“So I’m supposed to eat the rest of my food cold with new tenders?” Shelby Desha, who posts as @shellzmacncheezy, put that to a manager through the drive through speaker at a Popeyes on Fort Campbell Boulevard in Clarksville, Tennessee. The answer on her recording: “if you got an air fryer” or “a microwave,” that would do it.
Her caption on the video, posted September 27, 2026, explains why that suggestion did not help her: “For the record i don’t have a microwave or air fryer, some people are more fortunate than others. I went to bed hungry this night.” The caption tags Popeyes and asks whether this is how corporate owned locations treat their customers.
Most of the video is audio. Her phone points at the red order speaker post and the gravel around it, at night, under text on screen saying the manager “legitimately told me to microwave or air fry cold food” and that she “had to waste my gas driving all the way back to the restaurant.”
She begins by telling the speaker she came through “15, 20 minutes ago” with an online order for Shelby. “I got home, my chicken tenders are, like, inedible. Like, it’s hard,” she says. “My food is cold. Can I just get my order remade?” She offers to hand the original order back and adds, “I wanna eat it together.”
The reply: “The only thing I can replace is just your tenders.” She says her entire meal has gone cold. He repeats the line. “I paid for it to be warm, though, when I ate it,” she tells him. He answers that orders are set on the counter for pickup.
She says the counter is not the problem. “Whoever cooked it cooked it wrong. It’s either undercooked or overcooked,” she says, guessing the tenders went into the fryer twice or did not stay in long enough. “You can barely even rip the chicken apart. It’s hard.” The answer stays the same: “I said the only thing I’m replacing is just tenders.”
She asks for someone above him and is told she is already speaking to the manager. She asks for a corporate number. “Don’t have that,” he says. She asks for his name and does not get it. “You’re a manager of a store,” she says.
“You know that’s wrong, man,” she tells him. “I don’t even have gas. I drove back down here.” She makes the offer again: “You can have the whole thing back. I just want my food warm.”
Then she ends the exchange herself. “Matter of fact, it’s okay. I was recording this whole thing,” she says. “I’ll speak to corporate. I know what location this is. You ain’t got to replace none of it. Thank you.”
The last minute is her evidence. She films the lit Popeyes sign from the lot and says, “I just need y’all to see I ain’t tripping. This is the location.” Then she holds a tender up to the camera and pulls at it with both hands to show how much force it takes to tear. Her text on screen calls it “basically raw chicken” and out loud she says “almost raw.” Her last clear line: “I ordered a whole meal to eat a whole meal.” The video does not include any response from Popeyes.
Check a Pickup Order in the Lot, Before the 15 Minute Drive Home
By her own count, 15 to 20 minutes had passed by the time she was back at the speaker, and that gap is what turned one bad item into a cold meal. Open the bag before you pull out of the lot. Break one piece of chicken in half and check that the sides are hot.
If something is off, go back to the window or the counter right then, with the bag. The rest of the order is still hot at that point, so replacing one item fixes the meal and nobody has to argue about reheating.
Take photos before you hand anything back. She offered twice to return the whole meal, and if the store had taken it, her proof would have been audio only. One close shot of the food and a screenshot of the online order confirmation, taken while you are still in the lot, is enough.
Ask once for the fix you want in plain words, as she did with “Can I just get my order remade?” If the answer is no, decide whether to take what is offered. She turned down the new tenders and, according to her caption, went to bed hungry. Accepting a partial fix does not stop you from complaining to the company afterward.
When staff will not give a name or a head office number, write down what you can get yourself: the street the store is on, the time you were there and the name on the order. She had all three, plus the recording.
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