Anyone with restaurant experience can attest how tiresome, fun, frustrating, entertaining, and intense it can get. That’s because while working there, they get to experience everything—the good, the bad, and the ugly.
That typically entails familiarizing oneself with all the ins and outs of the industry, including its darkest secrets. Redditor u/PocketGoblix has recently addressed the restaurant workers of the ‘Ask Reddit’ community asking about said secrets; they wanted to know what people who frequent such places should know. Scroll down to find the redditors’ answers on the list below and see what dirty secrets are hidden behind restaurant walls.
Bored Panda has reached out to the OP and they were kind enough to answer a few of our questions. You will find their thoughts in the text below.
#1
I'm guessing my comment will get lost in all of this, but here goes. Managed restaurants for over 25 years and my #1 piece of advice is to stop going to any restaurant that is always hiring. No one is more likely to give you food poisoning than understaffed, undertrained, overworked brand new employees.
212points
#2
Any kitchen I've worked in (been many years) you did NOT f**k with people's food. You didn't joke about it, you didn't threaten to do it, it was not amusing. Not like sending out a wrong temp steak or slow working a ticket if a table sucked, that kind of thing was fine, you can f**k with people. But you didn't adulter the food. No bodily fluids, no foreign substances, you send out clean food and you don't f**k with that.
187points
#3
That the staff hates when religious groups come in. Like a lot. Christians were always the WORST! Church group comes in and you know they're gonna be high maintenance and loud af, Karen WILL complain and you're lucky if they tip you. Always hated the Sunday crowd.
130points
In a recent interview, the OP told Bored Panda that they used to work in a restaurant themselves, which is why they became curious about the experiences of others in the food service industry.
They revealed that they were a part of it back in their teenage years and shared that, compared to the answers from fellow redditors, their former place of employment didn’t have very many dirty secrets.
#4
If you order from pizza delivery places regularly, you will be treated different depending on how you treat the staff. A lot of systems have sections to leave notes on customers.
Personally, if I knew the person was cool I would hook them up with discounts, or as much cheese and peppers and napkins as I could stuff in their bags.
If they were jerks, it was always "Whoops, sorry buddy, just ran out!".
111points
#5
The cleanest food you can get grilled is waffle house. Everyone can see the grill. It's cleaned with a grill brick every day. Police come and eat there all day. If you want to bag on the House, go ahead, but I worked that grill, and I can tell you, it's clean.
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108points
The OP said they were very surprised about the amount of similar answers they saw in the thread. “Many of the comments repeated the same ‘secrets’, confirming the fact that it must be a very common thing; for example, not washing silverware properly.”
Unfortunately, said secrets are rarely ever positive and likely more common than customers would like them to be. A 2014 investigation of public health inspection reports from national chain restaurants in Canada has found that nearly one fourth of them reported at least one major violation.
#6
Don't come in 10 minutes to close. Everyone will hate you.
100points
#7
Most restaurants are lawless, godless s**t shows staffed and run by alcoholics, addicts, and idiots. You'll never have more fun at work or meet more awesome people though. I miss it terribly.
81points
#8
Contrary to popular belief, in my city at least, food trucks are inspected much more frequently and thoroughly than brick and mortars. The health inspector tends to show up at every single event/festival and inspects all food service. For some trucks, this can mean multiple inspections PER WEEK.
So, in general in my city, food trucks are far more sanitary than most restaurants.
78points
Just a couple of years ago, in 2022, there were roughly 12.5 million people working in the food service industry in the US, marking a slight increase from the 11.2 million a year before, Statista reports. It is unclear how many of them bear witness to secrets that stay behind the closed doors of restaurants, but the members of the ‘Ask Reddit’ community who did didn’t seem to shy away from sharing their experiences with fellow food service workers.
#9
Stuff is microwaved a lot more than you expect.
70points
#10
There are exceptions but most people who own restaurants are horrible people. The business attracts the worst kind of people to work for because it's easy to take advantage of people who need money, are easily replaceable and often undocumented immigrants. Sexual harassment is very common with usually no consequences. If you work for a big company that has HR then maybe you can report your handsy manager but when it's a mom and pop type place and pop is the boss then you can either quit or deal with it. I have been lucky enough to work for a couple of really great bar owners but in my experience most of them are smarmy, greedy little shits with God complexes and bad breath that put their grubby little hands all over their staff if they can get away with it and try to squeeze as much labor out of people for the smallest amount of money and have zero appreciation for anyone.
67points
#11
Pasta is one of the highest-mark-up items on the menu (with soft drinks being #1 by a country mile). A plate of pasta that costs $15 to order probably cost $1 to make.
65points
#12
The special is just some meat or fish that is a day away from going bad.
65points
#13
The amount of food that comes frozen, from a plastic bag and straight into the microwave is shocking.
64points
#14
They work sick. All the time. While handling your food. Especially while handling your food.
61points
#15
Our ranch was just the Hidden Valley seasoning packets, following the recipe on the back. The only difference, our ‘secret’ ingredient if you will, was just using buttermilk instead of regular milk. People would come in regularly just to buy our ranch, still blows my mind.
59points
#16
The delicious brownies sold for 10$ a slice? Yeah, that's Duncan Hines.
58points
#17
If you wait tables, find something in common with your guest. Even if it’s a lie. I used to tell people I had family where the were from, tell people I used to live where they are from, tell them I graduated from their university. Really whatever it took to create a larger tip. People are more willing to give to someone they share things in common with. Never be overly nice either. People don’t like you to sound fake. So that’s my secret, oops.
55points
#18
A good portion of the entire restaurant industry, especially fine dining, relies on undocumented workers for menial labor like cooking/prep cooking, washing dishes, and cleaning. They intentionally hire these people to exploit them and pay them far less than the minimum legal rate.
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53points
#19
You should not drink fountain drinks. If you knew what the hoses inside looked like and how rarely they were cleaned you’d never touch one again.
52points
#20
Where I worked, we knew most of the time when the health inspector was turning up. We also tried to delay letting them into the kitchen. Also, some health inspectors don't really give a s**t.
50points