Sir This Is A Wendys

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Sir, This Is A Wendy's is a deflection catchphrase used online to shut down long, horny, weird, or off-topic messages by pretending the sender is talking to a Wendy's cashier. It started as a Twitter one-liner in 2012 and broke wide in 2020 after cartoonist SrGrafo turned it into an exploitable comic template on Reddit.

Overview

Sir, This Is A Wendy's is a deflection catchphrase, an offshoot of the earlier Sir, This Is An Arby's gag, used to shut down messages that are too long, too horny, too pedantic, or too weirdly off-topic by pretending the sender is talking to a Wendy's cashier stuck at the counter3.

The joke shows up in two main forms. The first is a plain text reply, dropped as a comment or quote-tweet under a post that reads as unhinged, over-serious, or wildly unrelated to whatever thread it appeared in2. The second is an image macro built from a 2019 SrGrafo comic of a fed-up Wendy's cashier facing a rambling customer, with the speech bubbles rewritten for whatever conversation the poster wants to mock1.

How It Spread

The catchphrase drifted around Twitter for years before finding a visual home. On April 27th, 2014, user jakelikesnaps posted it in a Jurassic Park bit that pulled several hundred likes, and on January 3rd, 2017, the official @Wendys brand account replied to a fan with the same line, nodding to The Office scene3.

The image side started on February 5th, 2019, when Redditor and cartoonist SrGrafo posted a comic called Airport Security to /r/comics; when commenter HydroSword dropped Sir this is a Wendy's underneath, SrGrafo drew a follow-up panel with the line baked in, and that reply pulled roughly 1,800 upvotes1. The template broke wide on February 8th, 2020, after SrGrafo posted a new comic of a disgruntled Wendy's cashier reacting to a bizarre customer question about hypothermia versus suffocation in a locked fridge. On February 21st, 2020, Redditor Desnof117 edited the cashier's speech bubble to Sir, this is a Wendy's and reposted it to /r/ShitPostCrusaders, and that version got copied everywhere with Wendy's swapped for other chains and the dialogue rewritten via object labeling1. A dedicated subreddit, /r/sirthisisawendys, had been made on August 17th, 2019, and grew to roughly 11,000 members by May 20224.

By late 2020 the format had drifted into anti-meme territory. On December 18th, 2020, Redditor u/PROblem817 posted a version where the customer just calmly orders a normal Wendy's meal, subverting the whole gag, and it pulled roughly 49,100 upvotes over about a year and a half1.

How to Use This Meme

For the text version, reply Sir, this is a Wendy's or Ma'am, this is a Wendy's under any post that reads as too horny, too pedantic, or wildly off-topic; the whole point is to act as if the other person is haranguing a cashier2. For the image macro, take the SrGrafo cashier panel, rewrite the customer's speech bubble with the rant or bizarre question you want to mock, and either keep the Sir, this is a Wendy's punchline or swap Wendy's for another chain's name using object labeling on the storefront1.

Frequently Asked Questions