Weenies Hot Dogs Battles Pranksters In Madison

MADISON, NJ - Just days after weathering the controversy of the appropriateness of their work uniforms Weenies Hot Dogs was on a roll, until a series of prank phone calls hit on Oct. 17.

Weenies opened their Madison location at 145 Main Street to criticism about the appropriateness about their t-shirts. The Madison location employees sport the same uniform as their Denville counterparts, a black shirt with the name of Weenies and the phrase "grab yours here" below it with an arrow pointing down to the eatery's website where orders for pickup and delivery can be placed.

Some criticized the shirt for being sexual in nature, a charge owners Michael Dey and wife Kaidi denied.

After that died down it was smooth sailing until Wednesday night, Oct. 17 when the business was besieged by a series of prank calls.

"A person, sounded like a younger woman, called the store and as soon as my male employee answered, she started screaming, 'my husband was cheated on me with you,'" Kaidi Dey said.

She said the call included a string of profanity that was "pretty bad" and they implied they were calling a female who had been having an affair with said husband. The male employee who answered every time tried to tell the person that she’s calling a restaurant, but to no avail. She would scream louder when he would try to say something.

"Mind you, every call was started with our employee saying 'thank you for calling Weenies in Madison, how can I help you?'” Dey said.

According to Dey, the woman called back from multiple different numbers, and the staff just hung up when they recognized the number and they do not respond to blocked numbers.

"This happened between 8-10 p.m., and those are pretty busy hours for us," Dey said. "Staff alerted me, as it was happening. We blocked all numbers involved from being able to call the store and alerted the police."

Dey said all was quiet and under control, until Wednesday, Oct. 24, that was when the second wave came.

"It began with a delivery from a local pizza place for 'Daniel' at our location in Madison, that was not prepaid," Dey said. "We don’t have any Daniels working at any of the three restaurants my husband owns. Not even a Dan or Danielle."

Dey said the pizzeria driver was "obviously peeved," as was her crew — the store was busy with all sorts of orders, walk ins, take outs, deliveries.

"They at first thought it was a mistaken address but the ticket clearly said '145 Main Street, Weenies,' and a Daniel had ordered it," Dey said.

Dey said the staff alerted her with the pizzeria driver still there and told her they suspected it was a prank. But it didn't end there.

"For the following several hours, our store received calls from other local restaurants asking when we were going to pick up the food we ordered or confirming deliveries. My staff never placed any orders, they told the local restaurants that as well," Dey said. "Most of those orders were canceled before they were made, but there seem to have been some casualties."

Dey said there was not much she could do, so she posted one social media alerting people to the situation. Besides the two wild Wednesdays Dey said the business has received a few prank orders as well.

"People give their phone number and either a fake address, or some random address, for large quantities of food. They ask to pay cash, which we make available as an option," Dey said. "Our delivery drivers never ring doorbells as a courtesy, so when they’re calling the number back, the people ordering either screen the calls and don’t answer, or do answer and giggle and laugh into the phone."

Dey said when her staff rings the doorbell because they can’t get a response via phone the people at the residence are upset since they never ordered food and the delivery is disturbing their peace. On top of that, they end up tossing all the food.

"We have banned all those phone numbers from ordering again," Dey said.

Dey and her husband own another Weenie's location in Denville and Fatty's in Morristown, and she said pranks happen occasionally.

"The worst was last fall with kids having half days or days off school. Teenagers were calling the store and placing orders that they never intended to pay for were the worst," Dey said. "We got some very nasty kids on the phone who pretended to be adults trying to feed their kids at 12 a.m."

She said those callers were angry that they wouldn’t go out to their address unless they prepaid, since the order was going to go over 20 minutes away.

"We only did that since we suspected kids pranking us," Dey said.

One address they looked up on Google Maps showed a field where the caller requested delivery, Dey said.

Dey said they get their fair share of people calling to make puns over the phone or just asking about everything on the menu.

"We never assumed at first that someone was calling as a joke, because we don’t want to turn off legitimate customers that have questions, but there’s a point after which it gets ridiculous to read every single menu item off the menu and explain what it is we do," Dey said.

Dey said the calls can contain vulgar humor, Sponge Bob references and often come from kids who are bored.

"The worst wave of that was all in one night," Dey said. "And these calls just came in one after another. We called the police, who then called the kids and told them to stop or have to go in for questioning for harassment. Several of the kids called back to apologize after that. They all said they did it because they were bored."

Dey said the business has also been targeted by professional pranksters.

"We’ve also been targeted through a service that prank calls when someone pays for it. We’ve found that out by calling the prankers back, and getting automated messages. Those ones sounded legitimate — people saying they got sick from our food, which is a legitimate concern, that we absolutely have to investigate, Dey said. "Or that they never received their order or that their order was made incorrectly. One woman stated she had lettuce in her shake - that’s impossible since we don’t have lettuce in-house."

Dey said for each of these she personally checked camera footage and order history and those orders never existed.

"When the people would get ornery with me on the phone, I’d mention that the orders don’t appear in the system, and told them I will call back once i have more information," Dey said. "When I did, I got the automated message that we’ve been pranked."

Dey said she did contact the Madison Police Department and the police made a report.

"It is my understanding that they call the numbers to follow up with them and warn them about prank calling," Dey said.

She also suggested that other businesses who are pranked do the same.

"If word gets out that we call the police and give them the numbers of pranksters, it acts as a deterrent," Dey said. "Awareness is key – we would never maliciously do anything like this to other business owners since we know how hard this field is – so we try to raise awareness to make this problem go away for everyone."

Dey said if the pranks don’t stop, they could essentially file harassment charges against the pranksters, since they can’t hide their phone number.

"We haven’t gotten to that point for now, but we will if it’s needed," Dey said.

Dey said it bothers her because it hurts their image in front of other businesses, and it hurts the other businesses involved.

"Not cool," Dey said.

She also is hoping the pizzeria who came with order for the fictitious 'Daniel' doesn't hold it against them.

"Lord, we really hope we can order pizza from there if we ever want to," Dey said.

(Photos courtesy of Weenies)

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