Someone Asks All-You-Can-Eat Buffet Workers To Share Their Horror Stories, And They Don't Hold Back (30 Answers)

I used to cook for a breakfast buffet back in 2012-2013 as one of my first jobs. The restaurant in question I won't say the name of, but rhymed with Meat'n Bark.

Most of the customers that we got at the restaurant in general would be old people, however, a lot of the old people were very entitled and would come straight from church to the restaurant for their breakfast buffet. I'll just make a list:

1. One old lady kept implying that I wasn't old enough to work there. I said, many times, my real age (17 at the time) and she kept saying "I bet they're just making you say that, you know it's illegal that they're making you do this!" and I'm just at a loss and don't know what else to tell this lady who is 100% confident that I must be under-age or working for free or something. I don't know what her goal was.
2. A guy taking all of the bacon and putting it on his plate, and then telling me to "look at that" (the empty spot where the bacon was before he took it) and I said "Okay... looking? What am I looking for?" and he said "Tell me what's wrong with that!" and I say "Um, I don't know, is it not clean or something?" and he says "THERE's NO BACON LEFT! Aren't you going to re-fill it!?" and I'm like "Well that's weird it was just filled a couple minutes ago, someone must have took it all!" (knowing it was him) and he couldn't put 2 and 2 together, and just said "I don't know but there's no bacon there so what are we going to do about it?"
3. Some lady looking at bacon in disgust and saying "Wow.. It's 2013, who even eats meat anymore? Really?"
4. Some lady shows up to the buffet 15 minutes after it closes, while we're taking it down, and says "Woh woh what are you doing!? I haven't even gotten my food yet!" and we tell her politely that the buffet had closed 15 minutes ago, and the servers even give a "last call" on the buffet 15 minutes before it closes. Her response "That's okay I'll just go complain to your manager" I just said okay sounds good. In my head I'm like, what, you're going to tell my manager that the buffet closed 15 minutes ago? He knows. Lmao
5. Nothing huge but the same lady would come to the restaurant at least twice a week and complain about how s****y her service is each time and how the food is terrible. Finally one of the hostesses said "if the service is so bad and the food is so bad then why do you come here multiple times a week?" which shut her up. Lmao.

I worked as a server at a Chinese buffet and 4 things came to mind instantly.

1. A middle aged woman puked on her table and blamed it on giving herself the wrong insulin dose. The 4 mountains of food she destroyed probably contributed too. Profusely apologized and tipped me $1.

2. I tried to pick up a dirty plate off a table that had a big pool of hibachi sauce/grease on it. The customer stopped me and said "thats the best part." Then proceeded to drink the sauce like it was the milk after a bowl of cereal.

3. A young mother complained to me because the crabmeat and cheese that we serve on the buffet made her child sick and they threw up. Her child was an infant. Not even a year old. I'm no child care expert but baked artifical crabmeat and mozzarella can't be good for a baby.

4. The restaurant was raided by ICE one morning shortly before opening. The entire back of the house and one of our managers were deported. Back of the house was 1/2 Chinese and 1/2 Latin American.

A woman came in with two of her kids, and had a pretty regular meal. You pay when you leave at our place, and she decided to sneak out with her younger daughter before paying, leaving her underage son alone at the table. We caught on pretty quick and sent someone after her, who found her in her car in the parking garage, waiting for her son to come as well. She refused to come back in and pay, so we had to keep her son 'hostage' until the police came to handle the situation. What some people will do to their kids, i swear.

Forgot to mention we also found out from her son that she stole one of the managers' keycards and they would regularly come into the hotel and use the card to go swimming in the top floor pool. Smart, I'll give her that, but still.

I was a customer, not a worker.

My wife and I went to a Sweet Tomatoes for a lunch date, unlimited salad and soup was always good. One time, I saw a man over by the soups take the serving ladle for one of the weekly specials and take a big slurp from it. Then apparently he didn't like it and spat it back out into the ladle, and put the ladle back in the soup. WTF, dude?

I got up immediately and told the nearest staff what I'd seen, and they got right on getting that nearly full pot of soup out of there. I didn't have any more soup that visit, the what-ifs were too damn strong. Which is a shame, because I love their chunky chicken noodle.

I didn't work at an All You can eat, but my sister did.

The buffet itself was on the first floor, so you had to take either the stairs or the elevator to your seat.

Once there was a lady who was carrying a tray with a whole lot of stuff on it down. Glasses, plates and a whole lot more of junk. My sister asked the lady if she needed any assistance, to which the lady replied 'You assume because I'm fat, I need help?' My sister didn't react. A few seconds later the lady fell down the stairs. There was blood and food everywhere

Not a worker but..

I was at a Chinese buffet with a Hot Pot option that you had to pay extra for. There was a separate section with the stuff for that which was raw. This guy loaded up his plate with all this raw stuff and was eating it, including dangerous raw stuff like shrimp. I think he may have been slightly intellectually disabled. The Chinese staff had to come over and inform him that he was eating the wrong things and try to explain it to him. He got really embarrassed and said that he did not understand how it worked. Between the Chinese staff with their limited English and this poor guy who was not capable of really understanding what he had done wrong, it was one of those awkward moments in a life that you cannot forget no matter how much you try.

Not a worker but I once saw a grown man have a child like meltdown over the fact that he showed up to Soup Plantation too late and missed out on the biscuits and gravy

Not an employee, but I was standing behind a woman at Hometown Buffet. She was getting some lasagna or something, basically a really cheesy pasta that when you lift the serving utensil, a lot of cheese hangs on. I witnessed her lift her pasta, twirl all the excess cheese that was connected around her index finger (and there was a lot), clip it off with her thumb nail, and then fling it back into the pasta.

I knew I shouldn't have been at Hometown Buffet in the first place, but this solidified my stance to never go back.

I bus at a slightly nicer resteraunt. On Fridays and Sundays we offer a prime rib and crab leg buffet, among a salad bar, hot and cold entrées, and a desert bar. It's honestly pretty nice and our buffet runner keeps anyone from doing ungodly things to the buffet.

But the one incident that will always stand out to me was when this family of five came in. From the moment they came in to the moment they left, they ate as many crab legs as they possibly could. Their server and I were clearing plates off as fast as we could. But every time we would return it seemed like another mountain of crab leg shells would appear in front of each member of that family. I know not how they ate so much and I honestly can't recall if they are anything besides the crab. Piles upon piles of shells were left upon the table after they left. It was truly a sight to behold.

What's more is after I wiped down the table and came back with settings, I had to get another rag to wipe down the table *again* because something in the crab leg juice combined with our sanitizer and left a nice milky residue upon the table. Delicious.

When I leave this job I'll never be able to look at crab legs the same way.

My first job was as a dishwasher in an all you can eat fried catfish buffet.

People are animals. Especially the ones that get far more food off the buffet than they can eat. Then they take the leftovers and pile them on a plate or tray, cover them in ketchup and tartar sauce, then pour their iced tea over the top of all that.

A lot of people did that got at least two plates like that a night.