Hey Pandas! What’s The Most Horrible Thing You’ve Seen At A Restaurant? (Ended)

The worst behavior that I saw was from some customers.

Pre-COVID, at a high-end steak house (of course it is a steak house, I live in Indianapolis, the Steakhouse Capital of the US). They were sitting across from us and there eight of them. They enjoyed a full meal all the way through dessert and coffee. Right before one of them finished his cheesecake, he asked another person seated at the table, do you have it? There was lots of shushing and "lower your voice" statements that caught our attention. One of the women opened her purse, handed something to the man, something small which he placed in his plate and then there was lots of gasping from the table.
A waiter rushed over and asked what was wrong and the man held up his plate to show the waiter that there was a rusty screw in his cheese cake. Then the outrage at the table became quite loud. The manager was called over, apologies were issued, the manager took the plate away and said he would return. The table started talking about how they could have been killed. The manager returns and apologizes again and was probably going to comp the meal when, a customer at another table stopped the manager and explained that they saw the man ask for the screw from the woman and place it in his plate.
We nodded at the manager as did two other tables who also witnessed it. The manager turned red, placed the bill on the table and stood there. The people at the table started an argument. The manager just calmly said, you may either pay the bill, leave and never return or I will call the police.

Another customer approached the manager while he was waiting on payment and explained that he managed a bar down the street and the couple that had the screw had been banned from his establishment as well as several others on a strip of restaurants because they had pulled this same scam. This caused more outrage at the table and "how dare you's" from the scammers.

The people paid, but did not leave without a disturbance and threatening the intervening customers and the police being called.

My mom was eating at a Chinese restaurant and went to the bathroom and found the vegetables cooling in the toilet tank.

I have seen a lot of horrible things, but the most horrible thing that I have even seen was a manager slap a highschool girl who messed up my order. (The only thing she messed up on was she didn't take off the toppings I wanted off on my burger.) Needless to say, I tipped her way more than I would have, and I never went back to that restaurant again...

I've seen the back of a kitchen's stove. It had horrors for everyone's taste: rotten meats and vegetables, mold, dead animals, insects, chunks of black grease. I shiver to this day remembering it. And it'd require a poet to describe the stench it produced.

We were in an old pub that did meals. While we were eating, a man and his wife with their young toddler came in. They didn't have a reservation but the kindly staff made room so they could have a table. The woman fussed about taking her coat off and, to make thing easier, sat the toddler on the edge of the bar while she did it. The toddler, no doubt in protest, procedded to pee all over the bar and we saw it dripping down onto the floor. Both of them simply picked up the now soggy child and left without a word of apology to the bar staff.

Fast food place: Employee wiped her nose with a gloved hand and proceeded to make food. I left.

Country hotel owner enjoyed upsetting kitchen staff by any means possible. Would blow his nose on kitchen towels then hang them back up with the clean ones, drop food on the floor then pick it up and put it back on trays and regularly inspect the garbage bin for anything that could be reused.

I don't know if this counts, but there were roaches in and around the cafeteria at my old elementary school. I don't know if they ever got into the food, but looking back now I can see that was very unsanitary.

Oh here we go. I'm a server and bartender, for years now. I've seen/experienced some shit.

1) First of all, as previously mentioned, children running wild. Please, for the love of God, control your kids! Crayon markings all over the table/chairs. A massive mess of food and tissue under the table and on the high chairs. Literally carrying a tray of five pints in one hand while a child comes out of no where and nearly takes me down. Like, this happens once a week, easily.

2) The "Karen's". Ohhhh, the Karen's. Out-right being cursed at for literally the kitchens mistake and not mine, sometimes for no one's mistake... just, them not happy with the way it tasted. Looking for ANYTHING wrong just for some type of discount. I once straight up told my manager I refused to serve a table because the woman called me a bitch, and continuously used the word fuck towards me because I brought out two of our FREE very large salads for a table of three (it was more than enough).

3) A quote from the movie "Wating" with Ryan Reynolds. "She broke the cardinal rule. Do not fuck with the people who handle your food". This is true. Very true. I will not go into details.

4) People sticking gum under the table is still very much a thing.

5) I once cut a guy off because he had drunk two doubles of scotch within half an hour, had already seemed intoxicated and then went out to smoke a joint (don't get me wrong, I smoke myself but I had to do my job and I have the authority to make my own decision on the matter). He cornered me as I was leaving the kitchen (with three plates in my hand) and immediately got aggresive and threatening. Thank God I had good coworkers, including a massive black dude who instantly came to my defense. His sister tried to claim to my manager that I was being judgmental against his tattoos... I have tatts myself, viable ones.

I can go on and on but this is long enough. Over all, please be kind to those in the service industry. In all honesty, my best service goes to the ones who are polite and respectful, if you are an asshole then expect the service to be downgraded.

once saw the guys make pizza sauce with mopwater. just. don't. ever. ask. what happens in the back

every single member of one family was on their phones. it was very sad. :(

a cook grabbed the edge of the stainless steel hood vent to climb up on a reach in so he could clean the inside of the good. The edge was sharp and he almost completely severed four fingers. It was months before he came back to work , but thank god with full function in his hand

I used to work on/replace McDonalds kitchen equipment. You really don't want to know what I've seen.

My ex-friend told me this but, she was eating in a restaurant and a waitress took the order of a woman she said "congrats! when is it due?" the woman said, "I'm not pregnant"

When I was a teenager, I was an employee at a popular Southern style fast food restaurant. One of the menu items was a huge cinnamon roll. We sold a lot of them. We kept a 5 gallon bucket under the counter, filled with the icing for the cinnamon rolls. We’d use a large slotted spoon to drizzle the icing over the cinnamon rolls, when they finished baking. One day, as I’m about to drizzle icing over a pan of cinnamon rolls, I noticed the lid isn’t on the bucket of icing. Before I stick the spoon into the icing, I noticed there are a bunch of dead or dying roaches all over the top of the icing. The icing was thin and runny, so there was no telling how many roaches had sunk into it. I told my manager we needed to throw it out because it was roach infested and I asked where we kept the new buckets of icing. He looked at me like I was dumber than a rock. He snatched the slotted spoon from my hand and started scooping out all the visible roaches from the icing. When he was done he looked at me and said, “That’s how you deal that!”

My mother-in-law and I used to frequent this tiny, hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurant. Their fried rice was so delicious, but it always had these small black things in it. We assumed it was some kind of spice, like a peppercorn or maybe a piece of some all spice. In all the times we had eaten there, neither of us had actually needed to use the restroom. However, one day I needed to use the restroom. I asked where it was located. It was back through a door and adjacent to the kitchen. I noticed a several large bags of rice, piled up on the floor next to the bathroom. There were several mice all over them. I noticed a mouse climbing out of a hole in one of the bags of rice and another one scurry into the rice. It was then that I realized the black things in our fried rice weren’t some type of spice. They were mouse droppings.

I returned to our table, told my mother-in-law to stop eating, and said, “We need to leave now!” I threw down enough money on the table to pay for our meals, and we left. Once we were outside, I explained what I had seen. We were both disturbed. We never returned again.

Ok, first of there were kids trashing the place. Secondly, when the waiter came to our table, she placed the pizza right next to me, where my phone was! In her effort to take the plate of the phone, she dropped the pizza on the floor. after that, she PICKED UP THE PIZZA, AND GAVE IT TO ME AS THOUGH SHE COULD NOT SEE THE DUST FROM THE FLOOR ON THE PIZZA. I left

Dinner at a local Italian restaurant with my parents. Waitress brings our water, which she holds in her hands, and our basket of bread, which she holds in her armpit.

I saw someone start yelling at a cashier, I don't know what it was about but people are horrible sometimes.

my family was in a restaurant and the lady serving our food brought our food to us and as she was putting down the last plate in front of my dad, one of the pieces of fish (it wasn’t like fried fish, it was super fancy) fell on to the table by accident, and she picked up the fish with her hands, put it back on his plate, and said to my dad, “oops, ya dropped ur fish” to him and walked away. we didn’t say anything but we should’ve.