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

I'm not an employee, nor do I frequent buffets, but my senior lunch in high school was a trip to Golden Corral. As soon as I walk in, I see a large, obese woman hunched over a table close to the buffet, eating fried chicken, placing the near bare bones onto her plate, and stroking her hair back with chicken grease caked fingers. She had a few plates stacked on top of each other with the remnants of chicken bones poking out between the plates.

I went to a Brazilian steak house once. For those unfamiliar with the custom, it is all you can eat salad bar, and then you sit at the table and the Passadores bring out perfectly cooked and spiced meats to your table. They ask if you would like to try some and cut you off a small portion. The passadores pass through in rotations until you move a small place card on your table from green to red. When its red they pass you by, and you can eat and talk and flip back to green at your leisure. I love these places, however they are fairly expensive so I can only go on my birthday or special occasions, you also tend to dress a bit nicer as these are cloth napkin style places.

So with all this in mind, there I was, on my birthday dressed fairly well with my friends and family having a good meal. In the booth across from us sat a man. This was no ordinary man though, this was a man on a personal mission to destroy this Churrascaria through the force of eating. He was there before us, and wore workout pants, an extra large shirt with no sleeves, flip flops, and I kid you not, a visor. Like one of those green visors you see people who pretend to be accountants wear.

Luckily for my party he was after us in rotation, however he made sure to humph and grumph every time a passadore stopped at our table and gave a slice of deliciously cooked meat to one of the people at our table.

"This food is cold by the time it gets to me!" He would complain. So the passadores altered courses and made sure to hit his table first. No big deal. After all let this one dude get his meat before they serve our table of six. It was no skin off our backs and everyone in my party was fairly well fed, and contemplating sending up the red flag of surrender to the men bringing us the row after row of meat.

A few of us were still getting meat every now and then, but the entire party was dying down. However the dude in the visor was still going. He was eating meat like a t-rex barely even chewing. He asking for double portions every now and then swigging some choice beer (he went for the nicer imported beer). This dude was an eating machine.

Now he was already extrodinary enough to have my curiosity, but this is the part of the story where he gets my full attention. He had just finsihed some more meat, when he looked up at me, made eye contact, for what felt like an eternity. He was looking right at me, but not seeing me. His eyes were staring off and getting large. He looked panicked stood up suddenly rippes the visor off his head, heaves over at the waist and covers the floor in the most impressive amount of vomit I have ever seen. The sound of the vomit hitting the floor was loud enough to make overpower all the ambient conversations and noise of the resteraunt.

Two of the girls at my table screamed and stood up. One of my friends dry heaved, I thought for a brief moment he would sympothy puke, which would have caused a chain reaction of puke so gnarly it would have made the news. Luckily he held it in.

The manager came, and several janitors followed and cleaned it up almost immediately. One with carpet shampoo, two with buckets and one with some trays. The busboys Sprayed some airfreshner and it was as changed the table linen, all in all good job covering up this massive biological crime scene we all witnessed.

The man in the visor was moved to a table in the back. He did not leave. HE DID NOT LEAVE. He simply sat down at that new table and flipped the little card from red... to green.

I saw a huge fat guy take an entire prime rib at Kings Table. The guy carving it walked away for some reason so this dude just stabs his fork in the huge slab of beef and puts it on his plate. They let him eat all he could then banned him for life.

I am not an employee but I saw a man whom I now refer to as "cucumber fence man". At a stir fry place whatever you can fit in the little metal bowl they will stir fry with rice or noodles. This man used cucumbers around the edge of the bowl vertically to allow more meat to fit in the bowl and when he got to the fry area he told the man cooking to throw out the cucumbers as he does not want them. Simultaneously my new hero and the most gluttonous thing I have ever witnessed.

All you can eat employee. Not with a buffet but with servings. Usually a lot of drunk students visit us. Throwing food at each other. Peeing over chairs.

Worst thing is that my boss is in some kind of mid-life crisis so she usually starts drinking WITH them in front of other guests. (all you can drink, including wine and beer..)

So one time I made a joke that she could join me and my friends for a party. When we were at the club she actually showed up, ordering 50 euros worth of beer.(1 euro each lol). I then purposely lost her in the club. At some point at night she was totally messed up, was dragged out by security. I looked for her, found her fighting with 4 big security guys. Eventually she was taken home by the police. Talk about escalation.

Not an employee, but I was once eating at a Chinese buffet when two ENORMOUS guys walked in - I'm talking 400+ pounds each. The hostess asked if they wanted a table or a booth and one of the guys chuckled and said "We ain't gon' fit in no booth!" The other guy follows that up with "We 'bout to shut you DOWN!"

I've never laughed so hard in my life.

Not an employee, but still relevant.. when I was a kid, my mom, dad and I would go to a Chinese buffet quite often. My dad would put a mountain of food on his plate then never finish it. He'd then proceed to lay down in the restaurant floor and take a nap.

He also did the mountain of food thing at other places like Golden Corral, but he only laid down in the floor at the Chinese place.

Not an employee but one time I was staying in this small hotel outside Venice that was very empty. They had a buffet breakfast and I had the whole thing to myself for about 15 mins until this Chinese family walk in. I don't take much notice of them as I'm busy assembling my sausage mountain but i couldn't help but notice that the family had gone up to the counter and started to pick up whole tubs of food (not small ones). They then sit back down at their table and start eating. I swear the small kid ate about 50 boiled eggs and way too many baked beans.

There was a guy we called six pan man. He would go to the pizza buffet slide an entire pizza on his plate, and sit down and eat it. Then get up and do it again until he ate 6 whole pizzas.

Once at a Golden Corral a 400lb+ woman whom I've never met saw me cutting the fat and gristle off my steak from across the isle. She told me it was "the best part" and asked if she could have it. I was too stunned to do anything but give her my plate and she ate the fat.

Sadly, it was me. Indian buffet. I ate so much that I was unable to drive my car. I had to recline the seat and digest for a while. Pretty pathetic.

There is this place in my city that has a burger and sushi buffet. Once I ate 15 burgers and 5 plates of sushi.
...it was a eating competition with a friend..

Edit: Each burger was around 80-90gr +the buns, cheese, etc.
And I am a big dude.

I used to be a server at The Olive Garden in the early 2000s. During never ending pasta bowl season about every night you'd have a few people eat just disgusting amounts of pasta.

Once or twice there were people that would make it into the double digit bowls. If I recall correctly the first serving was 10oz of pasta and the subsequent bowls are 6oz. That means those people were eating roughly 5lbs of pasta plus the sauce. Really grossed me out.

Watched a woman come in, go right to the dessert section, and pick up 4 plates of pumpkin pie. Then, as soon as more plates of pie are set out, she gets up before shes even finished eating the four slices she's already grabbed, cuts right in front of a kid about to grab a slice, and picks up 4 more plates.

I should mention she didn't even finish them all. There were like 2 and 3/4 slices of pie on her table when she left.

I once saw a lady, of a considerably larger build, take four plates of sushi back to her table at a Chinese buffet.

Not entirely relevant, but was reminded of a story.

After baseball practice one day, my two friends and I jump in my car and headed to taco bell. All 3 of us were relatively hungry, so we decided to each order the grande meal (a box of 10 tacos).

I pull up to the speaker.
"hi, can I get 3 grande meals?" There was a lengthy pause before they responded,
"I'm sorry sir, but we don't serve buses in the drive through."

Still proud to this day that 3 high schoolers convinced a taco bell employee they were about to feed a whole bus full of people.

Not employee but growing up I had this friend who always wanted to go to china buffet. He drove me crazy though cause he would feel his plate up with a bunch of stuff, take like two bites of everything, and then just get up and go get a plate of different stuff. Not so much gluttony I guess but it was just infuriating to me.

Not an employee, but i once ate so much at the chinese buffet i vomited in the bathroom and then, feeling cheated, went back to my table and ate more food from the buffet to replace that which had been lost.