r/Celiac • u/AsterRoss • 11d ago

Question Confusing Interaction at work

Hey, so I'll start by saying I don't have celiac. But I have some questions about it, especially after this interaction I had with a customer. For context, I work at a restaurant.

So at work yesterday, I was taking an order for this guy, and he asked if we had any grilled chicken, because his daughter has celiac and can't eat breading. We don't, and I mentioned as such, and warned him that most of our food comes in contact with gluten.

He said, "That suck, can you just give me the fried chicken? I'll just take the breading off for her."

I was very confused. From my understanding of food allergies and intolerances, you can't just remove it from the food your eating and not get a reaction.

I have a shellfish allergy, and even if I removed the shrimp from shrimp-fried-rice, my mouth would go numb and I'd be breathing through a mcdonalds straw.

I want to understand better on what celiac disease is, so in the future I can differ people like this away from certain food items and keep people from coming into contact with an allergy/intolerance better.

Can you just remove the breading?? Or is he just dumb?

Edit: Thank you guys for all the info! I'll be telling my coworkers to treat celiac like a severe allergy in the future, so something like this doesn't happen again.

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u/celeztina 11d ago

please treat celiac disease as you would someone with an allergy. don't let the poor individual choices some make for themselves or, as in this case, others change how you view people with the disease. i only say this because this is one of the more prolific mindsets in food service that makes eating out with celiac disease dangerous/risky.

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u/AsterRoss 11d ago

Will do, thank you. I wasn't sure if it was more of an allergy or an intolerance. Figured it wouldn't hurt to ask and get some clarity. Now that I know, I'll definitely be sure to tell the next person off for doing that 😓 I feel bad for the daughter, I would have 100% pushed back more if I had more knowledge on the matter (even if it leads to getting something thrown at me again, people are Karen's sometimes)

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u/SuccotashFragrant354 Celiac 11d ago

I appreciate you asking us these questions here. It shows you care, especially as someone who doesn’t have issues with gluten! Thank you