After taking a bite of his flatbread sandwich during his lunch break, London-based software app executive Tom Dodds immediately thought something tasted fishy.
On Twitter, he publicly chastised Pret A Manger in a memorable tweet.
“What did your chef put in the Pret chef’s special crayfish and avocado flatbread?” he asked. “Tastes like my daughter’s sandpit.”
Dodds got a free sandwich out of the deal. But what followed was an epic rap battle on social media. The WeWork Moorgate member Dodds was relentless with his puns on pop songs, but so was Pret.
“That fish cray,” Dodds wrote, quoting from a song by Jay-Z and Kanye West.
“I’ve got 99 problems, but the fish ain’t one,” Pret shot back.
He was hooked, and over the course of several hours the two of them traded barbs. Dodds, vice president of sales at Hands HQ, says he didn’t expect that his tweet would get such an enthusiastic reaction from Pret.
“I was a little surprised to see them bite back with a funny retort,” says Dodds.
After quotes from from Silentó’s “Watch Me” and The Weeknd’s “I Can’t Feel My Face,” both sides took it up a notch. Pret broke out with a line from Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off.”
“I’m just gonna hake, hake, hake, hake, hake,” Pret wrote. “I hake it off, hake it off.”
Dodds effortlessly inserted an impressive five different fish references into quotes from Notorious BIG’s “Juicy.”
“It was all a bream,” Dodds wrote. “I used to read turbot magazine. Goldfish, cod and anchovy up in the limousine.”
The exchange continued with references to Adele’s “Hello” and finally ended with Meghan Trainor’s “All About That Bass.”
“Well played!” Dodds finally wrote. “Have a good one, guys!”
Although Dodds won’t be ordering the crayfish and avocado flatbread again, he says he plans to continue having lunch there regularly, as he has been for years.
And who was that mysterious tweeter at Pret? A company rep declined to name the employee, saying “they’re not really one to fish for compliments.”
Photo credit: Andrew Lunn