Every patron’s worst fear is that one of the cooks or wait staff at a restaurant you visit does something terrible to your meal. We can imagine all kinds of things, from the classic spit to giving us something we’re allergic to and asked to avoid, but how often does it really happen?
At least occasionally, according to these restaurant employees…who don’t really seem that sorry for their transgressions, to be honest.
1. What did he expect?
A friend did this at a restaurant. He kept sending the food back like three times, demanding it be more spicy. We kept telling him to cut it out, he was being obnoxious, but he kept doing. The waiter was like, “Oh, you want it spicy? I’ll make it spicy.”
While we all ate our food in good moods, my friend just stared at his untouched spicy dish and grumbled how “I can’t eat this.”
2. Everyone loves some salmonella.
I worked for Applebee’s for 7 years, and not until my last year did I witness this act. One of the cooks would drop down to one pair of tongs for the grill station for closing. He used the same tongs for raw chicken, beef, seafood, and cooked food.
He would swish the tongs in his sanitizing solution, that looked like soup since he never changed it, claiming that it was “good” after that. I called him out on it and he told me that he never told me how to cook, so I should let him be.
told management too and it was swept under the rug like everything else. I quit shortly after, but that was the only time I witnessed something f**king disgusting like that.
3. That’s common practice.
Worked at McDonalds for a long time. Never seen anyone intentionally spit in anyone’s food or anything like that but it’s definitely safe to say we’ve all eaten some burgers made without gloves or with contaminated gloves (put on gloves-go on phone-make sandwiches).
4. Whatever blows your skirt up, I guess.
Worked in a fast food pizza joint. Nothing without consent of the customer happened, but customers ask some weird stuff.
One time a customer asked for extra chili and emphasized “a lot”, so of course we put like a lot on it.
Another person wanted chicken legs and wanted it extra crisp. He kept sending it back until it was pretty much burned, which is when he found it perfect.
The worst one was a woman asked to put her pasta in a blender, because she had just gotten prosthetics and couldn’t properly eat. It looked disgusting.
5. Whaaaaa?
One time I ordered a burger from McD’s through the drive through and when I got home to eat it there were 3 bites already taken out of it.
Only time in my life I went back to the store and asked to speak to the manager and made a scene. Called the health department too.
6. Bless their hearts.
This isn’t really bad, but a lot of the times when people send food back and there’s clearly nothing wrong with it, the chefs will just rearrange the food on the plate, wait a minute or two and then send it out to the table.
The funniest part is when the customer says that its better.
7. This is typical, I think.
17 years in that sh%t and 100% no matter how f**king awful the customer is, you simply do. not. F**K. with. the. food. Ever.
Anyone caught doing that shit would be tossed out on their a$$ so f**king fast at any of the places I’ve ever worked or hung out at or known about.
8. That’s bad.
I worked at Tim Horton’s and a girl who worked there thought it was a great idea to staple a bag in which boiled eggs came in. That was a decade or more ago, when they had egg sandwiches, don’t know if they still have them.
As I watched her do it, I told her that she probably shouldn’t do it, but she ignored me as she hated everyone and everything, she was not a pleasant person to work with.
Well, the next day a customer who was dining in brings her sandwich with a staple in it. She was puzzled as to how that staple got in there. I told the customer to call the corporate office and complain, I was fed up with that particular worker and the fact that they kept her working there was just mind-boggling – she was so rude to all customers, and hated being there everyday.
Thanks to that nasty girl though I got a new job, because she was so nasty to one of the customers that I took over serving that particular customer and made sure to have her order before she even walked into our TH. After a few weeks of me having her order ready – she would always come at the same time and I saw her car pulling in and would start her order right away – she offered me a job that paid twice as much and where I met lovely people that I still keep in touch with, over 15 years later.
9. They’re like elephants.
My step-father complained to our local pizza place about them not putting very many onions on his pizza.
They apologized and offered a replacement to which he declined.
Fast forward a few weeks.
He orders his standard pizza again, and doesn’t say a word about the onion issue.
Pizza arrives and its entire surface is nothing but chopped onions.
10. Very effective.
I haven’t worked in a restaurant in over 15 years.
I never messed with anyone’s food because that is assault.
What I used to do to snotty Karen types is give them a senior discount and announce to the table when I dropped the check that I remembered to add the senior discount.
11. You’re kind of asking for it at that point.
One time we had a woman call back because her rotisserie chicken was “burnt” I explained it’s just charred because of the way it’s cooked, she wasn’t having it so we agreed to get her a new one. Ten minutes after her husband left she called back even more pissed saying this one was worse.. we told her to send her husband back again for a new one.
The manager and I went in back (with gloves on) and scraped off all the “burnt” parts. I shit you not another ten minutes after he leaves she calls AGAIN, but this time her rice didn’t have any craisins on it.. so once again I tell her to send him back. I dumped so many fucking craisins on that rice I think she got the point and we never heard from/saw them again.
I know it’s not super gross but it’s pretty rare to see someone maliciously fuck with someone’s food. I have seen cooks use the five second rule when dropping food or not washing hands but that’s about it in my 7 years in the industry.
12. I love a good psych out.
I worked in a very well known fast food chain for a while. My favourite example of this actually involved nothing.
The person who bought food had been rude to staff on multiple occasions. The person serving went to get their food, popped round the corner in a noticeable way, then returned having done nothing.
He gave the food to him with a huge grin on his face and said “enjoy”. He then watched the person throw it in the bin when he went outside.
13. More malicious compliance than anything.
Tampering with food is not that common. I’ve been in the business a long time and only worked with one girl who spat in someone’s food. Another server saw her and she got reported and fired immediately.
The only other thing that sometimes happens is when people get cocky and ask for extremely spicy food the kitchen staff turns into evil geniuses. A guy once asked me for wings so spicy that they would give a woman a miscarriage.
I relayed those lovely instructions to the kitchen and I don’t know what they did but the sauce was burning my nose and making my eyes water as I carried it out. He was not able to finish his wings.
14. She did it to herself.
My stepmom was SUPER rude to a server, kept sending her chicken wings back, and complaining. The last time the wings came out, the whole kitchen staff seemed to pile out and look at her.
She refused to eat the wings, and yelled at the server more.
15. Maybe waiting tables is not for her.
Pour the whole tray of drinks over a guest – twice. International trade fair with students as waiters.
First time was an accident, second time she was so nervous she was practically shaking and spilled the drinks again on the same guy.
16. Monster.
The worst thing i did was to this one guy that I already didn’t like and he was being kind of an asshole, I overcooked his eggs.
17. Sometimes you’ve gotta stand up for yourself.
My best friend was in line behind an absolute bitch at Starbucks a couple years ago.
The typical nightmare customer. Bitched about the line, bitched that the person helping her dared to attempt to upsell, etc. THEN she called her a C U Next Tuesday as she walked away.
So my best friend got about half way done with her iced coffee, took the lid off, and as she walked by the table, she “sneezed” and “tripped” which caused that remaining part of the drink to land right in the lap of that rude customer.
Maybe not the right thing to do as it wasn’t her “fight” but I don’t think she felt too bad.
18. This story has quite a twist.
I know a guy that pissed in a bucket of pickles. He would have never been caught if he didn’t talk about it.
There were other things going on at that McDonald’s that helped ruin the reputation. It was also competing with another well managed restaurant in a town that never really had room for both of them. The guy I’m talking about was just one of the most immature teenagers I’ve known.
The funny thing is that he’s married to my sister now and has a much better job than me. He slowly transformed into a responsible adult after having a child.
19. That’s just nasty.
I can fairly say that when I worked at sbux, I one time ruined a latte that a customer insisted on being steamed to 200 degrees. (Milk tends to burn and explode after about 180)
So I held up a cloth to protect myself from the liquid napalm, and scorched the fuck outta that drink. Enjoy your cajun style latte.
20. Nope nope nope.
I worked at a popular fast food chain, it was my first time with closing shift, cleaning and prepping the store.
I see this lady with a mop and bucket come out of the back, slop it on to the griddle and START MOPPING IT. I was appalled. I went and told the manager and she tells me well that’s the quickest way to clean it then scolded me for worrying about things that didn’t concern me.
I quit that job next day and then called the district office and told them what happened. That location closed down not long after. But the franchise still exists.
21. Five second rule?
Worked at a 50’s style diner.
Was prepping the chicken breasts for our burgers and dropped a tray of 50 and they slid right under the grill, easily the dirtiest place in the whole restaurant.
My boss saw and had me pick them all up rinse them with water and reseason then and stick them back in the fridge…
22. Ok that’s kind of funny, though. As long as it wasn’t your burger.
I had a buddy at mcdonalds, a real chaotic type, who every once and a while would say “oh hey, guess what time it is… PICKLE SURPRISE!” and put a whole handful of pickles on a random cheeseburger.
23. I just threw up in my mouth.
I gave them what they ordered. We were a pizza/Italian/bar restaurant. Our menu was ludicrously large and essentially anything that was on the menu that could go on a pizza was listed as a topping, probably 40 to 50 topping choices. I would get asked pretty often for “a pizza with everything on it!” I had a usual joke or two to find out what they really wanted.
Typically a deluxe but then they’d want no black olives or whatever. No big deal. Until the asshole came in that that ordered “everything” and then proceeded to ask if I was ret##### when I questioned him. My sister has disabilities so I didn’t appreciate his tact… told my boss about it and he smiled and said get him a pizza with everything.
Brought it out and gave it to him. He flipped out and demanded the manager of course. My manager had my back and gave the guy his bill which at $2 a topping was well over a $100 pizza. Guy refused to pay, cops got called, Yada Yada Yada.
I hope he enjoyed his pizza with clams, pineapple, Buffalo chicken, broccoli, anchovies, green olives, cream cheese, cauliflower, jalapeños, shrimp…
24. At least they knew her.
The best one I remember was a girl we knew ordered a burger with no onions. He took her burger patty, carefully carved it out so it became a burger ring, put that on the bun, and filled the entire center with onions. It was maybe 10% burger, 90% onion, but it looked totally normal from the outside. He never would have done it to a stranger, but friends were fair game.
I also went through and ordered a burger one time, and he handed me the bag with what I thought was an evil grin. Turned out, he put nine patties on it. My other buddy who ordered 2 burgers got one with 4 patties, one with 5.
25. This is so wholesome.
At my last restaurant job, my coworker would make very ugly sundaes for customers who were rude.
For particularly nice customers, she would painstakingly recreate the sundaes in the menu pictures and give them extra cream and sprinkles.
26. Why, though?
I saw a waiter pour an orange juice, take a big swig with his lips on the rim, top it up then take it to the table.
27. That’s logic.
This applies everywhere and not just in the food industry.
I am a IT contractor for hire, if you’re an ass I won’t put much effort beyond what is in the statement of work and follow it exactly. If you’re a pleasant person to deal with I’m much more likely to suggest alternate ways / better ways and possibly cheaper ways to accomplish the goal. r/MaliciousCompliance is full of examples.
28. Dude this is not your house.
In college, I worked for a well known pizza place. One of our wait staff came to collect a pepperoni pizza, and nabbed a piece of pepperoni off the top before taking it out.
He gets to the table, and everyone is staring at him in stunned silence. There’s a very fine string of cheese going from the pizza to his mouth.
29. Just for fun.
If I had a rude guest order a milkshake I’d make it so thick that they looked like they were sucking a d*ck instead of a straw.
I mean, I know customers are rough, but yikes. I hate these stories.
If you’ve worked at a restaurant and are ready to confess, our comments are open!
