“Used to work at a small fast food place and during training my manager got mad at me for throwing out slimy corn. She showed me how she would just rinse the slime off in the sink and put it back. I find corn suspicious now.”
Successful-Cat8572

“Former BK employee of 6 years here. The food was actually good if it was fresh. The issue is the staff/management. Sauce bottles would never get completely emptied and cleaned. People wouldn’t change their gloves between doing different tasks, or would be texting with those gloves then make your food.”
enthusiastic4few

“I worked at a pizza place that was infested with roaches, especially in the back room where we would leave the pizza dough out to sit. We would also find roaches in the ice maker, in the mechanical parts as well as the ice itself.”
CirceAlleghri

“My bro managed a Weinerschnitzel. Unbelievably they catered lunch for a few local high schools. (As did Ameci’s Pizza). The chili wasn’t up to school standard and they had to add more meat to it in order to pass LAUSD code. Of course they used old burgers, dogs, and expired ground beef from the freezer. Bro bluntly told me, “Never eat our chili.”

figbean

“I was a shift supervisor at a fast food place and years later, I still refuse to eat anything with ice cream in it. The machine we had was always covered in mold and spoiled cream while the owner’s ‘fix’ was to scrape off a layer of mold and spray some Clorox on it.”

Prannke

“When the cheesecake gets low you’re supposed to fill it up a certain way where the new cheesecake goes on bottom and what’s left of the old stuff is put on top to ensure it’s used first and it all stays fresh. Well let me tell you that shit is like a brick after it’s been in the container long enough, you constantly take it out and put it back so it’s always thawing and refreezing and essentially freezing together. This is why absolutely NO ONE rotates the cheesecake. I once dropped the cheesecake container onto the tile and the chunk in bottom cracked in half and came out…. it had become almost like 98% mold. We’d been using it without rotating it for months.”
Crazybunnybitch

“I was doing my thing one night, and the restaurant owner is on the phone, trying to get his fryer filter repaired. He told me he’d been trying for weeks but the co was booked solid.

I’ve got a degree in engineering, so I said I’d check it out. I managed to get it apart, and get a look inside.

Inside were two large dead rats, or what was left of them, bones and fluff mostly. They had got in the machine via the purge pipe, and got stuck inside.

So for probably a month or two, all the fried food from this establishment had been cooked in oil that had been filtered through two rotting rats…”

more_beans_mrtaggart

“If I had to complain about Wendy’s, it was the chili. All the meat contained in the chili is just hamburger meat that was too ambitiously thrown on the grill during busy hours that never ultimately got used for a hamburger. It gets cut up and thrown into the chili. Aside from that, we always kept things clean.”
eyekwah2

“Had a job with AMC theaters…

The oil is so gross. You’re basically ordering something that went through a machine built in the 70s that has accumulated layers and layers of oil residue. You can clean it a little bit, but you’re never going back to how it first looked. Everyday there’s like a new layer of ‘oil icing’ and the corners of the steel plates are where they really get stuck.”

commenter37892

“Ham on pizza. Worked at pizza hut done time ago and the ham would turn this disgusting gray color within a day or opening the package. You just couldn’t tell if it had been opened 24 his ago or 2 weeks ago. But, during cooking it returned to pink which always weirded me out.”

Fusorfodder

“Used to work at McDonald’s. Nobody ever ordered the crispy chicken. I’ve had it sit in the warmer from opening to changeover. Then from changeover when I ended my shift. Maybe it depends on the location, but the odds of getting one that’s been sitting there for an hour or two outweigh the odds that the table and grill people remembered it existed and changed it out when it started looking bad.”

shadeplant

“I worked at Orange Julius for my first job. We would cook hot dogs on the rotating grill for all to see. At the end of the day if they weren’t bought we were supposed to toss them. I mean they were almost burnt and wrinkly. The manager was there one day when we had three hotdogs left over…He put them in the fridge and told me to use them the next day in a chili or cheese dog where the customer couldn’t see the hotdog. To this day I still feel bad for the customer who received the chili dog the next morning since he was there. Thankfully he has rarely there and I would toss out those wrinkly fuckers at the end of the day.”

exWiFi69

“I work at a chain coffee shop where we make our own in-house chocolate sauce. Sounds nice but it starts to mold within a few days. That shouldn’t be a problem since we go through chocolate and make more daily, however the chocolate sauce container only gets cleaned out properly if we run out during slow times. Otherwise we just dump fresh chocolate sauce on top and get right back to dealing with the rush.”

Fantastic_Relief

“I have watched the hairiest men make coleslaw with no gloves, and for perspective, we make a giant tub at a time. You’re literally armpit-deep sometimes in this bin to mix it correctly…Please don’t eat the coleslaw.”

buddyturner2014

“I worked at Wendy’s in high school. For me, that item is the chili.

Whenever a burger is cooked it is only considered “good” for a certain amount of time. So many minutes after cooking and the burger didn’t get used it would be thrown in a bucket next to the grill. At the end of each shift the person dumps all the old burgers into a larger bucket of old burgers which may or may not be covered. They also may be from xays prior. Overnight they chill, the grease congeals and the meat turns pretty grey and weird. This meat may not be frozen, but it is still pretty hard to break up. So the person making chili dumps it in a big colander, runs hot water over it, and mashes it into tiny pieces again.

Now the soggy, greyish, lukewarm day old burger meat is ready to be used in the chili.”

MichelHollaback

“Former Subway Sandwiche Artist. I do not ever get the Grilled Chicken sub. More like chicken-shaped stamp energy block marinated in lukewarm tap water for 48 hours.”

CliplessWingtips

“If people saw (and felt) the popcorn “butter” at AMC when I worked there you wouldn’t touch that whole stand, much less put that stuff in your body. To replace the butter we get this bag of yellow liquid that glows pink in the light to screw into the nozzle at the bottom. And somehow which I never understand, is that touching the outside of the plastic bag makes my hands super greasy. And when I say greasy, I have to SCRUB with a sponge for minutes to get most of it off and there is always some residue that remains.”
runnerd81<

“Over a decade ago I worked at Little Caesar’s. The thing I refuse to eat (I eat there super rarely anyway) is the crazy bread. At our store and the other I worked at temporarily we used a paint brush to spread the garlic butter. The thing was that the paint brush was never fully clean so garlic butter from the previous days would still be on the brush.

I’d never seen the brush replaced in my nearly two years working there. It’s hardly surprising considering after we were robbed they still hadn’t put up security cameras in the three months following. At that point I decided to quit.”

thedenimlord

“Anything made with the ‘roast beef’ at Arby’s. It’s not a real beef roast. Instead, it’s a compressed block of beef scraps. It comes in a bag filled with beef broth, and you just warm the entire thing in the oven for a few hours.
And once the compressed beef block is heated, you put it on the slicer and leave it under a heat lamp for hours to slowly desiccate.”

Baruch_S

“My best friend worked at a very popular sandwich fast food chain. Some of the tomatoes had mold on them so she went to throw them out. Her manager scolded her and told her if anything grows mold, you cut the mold off and still serve it so they don’t waste food.”

airyeez

“I worked at a kfc/Taco Bell while in high school for about 3 years. The chicken pot pie was made with old chicken that would be old from 3-4 days ago when we froze it. Nasty and we wouldn’t make more pot pies unless we ran out. (Ie the pot pie we made at 10am would be served at 8pm).”

seahawks101777

“I worked at a Dairy Queen where the gm would rinse returned bitten off of hamburgers, rinse the meat, and grind it for tacos. For those who didn’t know, Texas Dairy Queen’s do have tacos.”
agoroguy

“McDonald’s in Colorado, worked one shift, cut the hell out of my hand and bled into a tea urn. The shift manager told me to use it anyways and didn’t even let me wash my hands. I dumped all the tea out and reported to the GM and made up a lie about having a blood-borne illness so they’d take things a little more seriously.”
Gavin1772

“I worked at the fanciest, most expensive mall in the fancy area of a major city. At night about 10 minutes after the mall closed and the lights dimmed, those decorative potted plants they have placed around the mall would absolutely erupt in cockroaches.”

ThunderSnowLight

“Worked at an ice cream place in high school. There was a hot fudge pump. Heated every day, cooled down every night.
My manager opened the hot fudge vat/pump prior to the store opening one morning and there was a nice film of mold across the top. Instead of cleaning it out, she pushed the mold down into the fudge and stirred it around. I can’t even look at hot fudge without gagging to this day.”

Andrews123456789

“I used to work at a cafe that would serve assembly-line style paninis and salads. We had squeeze bottles with olive oil and balsamic vinegar that we used for salads, and one day the balsamic vinegar was looking extra sludgy. Mind you, this wasn’t discovered until late into the shift. After examining/testing/pondering for some time, we discovered it was the oil lubricant for the panini press.”

tt417

“I used to work at a small Canadian chain where the full name was ‘Mary Browns Famous Chicken and Taters.’ While the chicken was good, the potatoes that they used for the taters often came rotten or partially rotten, and due to how popular they were and the fact that potatoes only got delivered twice a week, the manager would often tell us just to use the potatoes if they weren’t “too rotten”. One time the potatoes would do bad that they started turning to paste and smelt like manure, my manager just told the guy responsible for cutting them to just cut them and try to pick out the best ones.”

shelcod

“The McRib at McDonald’s was the only thing I wouldn’t eat there. My store was clean and food moved so nothing sat for too long. The McRib was put in a tray with bbq sauce and once they were all gone the next batch would be put back in the same tray, it was just as much grease as bbq sauce at that point. This would be repeated 4 times at least before a new tray was used.”

Mike_Hunt_69___

“The local Jack in the Box used to have moldy flour tortillas. If the mold was only on one side, they’d face that side to the inside of the burritos. Calls to national HQ didn’t solve the problem.”

twfeline

“I worked at Carvel for a few months when I was in high school… NEVER EAT THE ICECREAM CAKE! When I was in training the owner had me spend about 2 hours making soft serve ice cream cones (this is actually really hard lol), and I would just take the cone and wipe off the ice-cream with a spoon and it would land in a mop bucket. I did this over and over again. Icecream was dripping all over my hands into the bucket and it was just gross. I thought he would just throw the bucket out, but NOPE. Instead he put the bucket into the freezer and when it got cold enough he used it to make the ice-cream cakes. GROSS! I can’t speak for every Carvel, as I am pretty sure they are franchised, but I am sure stuff like this happens all the time.”

camii98765

“I was once a cook at a fish restaurant outside San Francisco, and we would take the fish filets out of the cooler every morning, rinse them till the fishy odor was gone, then use them or put unused filets back in the cooler at closing. After the filets had been rinsed off day after day eventually the fishy odor was unwashable, so we would put that kind of fish on special. So I would say, I’d never order any fish that’s on special.”

SSSS_car_go

“I worked at a donut chain in the main bakery. Crumb donuts. Never eat crumb donuts. Everyday when the unsold donuts were returned to the main building I would sort donuts by throwing out everything fired and taking all the cake donuts, put then on trays in racks and roll them into the storage room. The crumb was made from these old stale cake donuts that had been sitting on trays in racks in the storage rooms for weeks. When crumb was needed I had the pleasure of retrieving the stale, rock hard and rat nibbled donuts. Putting them in a grinder and mixing the crumbs with sugar. Then it was all dumped in to a 30 gallon trash can only used for crumb. Every couple of weeks when the can was low I was told to make crumb.”

122922

“Worked at Papa John’s, I cut my finger whilst cutting a pizza and bled onto the pizza. Manager walked over and proceeded to mix my blood in with the tomato sauce and hands it to the delivery driver.”

ItsBulkingSeasonLads

“I worked at Applebees. now about 60% of all things on the menu are frozen and our managers hate taking out more than the bare minimum because they don’t want things to go out of date because then they’ll have to throw them out. now once on Christmas eve we were busier than the managers expected so we were running out of everything so the manager’s solution was to take steaks out of the freezer and microwave them then slap them on the grill to mark them and cover up. only ate there once and never will again.”
elias138

“I worked at BK for a year. Once I accidentally dropped a whole open box of frozen original chicken patties on the floor and told my manager to write down the waste. He said “Just put them back in the box. The fryer oil will get rid of any germs or whatever.”
scoutydouty

“I used to work at the Cheesecake Shop (Australia) about 12-13 years ago. It was probably just my disgusting manager, but everything we did in that store was against OHS standards. We had empty meringue cases to fill when we got pavlova orders, I pulled one down from the shelf, it was infested with ants – she told me to still use it, and say it was kiwi fruit seeds.”

stormchelle

“Any self serve food from the grocery store including olive bars, salad bars, or hot bars (unless I saw them put new stuff out in front of me). The number of people who walked by and took a handful of something is disgusting. We had olives in oil and someone literally took a handful with the oil dripping off their fingers.”

Jberg18

“Goldstar. They had this machine that had water that would pour out and boil the noodles in a big metal pan underneath (I don’t know much about it because I was a dish washer). What I do know if the pan had a grate to be a strainer for the pasta, well that was the same spot our managers had us pour all the dirty mop water in when we were closing. Never saw it cleaned in the 3 months I was there. That’s not every restaurant of the chain (the owner was horrible), but you couldn’t pay me to eat anything there.”

tad_ness

“I work at a pizza shop and while there’s nothing specific I would never eat, I have told my mom (who has celiacs) many times to never get food from us. While we have gluten-free crust the pizza guys never do anything to prevent cross-contamination. They use the same ladles, same ovens, and of course everything is covered in flour. I always try to tell anyone with an allergy that there’s gonna be cross-contamination because I don’t want anyone getting hurt.”
lucy-182

“I never use cheese shakers that are sitting on the tables in restaurants. I worked at an Italian place. When the Parmesan cheese was refilled, we would dump it out of the shakers, check for and pick out mold balls, and refill it. I tried throwing away all the cheese when I found mold, and the manager yelled at me. It was so gross.”
Soleil7a