"Haunts Me To This Day": 58 Moments Workers From All-You-Can-Eat Establishments Can't Forget

The buffets in Las Vegas are disgusting because most people are already in a binging behavior mindset. I would see fat guys and gals loading up their plates 5 inches high. I never understood this because you can get a clean plate and get more food. It is like they are afraid there won't be anymore left for them. Gross.

Not an employee but:

I once saw a really fat dude at a Chinese Buffett smear ranch dressing from his wrist to elbow then as he ate he brushed the food along the dressing before putting into his mouth.

I saw two guys get into a fistfight on crab leg night at the Chinese buffet because one guy stacked his plate about a foot high with crab legs and the other guy wanted some of them.

Not an employee but I was at a Golden Corral in the south once. Walking through the line I stopped for about 7 seconds where they had cake, trying to decide between carrot and chocolate and someone literally walked up behind me, lightly put their hand on my waist and tried to push me out of the way.

I was in Law Vegas with two co-workers and we went to the aWynn buffet, one co-worker is a vegan and the Wynn has a huge vegan section since Steve Wynn is a vegan. While we were eating a couple came in and sat next to us. This was a skinny guy fat girl couple, but not like normal skinny guy fat girl, like 120lb guy 400+lb girl, WAY outside the "normal" range. They went to the dessert section, not a table, it's like a dessert room, and must have gotten one of all 50 desserts. They say there and he hand fed her all the dessert, he ate nothing, even though it cost him like $70 to get in, then they left. He hand fed he probably 50 desserts before we were done eating.

I work at applebees and we had endless fried feather-bone ribs. the initial platter was around 1700 calories, with each refill around 6-700. i served a (rather skinny) father and son combo who each ate 7 refills. around 6600 calories each. i honestly wanted to plead with them to stop.

Employee 20 years ago at a Golden Corral. This was before they had those nasty chocolate fountains. Saturday night we put extra all u can eat candy on the bar. Several times kids would eat so much they'd barf on the bathroom floor.

So I wasn't an employee...I was about five at the time and my uncle took me to Hometown Buffet. He told me there was a trick to tell if the rolls were fresh or not. His trick was to pick up a roll, lick it, and then if it wasn't fresh enough, he put it back.

Edit: No this was not a joke. This was just the first time I saw him do it. He got away with it until I was about 16 because my aunt caught him and caused a huge scene at the buffet. Basically my entire family would take turns walking behind him and throwing out everything he had licked. He said he could always tell if it was fresh because the outside would be moist. Also, I'm a girl...not a boy.

Obligatory "not an employee" but I ate at CiCi's pizza recently with a friend and it really made me not want to go back anytime soon. I think the highlight of the experience was an incredibly obese woman who just finished several plates of pizza and when one of her family members mentioned she should probably slow down because of her high cholesterol she said it was okay because she made a "salad" and then proceeded to point at a bowl that was so overly saturated with ranch, croutons, bacon bits and cheese that you couldn't see a single bit of green in the bowl. As the conversation unfolded and she continued to argue her point with the people at the table I was shocked because there was 3 major holes in her logic:


1)She assumed that by eating something "healthy" it magically cancelled out all the unhealthy food that she ate.


2) She believed that her ranch soup was healthy because everything with the label "salad" is automatically healthy


3) She thought that just making the salad gave you all of its nutritional benefits, that you just have to appear to eat healthy to actually be healthy. She never actually ate the salad but kept insisting that "I ORDERED one!" so it counts.

Had a friend who worked at the Golden Corral for college money. Most of his stories are mirrored here; vomit, fat people, kids licking spoons.

The only thing I can add is that he said fat people often don't eat much more than normal people. They just eat higher calorie portions. Like drown their chicken wings in ranch soup. And that's just fine for the business, because the cost of many high calorie items are much cheaper per pound than healthy stuff. Bad chicken tastes the same as good chicken when deep fried. Cake and soft serve are mostly air.

The worst he said were people who took food and stuffed it in pockets, purses, backpacks, or whatever for later. He said there were repeat offenders they routinely had to throw out, but they eventually came back when the management changed. They knew those places had high employee turnover. Offenders were the elderly and large families with lots of kids.

my wife's friend used to go to a buffet as a special treat every once and awhile. He was kind of a cheap guy so he would really pack it in on those days. once he ate so much he couldn't stand up and needed to call an ambulance.

Watched a lady get a to-go box and filled up the top and bottom of the under the styrofoam was about to collapse when she dropped an egg roll on the ground. She then proceeded to pick it up with her toes (she was wearing flip flops) and place it into her box.

I once saw a little kid sneeze directly into one of the chicken dishes. He was the perfect height for his head to be under the protective glass and directly over the container. His dad saw him and gave him a slight tap on the head like "not cool, bro" then they casually walked off to eat.
All forms of buffet have been ruined for me since then.

Took my girls to an all you can eat pizza buffet. My youngest girl, about 11 at the time, at 28 slices of pizza and about 6 brownies. She is skinny as a beanpole, but when we left she had 14 plates beside her. I felt bad for the staff and left a $10 tip on the table, but deep down inside I was impressed with her digestive fortitude and glad I chose the buffet that day.

Another non-employee, but this is a story I've shared before...

Went to Golden Corral (for those not familiar, GC is the Walmart of buffets) with a friends family in high school. Sat down with my food, they started to pray. While they were praying and I politely sat with my head down but my eyes open, a large sweaty man next to me looked me dead in the eye, barfed all over the floor, and then walked out of the restaurant like nothing happened.

My friend ran a Golden Corral in Omaha and he told me this older gentleman, skinny guy ate like 5 plates and my friend kept noticing him running to the bathroom over the course of the 5 hours he was there. Eventually he followed him into the bathroom and heard him vomiting in a stall. He was bingeing and purging his meal over and over again. He was asked to leave while in the stall. The guy left so fast as he seemed very embarrassed. Left a gross mess as well on the ground and back of the toliet.

Not an employee but when my family was on vacation in Florida we went to a all you can eat pizza place. For dessert they had these really tasty sticky buns that were in big demand. So me and my dad are in line to get one and once they put them out some big guy at the front of the line literally just picked up the whole tray and walked back to his table it was like 30 cinnamon buns. Nobody else at his table.

Not an employee, but I know someone. Let's say she may or may not be my mom. Goes in the cupboard before the trip to the buffet and grabs a handful of the big freezer bags and shoves them in her massive purse. Flash forward, we're leaving, in the parking lot, on the way out to the car, and the freaking strap on her purse broke from weight. It was closed, so nothing fell out, but jeez. It's not like [this family] had to worry about where the next meal was coming from or something. It was more about the thrill of "the hunt".

At a fish and chips place, an overweight guy loaded up like five or six solid pieces of cod and fries with coleslaw and a few buns. I'm sitting there disgusted at how someone can eat that many pieces and still feel okay.

Plot twist.

As he starts to cut up the first piece, he pauses, as if he were deep in thought and having an internal struggle. He then offers all his fish to a couple who just arrived and sat near him, and they happily accept.

Then he separately ordered a grilled salmon with veggies, which was not part of the buffet at the time so he paid twice. Great turnaround.

Not an employee, but I saw a really obese lady (in a wheelchair and breathing tube) have plates stacked all over the table. She was going HAM on a cake, but stopped to breathe really hard.

"HUFF HUFF HUFFFFFFF, PUFFFFFF"

And then took another huge bite.