News In Pictures: Young Woman Spends an Entire Week inside KFC Restaurant after Being Dumped by Boyfriend

Comfort eating is said to help in coping with emotional distress, but this Chinese woman might have taken it a bit too far. Recently dumped by her boyfriend, 26-year-old Tan Shen actually stayed inside a KFC for an entire week, gorging on chicken wings the whole time. When she finally came out, she said she did it because she just ‘needed time to think’.

Clearly hit hard by the breakup, Shen stepped into a KFC last week, near a train station in the area where she lives. “I was walking around feeling miserable and decided to stop off at the KFC at the train station,” she said. “I hadn’t planned on staying there long, I just wanted some chicken wings. But once I got in there and started eating I decided I needed time to think. I didn’t want to go back to my apartment because it was full of memories of him. So I stayed.”

The staff only noticed Shen’s continuous presence after three days had passed. “We work in shifts here and the restaurant is open 24 hours a day, so we get a lot of people coming through,” said worker Jiang Li Lung. “At first no one really noticed her. But after a few days, I began thinking she looked really familiar. Then I realised we had been serving her for the past three days and that she hadn’t really left.”

Jiang and the rest of the staff were concerned about the girl, and asked her if she was okay. Shen replied that she just wanted some time to think and then asked for another box of chicken wings with extra fries. The staff decided that she wasn’t doing anyone any harm, so they let her stay. “She was after all a paying customer, even if a bit of an odd one,” Jiang explained. 

But then more people began to realize that Shen was always there leaving and soon the media got involved. When reporters started to show up asking about her, she finally decided that she’d had enough fried chicken. She got up to leave, and when she stepped out of the KFC, she also decided to leave her old life behind.

“I had already told work I was off sick, so I phoned them and said I was leaving,” she explained. “I decided the best thing to do would be to leave the city and go back to my parents. And I was getting sick of the taste of chicken so there was no point in staying there anymore.”

Meanwhile, the staff at the KFC had grown fond of Shen and were sad to see her go. “I guess we kind of miss her,” said Jiang. “It certainly made work more interesting.”