About

Waffle House Wendy, also known as the Waffle House Chair Catch, refers to a viral video of a Waffle House waitress and cook named Halie who caught a chair that was thrown at her by a customer during a fight. After the 2021 fight video spread on Twitter and TikTok in December 2022, Halie was also nicknamed the Waffle House Chair Girl, the Waffle House Avenger and The Last Chairbender due to her impressive reflexes. Lots of fan art and memes were made about her going into early 2023.

Origin

On December 22nd, 2022, Twitter^[1] user rbaylor_74 tweeted a video as a reply to an older Waffle House fight video with his own recording of a Waffle House fight that occurred in a Waffle House near Austin, TX. The roughly two-minute-long video showed multiple customers fighting with Waffle House employees both in front and behind the bar countertop. Twitter user rbaylor_74's original tweet (shown below) received over 650 likes in 12 days while his video earned over 4.5 million views on its own, mostly due to viral reposts of it.

It go down at the Waffle House pic.twitter.com/g6fVoRvkdx

— Wallstreet_Ray (@rbaylor_74) December 22, 2022

The most viral repost of the video was tweeted by the Twitter^[2] account GAFollowers on December 26th, 2022, earning roughly 52,700 likes in eight days.

Spread

After the Twitter^[2] account GAFollowers' tweet, multiple reactions surfaced via replies and quote retweets. For instance, on December 26th, 2022, Twitter^[3] user EastsideBodega_ quote retweeted the video, captioning it, "Under no circumstances do you engage a white WaffleHouse employee in hand to hand combat You know how much a white person gotta go through to work at Waffle House?" The QT received roughly 75,500 likes in eight days (shown below, left). On December 27th, 2022, Twitter^[4] user torantula tweeted a screenshot of the video where the waitress is motioning with her hands, captioning it, "This got to be the best shot," and earning roughly 11,300 likes in one week (shown below, right).

Wendy continued to popularize on social media, especially after she claimed that she had been fired by Waffle House due to the video. A GoFundMe was set up for her because people felt sympathetic, mostly due to the fight video having actually been recorded a year earlier in 2021.

Fan Art

The waitress's chair catch quickly became the most notorious moment captured in the video, earning many viral tweets^[5][6] about it. Fan art soon emerged on Twitter that specifically centered on the chair catch. The first known art image was tweeted by Twitter^[7] user zachrawartwork on December 28th, 2022, earning roughly 30,100 likes in six days (shown below, left). On December 29th, 2022, Twitter^[8] user TGBcomic also tweeted fan art, gaining roughly 72,700 likes in five days (shown below, right).

Waffle House Wendy Response Video

On December 29th, 2022, the Waffle House waitress broke her silence when she posted to her Twitter^[9] account under the name The Real WWendy ✊🏼🤟🏼 (@WitchDragon5), sharing a link to a YouTube^[10] video that was a "Story Time" about what happened in the Waffle House fight video. Over the course of five days, the tweet received roughly 2,400 likes and the YouTube video received roughly 215,000 views and 5,300 likes (shown below).

In the video, The Real WWendy ✊🏼🤟🏼 admitted that her real name is Halie. She also admitted that the video had been recorded months prior, dating the fight back to 2021. According to her, the fight started when a group of people came into the restaurant and sat down in a closed section of the restaurant. The section was closed due to the restaurant being understaffed. The people refused to leave and then threw a sugar shaker at the employees, eventually prompting the later brawl.

Halie also stated in the video that due to the video's December 2022 virality, she'd been fired by Waffle House nearly a year after the fight had happened. According to her, the decision to terminate her employment ultimately came from the Waffle House company and not from the managers of her specific location.

Various Examples

Waffle House employees are built different pic.twitter.com/wpmvDVf7M6

— Sopranos World (@SopranosWorld) December 29, 2022

the waffle house chair girl: pic.twitter.com/HZnvb8u8FE

— from (@_F_R_O_M_) December 31, 2022

Search Interest

External References