For many Americans, a meal out has become a luxury. In just the handful of years since the pandemic, the cost of eating out has gone up 30 to 40%. So when we do go out, we really want to make it a great experience.

Good food and the right atmosphere go a long way, but nothing makes or breaks a meal, or a drink, out with friends and family quite like your server. While a bad one can ruin the night, we might remember an especially good one for a long time—maybe even forever.

A series of recent viral posts on Threads asked servers and bartenders to reveal some tricks of the trade—the little one-liners, bits, jokes, and gags they use to get their tables laughing and keep the mood light.

If you’ve ever seen an unfinished website or print layout, you’ve likely seen chunks of text that begin “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet…” This dummy text is simply a placeholder, so it’s not meant to mean anything. But why do we use that text specifically?

Few people know the true answer to that question, which led Emily Zhang, creator of the YouTube channel Rabbit Hole, to deep dive into the history of “Lorem ipsum.” As it turns out, what we thought we knew about it was largely wrong. Not only that, but Zhang’s investigation revealed a delightfully human story of oopsies, ah-has, and eh-close-enoughs that resulted in the mysterious Latin-ish placeholder text.

“What Lorem ipsum actually is,” Zhang said, “is a far stranger series of decisions that lived beyond anyone’s expectations to become the most famous nonsense text in the world, and an unsolved mystery.”

In 1968 John Calhoun, a scientist and animal behavioralist, devised a pretty fascinating conceptual experiment. He decided to create a “utopia” for mice. It would have unlimited food and water, with beautiful nesting spaces and plenty of materials for the mice to make cozy homes with.

However, there was a catch, of course. There was one thing the utopia would be lacking, and that would be physical space. As the mouse population grew, overcrowding would become an issue, and Calhoun wanted to study the problems this would potentially cause.

That sound you hear is the collective sigh of the disappointed mice who were stoked about the 24/7 all-you-can-eat buffet.

Parents, especially moms, often wonder what to pack for their kids’ lunch every day. While some schools forbid the pupils from bringing specific food items, others provide the standard peanut butter and jelly sandwich meal packs. But a mom named Caroline (@pezzi.shop on TikTok), who also runs a business that manufactures baby and toddler products, came face to face with a unique situation. One day, her daughter came home from school to reveal how their teacher made them feel about “bad food” in their tiffin box.

Her daughter said that they were made to start their lunch with the “good” food items in their box before moving to the “bad” food items. In the case of Caroline’s daughter’s lunchbox, the sandwich and fruits were considered “good” whereas the cookies were considered “bad.” As confusing as it might sound to others, Caroline additionally wrote in the caption of her TikTok video, “My three-year-old came home from school yesterday, telling me that her teacher told her that she had to eat all of her ‘good’ foods before she ate her ‘bad’ foods.” Caroline can be seen opening the lunchbox briefly to show the kind of food items she had given to her daughter.