be the worst part of any fast-food worker's job, and that's no different at Taco Bell. This is usually because of the way that some customers can act when ordering from their car. For whatever reason, people feel as though they can cut through standard etiquette when putting in a drive-thru order and get away with behavior that they'd never show if they were dealing with a person directly in front of them. This means talking over employees or getting annoyed when they ask you to repeat yourself, taking an inordinate amount of time, shouting at workers through the speaker, and generally acting entitled. This behavior can also spill over to how customers interact with each other, too, with fights happening in the drive-thru line.

Look, we get it. Drive-thrus are stressful, and the speakers often suck. However, Taco Bell employees know this as much as you do, and they can't do a lot about it. They're being as patient as they can with you, so you should try to be as patient as you can with them. Just because you're in your car doesn't mean you don't need to have good manners.

Taco Bell is fast-food, but it's not always fast for the employees making it. While a lot of its items can be put together fairly speedily, others take way longer than you might think to put together, or are else fiddly and cumbersome to construct. This shouldn't stop you from ordering them, of course — you can get what you want there — but if you've ever asked for a certain item and have been greeted with a fairly frosty reception, now you know why.

So which items are the worst offenders? Apparently, the Cantina menu and its dishes can be a hassle for employees to make, due to the additional steps involved — and the Crispy Tacos are especially loathed by workers. They might be some of the healthiest items on the menu, but they're nightmarish to put together. Cheesy Roll-ups are also an annoyance, as they have to be cooked in fairly small batches, and it can be pretty frustrating when customers ask for a bunch of them in one order. On the dessert front, Cinnabon Delights can be way messier than you think, thanks to the cinnamon sugar that coats each one. Oh, and that Diet Pepsi you just ordered may have made the worker who poured it sigh with angst: Employees say that they foam up considerably, and can be deeply irksome to pour.

What's one thing that brewery employees hate, McDonald's workers can't stand, and Taco Bell crew members detest? If you guessed rude behavior, you'd be correct. Virtually everyone in a customer-facing role dislikes this. Customers treating the person in front of them with disdain or disrespect is far from limited to Taco Bell restaurants, but its employees get more than their fair share of bad vibes. At the chain, it can be depressingly common for workers to have to deal with people acting out, and there's maybe a general sense that you can get away with losing your manners when you're at its stores. Well, you can't. 

Rude and demanding behavior has a significant impact on workers. Some of them have even driven to look for new jobs after long tenures at Taco Bell, because they've found that customer attitudes have gotten worse, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic. Employees have had to deal with swearing, tantrums, abuse, people getting upset and emotional, and everything in between — and the fact is that it's often just not justified. The person in front of you likely isn't at fault for the perceived issue you have, and hurling an expletive at them isn't going to make anything better. A little good grace goes a long way.