The Root Beer Float Rant That Caused This Arby's Karen To Go Viral
No one really likes a Karen. Yet, as a culture, we can't seem to look away from them. As of this writing, the #Karen hashtag on TikTok alone has more than 19 billion views. This week, that number is in part due to a viral video posted by TikTok user @ignastyo. Based on his profile and video, it would appear that Ignacio works at Arby's and was on duty in the kitchen when a female customer went off on a long and strident tirade addressed toward a front-of-house worker about the proper way to make a root beer float.
On the woman went, railing against fast food joints that skimp on the root beer while piling on the ice cream. By the looks of it, the worker might not have even started making the woman her root beer float: She said all of this while placing her order. If that was the case, the woman was attacking the worker not for anything he had done, but for floats made "incorrectly" by other employees at different locations.
Well, there's a word for that sort of behavior, and that word is "rude." Indeed, that would seem to be the consensus among the roughly 11,000 TikTok users who commented, the 355,000 who hit "like," and the 10,000 more who shared the spectacle with their respective followers.
She would not accept a float with too much ice cream
Apparently, this Arby's Karen on TikTok, as she will no doubt be known until the next video goes viral, has been the "victim" of at least one too many floats in which the root beer was viciously upstaged by a too-large helping of ice cream — and she was determined not to stand by and watch that happen again.
To underscore her point, the woman informed the surely bewildered employee that since she is not, in fact, "2 ½" years old, she most certainly should not have to endure a root beer float that requires a spoon to enjoy. She wanted enough soda to be able to "suck it all the way through" a straw. Needless to say, TikTok ate this particular soundbite up with a spoon. As user @AmandaGuarino commented sarcastically, "I'm not two and a half. I'm just going to throw a tantrum over a root beer float."
To his credit, the Arby's employee who was on the receiving end of said tantrum remained delightfully composed throughout the video. "So, a small root beer float?" was his appropriately bemused reply at the end. "Gotcha."