1 month ago
28
1. "At the last restaurant I worked at, there was no running water, meaning no hand-washing. Staff would use the same utensils, without washing, to cook both vegan and non-vegan food. There was no toilet, even for staff. There were ants, maggots, and flies. Our 'freshly cooked' brownies were frozen brownies from a wholesaler that we cut up and put near the oven to warm up."
"That said, most of the food was fresh and made with decent ingredients. It was worse for the staff, who had no toilet, had to work 14-hour shifts, and couldn't get through to the manager on any issue."
2. "At the supermarket chain I work for, most of the food at the salad bar is there because it's about to go bad, so they put it there to sell it. Same goes with the pre-marinated meats in the meat department. Customers pick food off the hot and cold bars with their bare fingers all day as well."
3. "I worked at a popular sandwich place and had to cut up tomatoes that were in contact with other tomatoes that were rotten/moldy, and management didn't let us throw them away. The meats (ham, cold cuts, beef, turkey, chicken) come in plastic bags, and the guac comes premade, frozen in a little plastic baggy."
4. "Whenever you're at a fast-food drive-thru, WE HEAR EVERYTHING. As long as you are in the censor, our mics are open. So, we can listen to your phone conversation, jammin' music taste, or even your rude comments."
5. "I worked for a very popular coffee chain for quite a while. THE WORKERS ARE TREATED HORRIBLY. Especially after the changes in corporate. Purposely understaffed, unprotected, extremely poor working conditions, and awful policies. If it's a high-volume store/drive-thru/24-hour, it's even worse. We deal with abuse from customers as well as management."
"At my last location, I never made it through a single shift without at least one person in tears. Please boycott. Seriously."
—Anonymous
6. "My first job was at a popular restaurant chain for kids. That place is so vile and nasty, and it's one of the reasons why I grew up child-free. If you take your kid there, only let them eat the food if they eat dirt and worse, the floor anyway."
7. "The amount of waste thrown away every single day by grocery stores. I worked in the meat department of a decently sized grocery store, and the waste there was nauseating. I kid you not, we would throw away an industrial-sized garbage bin worth of meat, fish, and poultry every single day. The expiration dates dictated everything, which is obviously a sensible policy to have, but they wouldn't do anything about it. They wouldn't donate it, let employees take it home, or make adjustments to the orders so we wouldn't have to throw so much away."
"The reasoning was always 'better have too much than not enough,' which I guess makes a little sense, but when I am throwing away dozens of pounds of tenderloins, center-cut fish, and shellfish per night, it's too much. Mind you, this is one department of one grocery store."
8. "I got let go after a short stint working in a grocery store's packing warehouse because I kept reporting bird and mouse poop I found on products. I asked a bloke who worked there why I was let go, and yeah, it was because I was too much trouble for management. Suited me just fine."
9. "Former restaurant worker here. Don't roll up right at closing and expect a meal. The kitchen is closed, the dining area is getting final checks, and the staff are mostly out the door. They're tired, hungry, and ready to go home. No one cares if you are a 'regular.' You can Google the restaurant hours and the location of the nearest McDonald's."
—Anonymous, 42, Massachusetts
10. "I worked at a fine-dining restaurant in Seattle. There were dead mice clogging dish sinks, a pipe from the upstairs bathroom toilet dripping onto the flat-top grill (manager told me to just scoot all the food to one side and keep cooking), and an old fish that wouldn't sear properly because it was diseased, and the chef said, 'Just keep using it.'"
"One time, a shard of glass in an ice cream dish went to a 4-year-old because my co-worker was completely inept. (Chef said, 'He's a warm body, we need him.'). Oh god... the things people don't know about restaurant kitchens."
11. "I work in a small pub/restaurant as a server. Recently, I helped the kitchen staff clean the fryers in the morning before opening. I assumed they were going to change the oil in them after we finished, but they did not. A significant amount of degreaser (which is toxic) got into the oil that we used all day and probably the next as well."
12. "I'm a barista. Most of us love when people ask for suggestions or want to try something new and fun — we want you to enjoy whatever it is you order. Also, just like a bartender, we have our regulars that we really get to know. I went on vacation last month, and when I got back, my regs said they were worried that I was sick because they didn’t see me."
"It’s a hard job, my feet always hurt, and something in the store is always broken, but the people who stop, have conversations, and ask about your personal life are what make my job worth it. And I’ve got a boss that believes in living wages — means a lot."
—21, New York
13. "I don't know if it's just the restaurant that I worked at, but I will never order thick soup at a restaurant now. The dishwashers were always pressured on speed over quality of cleaning, so sometimes the kitchen would get bowls with pieces of old soup still on the inside, and they would still pour new soup in it."
14. "Worst thing I participated in as kitchen staff in a rather top-flight restaurant was on a slow summer Sunday afternoon. The boss sent us down to the walk-in meat coolers to spray paint the rusted walls. We were instructed to not remove the contents of the cooler first; rather, just shift the meat from one side of the cooler to the other — the coat of silver spray paint will come off during cooking."
15. "I work in a museum at a restaurant/cafe. The hosts and my colleagues are very nice, but the customers can be real a-holes. I’ve had a guy threaten me because I couldn’t get him what he wanted, a woman taking a picture of me because I 'looked bored.' It’s a lot of stress and long days. I developed a slight depression because of all the negativity I received."
"Still, it’s fun, but stressful."
—22, Sweden
16. "I used to work at a fast-food sandwich chain when I was a teenager. My manager never wore gloves when he was mixing up the tuna. Also, he was super hairy. Be careful out there."
17. "My husband's job requires him to go to many different restaurants and hotels in a few different cities. He's not a health inspector; he works for a company specializing in cleaning chemicals, industrial-sized dishwashers, and laundry machines. He's told me about several places that try to save money and water down their cleaning/sanitizing chemicals. He's also told me that some of the cleanest places are McDonald's."
"A popular seafood chain in our city with the name of a color in its name found a giant rat behind some of their equipment a few weeks ago. He said he had never seen a rat that large in his life."
18. "The deep fryer grease is long overdue for a change, but it’s expensive to do so nightly."
19. "I work in a grocery store. We never have more in the back. Ever. If we had it, I guarantee you we would have it on the shelf. If you ask an employee if they have more of something in backstock, they will walk to the back room and just stand there for three minutes."
"Maybe more if you give us attitude."
20. "I'm a former cook. One place I worked had 'from farm-to -able' key lime pies, which just were frozen pies from a wholesale distributor with a few blueberries/strawberries and a few dabs of whipped cream put on top. The 'fresh fish tacos' were frozen pre-battered products from the distributor, too."
"Don’t get me wrong. Both of these were delicious, but at $8 a slice and $20 a meal, I would rather just buy a big box or even start a collective of sorts."
21. "I worked in the bakery section of a very popular grocery chain when I was younger. The bakery was connected to the deli, and every night, we threw away ridiculous amounts of perfectly good food. Most of it got bagged up and some were thrown away before the expiration date."
"If I recall correctly, they'd lock the dumpsters at night, which was especially sad because I worked in a rougher part of town with a homeless population that could have really used that food."
22. "Grocery distribution warehouses are often extremely filthy and rarely cleaned. Wash anything canned, bottled, or jarred!!! They're filthy as hell, covered in microplastics, rotten food, mouse pee, bird poop, etc. I used to do maintenance on conveyor systems for a major US chain, and they just send items flying down the conveyors so fast, it's fairly common for glass to shatter because of the vibrations, food to fall off, etc. I saw bats, birds, and mice in that facility, but it was within the tolerance of their health policy."
"Also, I saw people that were sick sneezing and coughing on products. Never saw a floor scrubber go through the warehouse during the entire three months I worked there, and I was doing alternating double shifts! The only time I saw a broom was if there was shattered glass."
23. "I work at a chocolate store, and it's not glamorous. It's just like any other job. People come in and are always like, 'Oh, I could never work here!' I always roll my eyes because it's just work — we just happen to be surrounded by sweets. Plus, our customer base is incredibly entitled and rude, especially since it's a *luxury* item (and a gourmet product — not just your average Hershey's). People think we're in there eating chocolate all day, but it gets stressful! We also only get two free chocolates per day, and I can't even begin to afford the products otherwise, so it's kind of a slap in the face for customers to just assume we eat it all day."
"We get unbelievably slammed around the holidays, too, and it's hard to keep a smile on your face when customers tell you how lucky you are to work there, when you've been running around and on your feet for hours, putting out fires. I'll literally have sweat POURING off me and a million things going on at once, I just got yelled at by another customer, and a customer will tell me how fun my job must be. It's, like, weirdly demeaning."
—Anonymous, 22, North Carolina
24. "I worked in a chain restaurant and transferred from a great one to one barely keeping the doors open for health reasons. Night and day difference. When I pointed out that some meat in the walk-in was rotten, a manager still wanted me to cook and serve it. He reluctantly yielded and agreed to chuck it. Such poor management."
25. "My restaurant says we’re a 'from scratch' kitchen and recycle corks/crayons/menus. We don’t recycle, and our mashed potatoes are boiled in the plastic bag we get them in."
26. "All the chain places I've worked at had much stricter cleaning regimens and regulations than the fancy, smaller restaurants. All the heinous things I saw were at farm-to-table places. The farm-to-tables I've worked at were legit about their ingredients, but their cleanliness was awful. Must have had a deal with the health inspectors or something."
27. "Worked in a pepperoni factory 20+ years ago as an accountant. Found that the more MSP in the bill of materials, the lower the quality and the cheaper the product. Looking at the stuff, it looked kind of like an old square crumbly eraser if you remember those. So, I asked what MSP was. It's 'mechanically separated pork.' When I asked what that means, they told me that after all the good meat is cut off of a pig, a power washer is used to blast the remaining flesh off the carcass. That's scooped up, dried out, and packaged as MSP."
"Enjoy your next cheap pepperoni pizza."
28. "I've worked in food manufacturing for 15 years. I don't mess with sandwich meat, regular hotdogs, and non-pork bacon, they pretty much 'trim' the moldy parts and throw the 'rest' in the grinder."
29. "I used to work with health inspectors. When describing what they do, I say that they’re the people who go into restaurants and say, 'We’re shutting you down. There are too many cockroaches in the soup.' About one person in 10 notices that it’s too many cockroaches."
30. "My first job was at locally owned Italian restaurant. The current owner was the son of the original owners, and the restaurant is still alive and kicking 25 years after I worked there. With that being said, the owner regularly hot boxed in the freezer, especially when he was doing inventory."
31. "I worked BOH (Back of House) in salad and soup prep at a pizzeria restaurant chain. I saw tons of trays of veggies accidentally dropped on the floor, walked over and picked back up with nary a rinse. The chili stays in the pot for days on end and they just add more water and beans."
32. "I worked at a café over a pub for a few months, and we shared the kitchen. It was so gross. Everything was covered in dirt, and there was an absolutely deadly section of the floor by the stairs that was always covered in a pool of grease."
33. "I spent a very brief time on dishwasher duty at a very popular seafood restaurant in our town. They served a lot of crabmeat au gratin in those small oval bowls. I couldn’t get that hard cheese ring off the inside of the bowl, so I asked the manager what the trick was. He said, 'Just wash it.' Those rings of hard cheese don’t come off and have been on there since we bought them."
34. "I used to work for a big American Chinese food chain. The brown rice is actually soy sauce mixed into white rice instead of actual brown rice."
35. "I’ve been in hundreds of kitchens and I can say (generally) the super popular local favorite places to eat are disgusting. The buildings are falling apart. The food is outdated. The walls, ceilings, and floors are alive with all kinds of bugs and rodents. Hopefully, this is just my area and not widespread throughout the country..."
Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.
English (US) 