I’m easy; I might ask them to leave off an ingredient every now and then. I don’t see a big deal in asking to omit an ingredient or two. Asking for all kinds of pain in the ass substitutions, though… if you’re that picky, just go make your own dang dinner.
woosh?
Pretty low.
I remember sending back two meals in my entire life. One, because the pork was still oinking, and two, because my fish tasted like an ashtray. Both times the waitresses were happy to oblige.
Sometimes I’ll ask for a substitution, like cole slaw for fries. It’s usually a cheaper substitution and nothing that takes much prep.
I think the joke is “nothing is okay” since older ladies are very picky and high maintenance.
Instead of asking is “everything okay” the poor waiter is just hoping they like something, anything.
Seriously?
“Anything” vs “everything.” He’s asking if they’re happy with even one thing he brought them.
Funny, it does seem to be elderly women that are the pickiest. I wonder why that is.
I guess I’m low-medium maintenance: I like a straw with my soda or water, NO LEMON please (no really - not on the side of the glass, not in the glass, not with a fox, nor in a box, etc.,) please hold the onions or bell peppers when possible, and yeah, I want my steak rare, as in “slightly wounded.” Because my voice doesn’t carry well, I have once or twice had servers mishear me and bring my steak well done. Those, I send back. If the steak is pinker than medium, I just eat it.
One reason that I’m pretty easy to satisfy in a restaurant, though, is that I tend to order from the “stronger” part of a menu - that is, I order steak at a steakhouse, or seafood at a seafood restaurant. My mother has the annoying tendency to suggest a restaurant (often a casual family restaurant like Bennigan’s or Ruby Tuesday,) and then order a steak without added seasoning, and then bitch and moan because the steaks are delivered to the restaurant pre-seasoned. Lather, rinse, repeat. After the third visit to Ruby Tuesday with her, wherein she did this each time, I finally declined to visit that restaurant with Mom. She knows better, having worked in every level of foodservice for almost 40 years; and it’s not like she’s senile - she’s 60, for pity’s sake!
And yes, I tip well if the server is actually trying. Especially if said server has to put up with my mother’s shenanigans or my husband’s lame jokes, which he refuses to believe aren’t funny after the 8-thousandth iteration. (“What can I get for you?” “The winning lottery numbers!” :rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes: ) I don’t blame kitchen delays on my server, and even mistakes are easily “forgiven” if servers make a prompt and cheerful effort to fix them.
Lotsa custom stuff here, but I wouldn’t consider myself high maintenance.
See, we eat out quite a bit, mostly at a few places where we are on a friendly basis with the owners and staff. Some of the custom requests are things the owner has suggested to us, knowing our tastes.
For instance, a Chinese place we frequent offers an eggplant dish that is fantastic. On the menu it is offered as a chicken, beef, or shrimp dish. Knowing I like tofu, the chef offered it that way once. I order it from time to time and it is no problem.
I didn’t fill out the poll - based on the question I would probably have been in the 6 - 15 range, but all from one restaurant (Cross Rhodes, which was our default go-out-for-a-quick-meal place when we lived in Evanston), where they pile TONS of raw onions on their sandwiches, and I always ask for “easy on the onions”. Other than that, I can’t remember the last time I asked for anything off-menu.
Aah, gotcha! I guess I skim read and my brain substituted ‘everything’ because that’s what I expected to see. 
Can’t answer. Poll’s rigged. 
Despite having waited tables (and picking up the ensuing hatred of people in general), my definition of high-maintenance is less strict than yours. Making modifications to existing items is fine; ordering off-menu or trying for blatantly stupid substitutions is not, but that’s not necessarily high-maintenance either.
High-maintenance is making requests that are explicitly a pain in the ass. Also filed in this category is the practice of “modifying” the food with thirteen dozen requests (which may or may not be individually acceptable) until it no longer remotely resembles the item you’re supposedly ordering.
Some examples to illustrate:
“Burger and fries” = fine.
“Burger, no onion, extra mayo, and can I get mashed potatoes instead of fries?” = fine.
“Burger, exactly two pieces of onion, one tablespoon of mayo, lettuce and tomato on the side on separate plates, half the fries in a takeout box for my dog and extra salt on those because he likes it, and make it as quick as you can because I’m on my lunch hour” = high-maintenance pain in my ass.
“Burger, only I don’t like beef so make it out of turkey, and can I get fried shrimp instead of fries?” = Not fine, but not high-maintenance.
“Burger, no mayo, no lettuce, no onion, no tomato, and instead of a bun I want two slices of toast, and can you put them on the grill with that cinnamon sugar you use for the sweet potatoes, and instead of the beef patty can I get sausage patties, and substitute hash browns for the fries” = Definitely high-maintenance, and I can certainly see if the chef feels like making you a french toast breakfast but why the hell did you order a hamburger?
I’m probably medium maintenance - but it’ll jump to high maintenance if you count ordering fries without salt/seasoning 100% of the time.
I’m still lower than my wife, who is unquestionably high-maintenance.
On the other hand, we tip 20-35% every time.
God, you are such a high maintenance poster!
It’s OK, I didn’t get it until the third reading.
If it matters at all, the joke I got in email had it as four Jewish ladies. Would that have made it easier to grasp? 
I chose once or twice a year, on the basis that there are a couple of restaurants where I’ll ask for something specific; for instance our local Greek, where they’re used to being asked if we can have garlic butter on the rice. I’ve never tried to order anything that’s not on the menu, though, and never made more than one request about a dish. The only times that spring to mind that I’ve sent anything back were once when they brought me a ruined steak (too cooked), and once when I ordered the crab salad but the waiter brought a club sandwich. That was when I was much younger, though, and it was actually my father who called the waiter back. I’d have eaten it. The huge, huge majority of the time I’m just happy to eat what they give me, even if it’s slightly wrong or not what I was expecting. Oh, I did query a bill in a restaurant last week: but that was because they hadn’t charged us for a bottle of wine, and I didn’t want the girl to have it taken out of her wages.
I like steak well done, but I can take a little undercooking. If it’s really pink I’ll send it back, but that’s rare.
But almost always, I’m happy with what’s on the menu and what I’m served.
This is the crux of my answer, but for me it depends where I am. When the family gets together at Mom’s she likes to take us to the Ponderosa*. It’s half a mile from her house, cheap and maleable to accomodate a variety of dietary needs and preferences. They ask how I want my steak done, and I say “rare” and it comes medium, and I eat it.
A month or so ago I was at a fairly upscale restaurant and ordered a steak, rare. The server and I talked about it, she definitely heard me. My steak arrived well done. If it had been medium rare I’d probably have let it go, but there wasn’t a bit of pink.
This cracked me up. I eat lunch fairly regularly with a group of folks from church. Most of them are pure sweetness and light and happy to be out together and see goodness everywhere. One lady though, in six years of lunches has never ever not even once that I can recall gotten all the way through a meal without complaining. The lettuce in her salad is too big. Almost everything is too salty.
A lot of her complaints stem from not having thoroughly read the menu. “I didn’t know it would have onions!” Coffee and soup are never hot enough for her, but she refuses to say ahead of time to the server “I like my hot liquids to be scalding hot, could you zap it extra before bringing it?” On occasions when the food is miraculaously acceptable the air temperature is wrong or the music’s too loud, or the prices are too high.
*For those of you who aren’t familiar, Ponderosa is between a college cafeteria and a chain restaurant that serves pre-portioned formerly frozen food on the culinary ladder. You choose an entree (mostly steaks) and then can also enjoy the extensive buffet.
I do the onions thing, too. And I just hate olives so much, and they go on top generally anyway so I ask if they can just not add them.
My SIL used to send everything back. Eating with her was a horrid PITA. Now she just has two unruly kids so it’s still a PITA for different reasons.
I’ll ask questions, like “does the such-and-such have meat in it?”, because I keep kosher. I’ll eat in a non-kosher restaurant, but I won’t eat meat, poultry, seafood, or non-kosher fish. That includes meat stock.
I would never order something that wasn’t on the menu. I might order something on the menu but say “dressing on the side”, or “hold the whatever”.
I’m not even terribly likely to try to substitute sides, though I have done it.
I might send something back if it had something I couldn’t eat in it, or I might just not eat it. Otherwise, I wouldn’t send it back unless it was totally inedible.
I’m generally pretty apologetic when I ask for a modification to a menu item, or send something back.
Sometimes I’ll ask for dressing on the side, but generally, the reason I’m ordering a meal is because I liked its description on the menu, so I usually want it as advertised.