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

Back in about February of this year before everything shut down, my group and I had to sit near a family with a relatively large amount of very young children. They were extremely obnoxious; one of them literally began screeching every few seconds, another one was watching videos with the volume turned way up, and I believe there were a few of them chasing each other around, too. The parents did absolutely nothing about it, and the group of them didn't leave the restaurant until we did.

So I used to waitress at weddings and one such wedding the chef asked me to make the coleslaw. When I went to peel the carrots I stopped and told the chef they were all covered in blue mould so did she have any others. She just looked at me and said 'just peel off the mould and use them'. I didn't but I suspect she did it anyway whilst I was serving because there seemed plenty of 'fresh' coleslaw available. I stopped working there 🤮

Upmarket Greek restaurant in an upmarket village last year. Eating an early supper with my wife and kids.
Single guy in his 60's, in expensive casual chic clothing , sitting at the next table videos a 20-something girl at the next table ( 2 tables away from us) , using his cellphone.
He then watches the clip he's just taken, zooming in on her chest.
My younger daughter witnesses this clearly as he now has his phone facing us to hide it from the victim.
My daughter , then 17,years old, first goes to tell the female victim, who was sitting with her parents and aunt, and then directly confronts this creep about his behaviour.
He spins a bullsh*t story about videoing the fancy cars parked outside- it was raining with the plastic blinds closed , so no cars were visible.
He then left in a hurry, having to walk out directly past our table.
My adult son challenged him to show us his phone, which he refused, claiming it was his private property.
He did the walk of shame past us - we loudly criticized him as he walked past, and I had to stop my son physically attacking him .
Management were supportive, but he had scuttled out by the time they were alerted.
Beware of sickos in public places.

While eating breakfast at an IHOP, I happened to notice a woman across from me getting up. She left a massive sweaty wet area on the bench seat. She was wearing a miniskirt and nothing under them. That is what I think of when having to sit in public spaces now. Please ladies! Wear underwear! How would it be if men rubbed their genitals all over your seats?

My brother worked at the Aquarium owned by Landry's and the Fertitta family. He would tell me about the nights the owners would toss ice cubes at the kitchen staff and threaten them to work faster. Several times an ice cube would land in the fryer and explode. He quit after a month. For me, the worse was a place that no longer exist. The owner was a wealthy Vietnamese woman who bought a bineigh bakery. We closed at 10pm on Friday. Every Friday she would bring her entire church group at 9:30pm and I couldn't leave until midnight. She never paid any overtime and when I demanded that she paid she just told me to quit if I didn't like it. It's not hard to find a restaurant job in Houston so I did.

I have worked at several fast food places. I have seen workers drop food items on the dirty kitchen floor & pick them up and place them in the to go orders. (Rhymes with Yack in the Fox, located in Edwardsville, IL.)
I have seen day old chili being reheated & served to customers. (Rhymes with Jake and Snake in Arnold, MO.)
You're supposed to label food products with expiration dates & throw out old food.
I have seen cooks not wear food service gloves or change gloves or wash thier hands while making your pizza. (Rhymes with Let's Pizza, in Arlington Heights, IL) No, baking the pizza in the oven doesn't justify your nasty germs on it.
I've seen this same place wipe pizza pans with a paper towel & then regrease them with used oil. No. You wash & sanitize them!
On the other hand, I've seen rude customers throwing fits over wrong food orders & even had a customer come up to the register & throw her chicken at me.
It definitely goes both ways.

At a buffet I saw a woman in line up a lobster claw, suck out the meat inside, and put the claw back on the platter.

Another story is at a Cuban restaurant some waiters started playing chug-a-lug with some tourists. Not a good influence for the kids around them.

have two: #1. military hubby comes back after almost a year. plan a great day, including going to a chinese buffet that we had wanted to go to as it was said to be really good. and, it was. hubby loves beef, me...not so much. but, he said it was really great and talked me into it. surprisingly, i enjoyed it. left to go on the rest of the day. about half an hour later, i got really dizzy and almost passed out. we started back home which was a 45 minute drive and all the way there i threw up...first in an empty soda cup, then then the litter bag and eventually out the window. he took me to the e.r. and a few minutes later i hear him put into the next e.r. bed, also throwing up. the dr. got to him first and, once hearing about our eating out, determined food poisoning. when he got to me, all the dr. said was, you must be the missus. it was reported to health dept and the place was shut down for a couple of weeks.

#2. at the time, i lived on an island which meant restaurants were limited. there was one chinese (i know...again with the chinese but, really...it's nothing against the cuisine or the people. just love chinese food!) the owner/cook was a really gruffy guy, could speak english but only when he wanted to, and was known to be quite the drinker. it was strictly take out. the rumor was if you were going to get take out you should wait until late in the evening (his hours were from around 4pm to around 3am.) as the later it got, the more he had drank and the better the food was. right out of high school, i got a job there as cashier/phone order person. the people were right: the later it got, the better the food. but, i don't think it was all because of his being more plastered as the evening wore on as much as it was the things that i ended up seeing while he was cooking. he would be smoking a cigarette and if the ash or the entire butt fell into the wok he just kept cooking until he saw it and flicked it out onto the floor. if he dropped an ingredient on the floor, he just scooped it up and put it in. i don't think i ever saw him wipe or clean a chopping block or wok but he was meticulously clean and careful with his knives and cleavers. i once commented on his putting dropped things into the wok and he turned on me, cleaver in hand, and screamed at me in mandarin. scared the crap out of me and i quit shortly afterwards. being 17 i didn't even think about the health dept but i did word of mouth regarding his habits. didn't seem to matter as his business kept being a brisk as ever.

On the road, traveling. Made a quick pit stop for a fast food breakfast sandwich and to use the restroom. Went to use the restroom first. I could not believe the stench once I opened the door. I could only conclude that someone was VERY ill for it to smell so bad. In about a minute a young woman comes out of the stall, attractive with an employees uniform on. She stops to check herself in the mirror and walks out the door. I was right behind her (using a paper towel to open the door.} She went to work, I went to my car.

My mom saw a health inspector at a Golden Corral put a thermometer in the tuna and shake her head (AKA: tuna is at the wrong temperature). She has never gotten seafood at Golden Coral ever since.

Once ate at a restaurant where there was a constant dripping of water splashing on me. Turned out it was leaking from the toilets on the floor above me.

Kids running all over the place and very loud people

In Atlanta restaurant: elderly man in the table next to mine, removing his prosthetic eyeball, snd cleaning it with his spittle

I was at a restaurant and a couple started to yell at the waitress for getting the order wrong, when I got the same thing and it was was correct

At a Chinese restaurant, husband went to the mens room, only to find a man urinating in the hand sink.

I have seen people flirt very disgustingly for 1 hr

So I worked as a waitress at a club and my colleague which also happens to be my best friend is sitting next to me on our lunch break. So we saw this older lady come in with a wheelchair. Well she looked really nice and sweet so I said welcome to ..... and she looked at me with the biggest grin on her face and said in the manliest voice I had ever heard from a woman,”Thanks glad to be here.” My colleague and I looked at each other so fast because it sounded like she smoked 15 packs a day. We told our boss the whole experience and she told us if we ever saw her again to give her a thumbs up. I seriously looked at her like ????, but she said to just do it. So the next day I came in and gave her a thumbs up when she looked at me. BIGGEST.MISTAKE.EVER. She seriously on the spot had a skimpy outfit under her dress, Got on the pole and started doing a whole routine going on and she earned some cash off some old creeps there though. Scared me for life.

Italian Restaurant at a tourist hotspot: a waiter entering and leaving the guests restroom, the apron still on as before. Left immediatly.
Turkish takeaway at a very frequented street: the prepared dough sleeves laying unprotected, without any cover on a shelf under the table benath the floor just behind the guy at the service desk running across them all the time.
Left at once.