Yeah, unfortunately, as the article says, “too good to check” has become a business model, rather than a cautionary note.
The story did also appear on a bunch of other sites that are not exactly proper news outlets, but that do make at least some pretense of being something more than gullible aggregators of anonymous stories.
It ran on The Consumerist, and on the Gawker network. I also found it on other actual news sites like Australia’s news.com.au and the UK’s Evening Standard website.
Where was it debunked? I see people saying they don’t believe it, but how is it possibly to debunk unless the guy admits he made it up?
I didn’t mean it literally, sorry. It just flowed better in my post.
Makes sense. 
Was just wondering if I had missed something.
The story is doubtless made up, but I like to think its positive reception will inspire real people to do similar things in the future. The support for it is heartwarming.
It’s a story about someone being a dick to a stranger because he was mad at a child. I’m not seeing the heartwarming aspect.
I think people consider it heartwarming in a “justice has been served” way.
I get that. I was saying the story is satisfying as a revenge fantasy, but as a real world interaction it doesn’t work so well - partly because neither the child nor the parent will learn anything from it.
Not sure I understand how the story is “revenge”. Is there any indication mom wanted to buy the kid pie?
Kid: I want pie! Wahhhh!
Mom [ignoring kid’s demands]
Guy in line: I will show them! [Buys all the pie]
Mom: Thanks, Guy in line. I wasn’t going to give the kid pie anyway. That’s why I was ignoring the kid’s demands. Plus, I’m a lousy parent who could not care less if my brat’s screaming bothers you or anyone.
Kid: No pie! Wahhhhhhhhh!
Mom: yeah, he does that when he doesn’t get pie. Get used to hearing it.
Guy in line: D’oh!
…by doing something nice for twenty people.
Link was posted in #48…
I also call bullshit. So this lady and her kid are right behind the guy in line and don’t hear or notice him order all the pies, or notice him receive a huge bag of pies. Then when the lady finds out they are out of pies, she suddenly suspects one person (but not him) of ordering all the pies, instead of it just being a case of the restaurant running out, because, you know, I hate it when I go to order a pie at BK and someone just happens to have ordered all of them. Happens all the time. Finally, the way I can really tell that it’s a load of BS is that the guy is immediately able to start eating a pie and as anyone who has ever had a fast-food fruit pie knows, the filling in those things is only slightly hotter than lava and require at least a 10 minute wait time to consume.
I also like how our OP managed to completely make up the part about the guy buying the pies “for everyone in Burger King.” Not even his shitty source (which seems to have completely added a specific pie flavor to the story for some reason) said that, nor did the original reddit post or any other coverage I’ve seen about this incident.
The version I heard he just walked out with all the pie.
Anyway, I can forgive plenty of misbehavior by children if their parent(s) show some kind of effort to control, contrition at the situation, or their own exasperation at their kids. Any indication somebody in the party knows that something is amiss. The despicable parents are the ones that encourage such behavior, ignore the behavior, or ignore the children altogether.
In the version the OP links to, he just gets the pies, eats one while they watch - shit, this thing gets less believable every time I look - and then leaves. I think there’s a different version where he shares the pies with everyone, but then again there’s probably a third version where he figures out a cure for cancer in the parking lot.
Yes, it was. Sorry.
“…uh, yes, Burger King Regional Headquarters? My name is (reporter name) and I’m doing a story for (name of paper). Can you ask your IT department to confirm that their database shows a single purchase of 23 pies at the (location) site on (date) or…perhaps within a week of that date? Actually, any quantity over 20 should pretty well validate the story I’ve received. I can be reached at…”
“Yeah, sure. Give me 20 minutes and I’ll have an intern run a simple SQL query.”
Cash registers have been uploading data to home offices and corporate headquarters since the 1980’s. They’ve only gotten more and more sophisticated with the Internet going commercial in the mid-1990’s; now they don’t just report receipts, they report date, time, and inventory changes to make it easier for the bigwigs to differentiate trends from rare spikes (like a shitload of pies being bought in one purchase). Of course, it will take 10 seconds to run the query, 1 minute to write it, 3 minutes to explain the parameters, and 15 minutes to track down a grunt with free time to do the task, but the data will undoubtedly be available.
—G!
The big boys they all got computers
Got incorporated, too
Me I just know how to raise things
That was all I ever knew
…–Don Henley (Solo)
…A Month of Sundays
…Building the Perfect Beast
*and the cure for cancer is Death By Exceedingly-Hot BK Pie
Which was profoundly stupid, because the surest way to ensure mother and child got multiple offers of free pies would be to pass them out to random strangers in the restaurant who didn’t want them and hadn’t ordered them.
I saw a lady in my apartment wait out a ~30 minute tantrum. I was stepping out on a quick errand and they were still outside when I came back. Gave her a thumbs up and smile. Kid wore himself out as I was checking my mail and they came in.
All of the above, plus the fact that it would take BK maybe 3 minutes to have a new batch ready. All he really would have accomplished is to ensure that Jr. got a freshly heated pie. A better lie would have been to say he bought all of the pies, ready to eat and unheated. It would have been a touch more expensive, though.
It warms MY heart. Most of my opinions are unpopular, so it’s nice for me to see that at least a lot of people agree that this kind of parent/child combo should get no pie!