Most of us don’t really think twice when ordering a Whopper. We naturally assume the burger is gonna be fresh as always, the meat will be smooth and tender, and that crisp lettuce will perfectly close up the whole palate. And more often than not, that’s how it is.
But recently, Redditor u/Caseykins turned to fast food chain employees to find out what happens behind closed doors. The question read as follows: “what’s one item on your respective chain’s menu that you will absolutely not eat under any circumstances?” and it got 18.3k upvotes.
From ice cream to chicken sandwiches, these are some of the worst products according to people who know what they’re saying that honestly look very innocent to our hungry selves. So let’s scroll to see the faux pas foods you'd better stay at a safe distance from.
#1
One shift, I 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, reported it to the GM, and made up a lie about having a blood borne illness so they’d take things a little more seriously.
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134points
#2
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.
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99points
To find out more about what it’s like to work in a fast food restaurant, Bored Panda reached out to the comic artist Kairi Sneed, also known by the Reddit handle TheLikeGuys3.
Kairi shared what working at Golden Corral was like. “It almost felt like arriving in a foreign country,” he said and added: “I worked on the grill, and there were only 2 other employees in the kitchen that spoke fluent English, so you can only imagine how hectic it got during the Sunday after-church lunch rush.”
In the Reddit thread, Kairi wrote that he worked a month during his senior year of high school. The sight he won't forget is “Roaches. In. The. Meat. Freezer.” When asked if he ever saw more alarming sightings there, the Redditor said that it was just the roaches. “That’s the last thing you’d want to see in a meat supply closet,” he added.
#3
I was doing my thing one night, and the restaurant's owner is on the phone, trying to get his fryer filter repaired... I said I’d check it out. Inside were two large dead rats, or what was left of them, bones and fluff mostly. They had gotten into 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.
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95points
#4
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.
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91points
Kairi said that he worked in several restaurants, “and let me tell you... it *really* depends on the dedication of the employee. Many times, I’ve seen people go above and beyond the call of duty, and those who’ve literally reused dropped products like it was nothing.”
When asked what’s the item he’d never order at Golden Corral, the Redditor replied: “As far as buffets go, I stay away from the salads. More often than not, it’s just a bag of lettuce, some with a few brown spots.”
#5
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.
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82points
#6
I discovered maggots crawling all over a box of moldy potatoes. I threw the box out, and I was cussed out. They fished them out and cut the maggot parts out of the potatoes and used them anyway. I quit that day.
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78points
#7
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.
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76points
#8
There's a reason that the ice cream machine is down a lot. Sometimes it's for legit maintenance, other times though, it's to clean out the mold that likes to grow in the liquid mix. I only found out after a year. I was filling it one day and looked down. The stuff I saw was nightmare fuel and ruined me on their soft serve for a while.
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72points
#9
Once I accidentally dropped a whole open box of frozen 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.' Unfortunately, if food waste exceeded $100 a month, they would make the managers pay out of pocket for any additional expense... Seeing as everyone is underpaid, including the managers, you can probably guess the corners that would be cut to keep food cost as low as possible.
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70points
#10
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. Also, all the items that go into making your food (lettuce, cheese, etc) was all tracked via time stickers (think a little clock). So if you brought out new cheese, the rules were it could only be left at room temp for 4 hours. If you brought it out at 12, you’d mark the sticker for 4PM, at that point you should have thrown it away. Well that never happened. Everything got stickers replaced to make sure they were always good in case of surprise inspection.
Whenever I’d train people I gave a few rules to live by:
1. If it’s dirty, clean it
2. If it’s out of place, organize it
3. If you wouldn’t eat it, don’t serve it
From a customer perspective, always order your food with a slight modification (light Mayo). This will ensure your food is made fresh instead of you getting one that has been made previously to speed things up; however, can’t guarantee the food it’s being made with is fresh.
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66points
#11
The chili. Whenever a burger is cooked it is only considered 'good' for a certain amount of time. If 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 days prior. Overnight they chill, the grease congeals and the meat turns gray and weird. This meat may not be frozen, but it is still 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, grayish, lukewarm day-old burger meat is ready to be used in the chili.
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60points
#12
Had a job with AMC theaters.
I wouldn’t reccomend buying anything other than popcorn/drink.
The fried food is really something else - one it comes shipped from a 3rd party, so it’s not even kind of fresh.
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.
(I’ve worked other jobs as a fry cook before too, making fresh chicken tenders and such everyday at a deli. AT the deli we cleaned the fryers every night, with huge hoses.)
AMC we cleaned the fryer once a week - by a person making minimum wage and doesn’t exactly have any motivation to do a pristine job.
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57points
#13
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. I went to toss them and he flipped his s**t. 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 hot dog.
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56points
#14
Never get the chicken pot pie. The chicken used for this is old chicken that hasn’t been bought throughout the day. For example, a cook will make the chicken at opening and once time passes no one buys it, they dump it in a container, freeze it, then shred it up for pot pies months later. No one would know since it’s sauced up in a pie.
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53points
#15
Did a month at Golden Corral during my senior year of high school.
Roaches. In. The. Meat. Freezer.
Roaches. In. The. M e a t. F r e e z e r.
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51points
#16
Nobody ever f**king orders the chicken sandwich, so if you do, it's probably been sitting in a warmer tray for an hour or two. We just can't afford to throw out the old ones all the time, but have to keep some on hand. It will probably be hard and dry, and we probably won't give you a refund.
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47points
#17
Commercial food equipment maintenance man here. I will never drink a fountain beverage with ice at a sub sandwich chain restaurant or anywhere else that bakes bread and has an ice maker. The yeast in the air makes things grow like crazy on the grid the ice is formed on. Even if the ice maker is cleaned regularly, it’s not enough. It’s why they don’t use clear cups. If you got clear soda or water with ice in a clear cup, it would look like pepper was floating inside.
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47points
#18
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.
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46points
#19
Applebee's; not a damn thing. It's the only restaurant I've worked for I would never eat at.
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43points
#20
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 grill people remembered it existed and changed it out when it started looking bad.
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42points