What is it about buffets that bring out the absolute worst in people? These are the places where people reveal how disgusting they truly behave. I'm not talking about getting lots of food. I'm talking about the disturbing behavior that no waiter or waitress should ever have to clean up after. These are their horror stories. Content has been edited for clarity.
Every Day Was A Nightmare
“I’m an ex-buffet worker. My first story occurred during the peak season. It was a pretty busy day, and I go to a family’s table to ask them what they wanted to drink. When I look to my side, the woman is bragging about the size of her plate. The best way to describe it is a seven inch tall mountain consisting of meat, fish, and a whole lot of fried foods. Now it was fairly standard to have people ask for a leftover bag to take home. But this lady decided it was a good idea to bring a FABRIC bag that absorbed all the liquids from the food. She put this bag inside her purse, so everything must have been soggy.
For my second story, I always tell friends about that time I thought I was going to be attacked over a bottle of juice. We would serve drinks out of two-liter bottles of juice, which customers always thought they could take the bottle home with them. Once day, a couple enters with their two daughters. I was serving at the bar, so I asked the parents if they wanted something to drink. When I go to get some of the ingredients, I see one of the daughters hide a two-liter bottle of full iced tea. I asked her if she needed anything, and she screamed, ‘No!’
I go back to my supervisor, asking if it’s permitted to steal bottles now. I was told to immediately retrieve that bottle. I rush over to the family’s table and tell them that they aren’t allowed to take the bottle home. The mother stood up, pressing her body against mine, and started yelling ferociously. I could see her hand getting ready to hit me.
There is always someone trying to force you to give them free stuff. Our coffee mugs were branded, so it was clear when someone was trying to steal them. There’s always someone willing to start an argument because we didn’t have what they were looking for that day. Sometimes, we had people just take the entire tray of food to the table from the buffet. We would end up arguing with them over the cost, because they took an entire cake. Thankfully, there were outstanding customers who I loved serving, so fortunately not every single customer acted so immature.
For my third customer, we were hosting groups form tour buses during this one summer. This group of elderly people would arrive every year from a nearby big city, and it was all organized by this priest. The group took up twelve tables in a space that only had sixteen, so I needed to try to seat them efficiently. Once I did so, I struck up a conversation with their bus driver. Suddenly, the priest comes over next to me and asks if everything is okay. He then proceeds to tap me on the back and squeeze my butt, then walking away immediately. Needless to say, I was shocked. Does this count as being ‘blessed’?
Bow Down To Our Family
“In the early 80s, I quit college, and before I transferred to another one, I tended bar at a supper club in east central Wisconsin. Without bias, I have to assert this place had phenomenal food, especially its fried chicken in particular. It was amazing. I can’t describe it other than to say it was unlike other fried chicken and it was beyond delicious. The recipe was developed at the club and passed from owner to owner. There was a rule that the written recipe could not be duplicated. Two cooks who were found with photocopies and were fired on the spot. Jump to one Sunday, where we had the weekly buffet running from brunch through dinner and I was tending bar with the manager. Later in the afternoon we had a large family arrive. They appeared to be from a lower economic level, but that didn’t bother me, so was I, and the buffet was very affordable for an all-you-can-eat affair.
All the family, including the little ones, went through the line at least twice. Some of the larger ones went through three and four times for plate fillers. During the meal, one of the hostesses presented them with their bill, according to the number of people in their party. When they’d finished, the matron of the group came to the cash register at the bar and declared that they were NOT going to pay their bill, as the food was inedible. My manager told her that if they tried to leave, we’d have the sheriff’s department on the phone before they hit the door.
She immediately ran to the kitchen and grabbed the owner, a Lithuanian immigrant who was a friend of our family. He was a tall man who spoke slowly with a pronounced accent, and he had a blistering sense of humor. He heard the group clamoring how the food was terrible, that they were all feeling sick and were not going to pay. The hostess confirmed that they’d all been through the line multiple times. The owner just looked at the group and said normal people can tell the food is bad on the first plate, why did they have to go back to make sure? Then he told them to pay up.
I never saw that group come back in the time I worked there. There was no food flying or wasted per se. Once the bus boy got over to their table, we noticed how their dining area was a disaster with food scraps all over, a mess on the floor, that sort of thing. But the most disgusting part of this for me was their utter gall in assuming that we’d bow down to their complaint and allow them to defraud the restaurant. Sometimes people are the worst.”
How To Lose All The Money In Just Eleven Days
“Jiamener had a problem. Jiamener was a small hot pot restaurant in the Chinese city of Chengdu, the capital of spicy food, and yet somehow it couldn’t turn a profit. It’s owners therefore came up with an innovative solution: transform it into a hot pot buffet! They began selling cards for $18 that allowed customers to eat there whenever they wanted, for one whole month. In just a few days, they sold 1,700 different cards. If that sounds like a terrible deal for the restaurant, it’s because it was. All a consumer had to do was eat there three times, and Jiamener would lose money based on the customer’s orders. But the idea was to generate a buzz, some awareness, and hopefully have gained a solid base of loyal customers by the time the promotion ended. Ya gotta spend money to make money, am I right? Wrong.
Some customer spent the entire day inside the restaurant. Most of the customers just lent their cards out to friends and family, because the cards themselves didn’t have any sort of names or photos or identification on them. At one point, groups of people received five hundred free meals in a single day. The restaurant wracked up a staggering debt of $77,000 in eleven days. Sadly, the owners had to close it down. Now while it may seem easy to blame the owners for an admittedly stupid promotion, I would argue that it doesn’t matter how well any sort of deal is designed. Chinese customers will definitely find a way to break it.”
All Hands On Deck
“I work at this hotel’s restaurant, and during breakfast, we had a self-serving buffet station. We had just hosted this dance party over the weekend, and because it was a Sunday, all of these guests were heading home. We, all the staff, were wearing gloves, as we had gotten severe (even bloody) cases of dermatitis from over-washing our hands. We were going out of our way to protect ourselves as well as these guests.
This disgusting lady walks up to the buffet and begins coughing. She is sputtering everywhere, all over the food. She wasn’t even covering her hand. Then she plunged her gross fingers into the buffet, grabbed a sausage, and ate it as she made her way back to her table. She kept touching the counter space. The head waitress at the time saw this unfold out of the corner of her eye, while she was busy serving coffee. The rest of the staff was busy running around serving others.
We had to stop everything we were doing and get all the food back into the kitchen. We had to throw all of it away. It was such a waste. We got so many complaints because of course we had no food to serve, and the chef was going to have to cook everything over again. Unsurprisingly, the coughing lady was one of the many customers who complained, but there was very little we had to say to her. We each got a mouthful of abuse from our supervisor for not having someone watching the buffet at all times. This would not have been possible, as our dining area was deliberately understaffed.”
What Went On Behind His Back
“In college, we would regularly go to this all you can eat Chinese Buffet. Somehow, it was the perfect hangover food. Anyways, we were usually there Sunday afternoons, and I would always sit with my back to the buffet. The ONE TIME I sit facing the food, I watched as the worker lady came and refilled the good chicken. Almost immediately after she refilled, I look up and see a random guy with half his fist in his mouth, like he’s trying to pick something out of his back teeth, and then scoop a serving of chicken onto his plate with that same hand. Like without a thought or a care in the world. Mouth to serving spoon. I was so disgusted, I flagged down one of the workers and tried telling them what happened. I even pointed to the guy who was still walking around.
She says ‘okay,’ and walks over to the spot where it happened. She grabs the serving tray and spoon, and right away a manager comes right over to her looking confused and asks her what she’s doing with the fresh chicken. They talk for a bit, and the manager is starting to get ticked off at this worker. He finally tells her to go take it to the trash. About 5-10 minutes later, everything was replaced and all was seemingly well. I’m 98% sure that they just brought out the same dish with the same chicken and spoon, but by that time, I’d already paid the check and was walking out.
And that was just the one time I actually saw something. I still wonder about all the things I didn’t catch. They got shut down by the health department a few times not too long after this happened too.”
Henchman, Assemble!
“I call it the ‘All You Can Eat Chinese Choke and Puke’. We have a pretty decent Chinese buffet here and are regular visitors, so much so that we’ve become friends with the owners. They even make stuff for us that’s not on the menu. We get real, authentic Chinese food.
On any given night, you see some weird characters going in to graze, but this one fateful day was different. Tonight, this bizarre man staggered into the place.The guy was well over six feet tall and about six feet wide. His little entourage was with him, and they sauntered up to the buffet and took their production line positions. They were bringing this man two plates each. The look of sheer piggish joy on this mutant’s face was disturbing by itself, but seeing this clown eat was simply disgusting. Now I can eat, and the friend I was with is an eating machine with the metabolism of a hummingbird. In the time it took each of us to finish two plates, this strange man wiped out six plates, and then he killed another six plates, with each one piled high, just slamming it into his gaping pie hole. Then he had four plates of desserts. He had food stuck to his face, all over the circus tent of a shirt he was wearing, and all over the floor. He was deeply fascinating to all the regulars. I don’t know, maybe they were jealous because they couldn’t eat as much as he could.
Thankfully, we never saw him at the restaurant again. That was a true monstrosity in motion, which put me off of Chinese for the rest of the summer.”
A Sticky Surprise
“I worked at Old Country Buffet for two years during my last year of high school and first year of college. I saw lots of very large people come through. There were lots of families with kids who were messy eaters. So we had a regular customer who was probably in her 30s, but she looked much older and was pretty wiry and gaunt. Anyway, she came in at least once a week, sometimes more, and would make multiple trips to the buffet. Salad, soup, meat, and mashed potatoes. And then she would visit the restroom. I never personally witnessed the ‘aftermath’, but basically she was binging and purging.
Another time, I was helping out by busing tables one evening, and I had a group of four young people (probably early 20s) who wouldn’t let us take any of their dishes. So by the time they left, there were easily twenty or more plates on their table, plus silverware, cups, and bowls. When they left, they were laughing and said over their shoulders, ‘Have fun!’
I just figured they were poking fun at how we had to work and clean up people’s dirty plates and they didn’t have to. That is, until I went to bus their table. They had shoved all the dishes to the inside of their booth. Now as I started pulling stacks of dishes out, I noticed a giant puddle of not-so-hot fudge. Yup, they spilled an entire cup of fudge on the table and didn’t make any effort to clean it up. Instead, they decided to hide it. And they didn’t even leave us a tip.”
Caught Red-Handed
“I usually don’t eat at ‘public’ buffets, like Golden Corral and the like, precisely because of bad behavior. I was eating at a nice Japanese buffet, which had a good variety of not only seafood but also other foodstuffs. It was rather expensive to get in, but there were no elementary-school children, and the area was populated by local businessmen. So, not the place you’d expect bad behavior to take place. The restaurant prided itself on getting the top score in each and every health inspection. They held a ’99/100′ as a shameful score.
While getting some cucumbers, I noticed a businessman pick up a crab leg, lick it, then put it back. Then, apparently looking for the same leg, he searched through the pile, found a different one, broke it halfway open, then put it back when it didn’t break fully. Then he found another one. This time, it broke fully, and he took one bite before putting it back.
At this time, the chef had come back to refill some dish or another and caught him red-handed. Security immediately took him out of the restaurant, with no refund.”
“I Feel So Attacked Right Now”
“These types of buffets used to be my favorite. There would usually be 200-300 different dishes available. Currently, I try to stick to all-you-can-eat sushi places, instead of just any open buffet. When you go to places like this often, you see many people doing disgusting things. And you realize that way more disgusting things happen when you are not looking also. And that’s a turn off for restaurants like this. People can be really disgusting. I’ve seen people take food, like pie, cookies, and cake, take a bite, then put it back. I’ve seen people go to the washroom, not wash their hands, then go touching plates, serving tools, and even food afterwards. I’ve seen people eat out of the display cases directly. I’ve seen people not using the tongs, and instead use their hands to take food. I’ve seen people sneeze all over the buffet. One of the reasons they have the glass ‘shield’ is to stop people from breathing over the food, but sneezing is just wrong. I’ve seen a kid puke into a serving pan at a buffet (this was in the ice cream dessert area). Mind you, it was a young kid, so things like that can happen. Thank goodness I’ve never seen an adult do that. One time, I saw a woman peeing her pants while waiting in line on purpose, with a puddle of urine forming around her shoes. They they had to empty the entire restaurant, with hundreds of people mortified. The woman was spewing out slurs to the various Asian staff members.
The most disgusting thing I have every witnessed was when a woman and her three friends were at this sushi buffet place. It was lunchtime, so only maybe thirty people were eating there. These four ladies were non-stop spewing awful comments towards the Japanese staff. They wouldn’t stop making fun on their waiter. Well, turns out it was actually a Chinese-run sushi restaurant. Not a single Japanese worker. Everyone there was Chinese and also spoke English fluently. Their waiter probably spoke better English than these women. Many of the other tables couldn’t believe what they were hearing. Customers were requesting to be re-seated farther away. One intimidating guy, sporting a large beard and an orange construction vest, got up during his meal, passed by the ladies’ table, and noticeably muttered, ”Effing Turds,’, obviously directed at the ladies. People were visibly annoyed at the four of them.
Then one girl at that table responded to the insult by shouting to her friends, ‘We need to find out where that guy works and call his boss!’
She was a blonde woman, maybe in her mid to late twenties. The other ladies were all like, ‘Oh my god, yes, oh my god. I can’t believe that happened. I feel so attacked right now.’
People like those four ladies disgust me. They should be ashamed of themselves. I shouldn’t even be calling them ladies, as they are far from that.”
Hanging Onto His Life
“All-you-can-eat buffets were my absolute favorite dinner outing when I was a child. I would pile my plate with fried crab rangoon, sugary roles, and I would make frequent stops to sneak in a dessert each time I went back up. All the dinner rules went out the window when we got to the buffet. As I’m digging into something that was most likely sugary, I hear a woman screaming across the table from my family. I looked over and her husband’s face was bright red as he was squealing for air. He was choking.
His wife was screaming for help and shouting for someone to call 911. The man’s face was starting to take on a bluish color. Luckily, there happened to be a nurse that was dining at the restaurant and quickly came over to assist. She swung her arms around his abdomen and performed the Heimlich maneuver. Within less than a minute, the man was able to cough up his food and was coming to.
His wife was weeping in relief as her husband’s face was regaining pigment. The restaurant patrons were clapping, celebrating the victory of each breath the man was able to take. The waitress also came over to check in as the nurse was asking the man some basic questions. The waitress sees that he was speaking and slipped the check on the table as she passed through. It was only a few minutes after the man regained consciousness, but the check made its way to the table almost immediately.
My parents were appalled, as we just had front row seats to a very traumatic scene of a man hanging onto his life. It was unbelievable that the staff was waiting for him to breathe, so they could promptly deliver the check for their meals, like it was the last box they needed to check for their service. Another scene followed from the patrons. Everybody was disgusted at how swiftly the waitress brought the bill after the man suffered a near death experience. Needless to say, the bill ended up being comped by the restaurant.”
Customers Could Perish At Any Minute
“For three years I was a repair technician for commercial kitchen equipment. I repaired ovens, steamers, microwaves, grills, griddles, and anything that heated up in a kitchen. We had a division of labor between the cold side and the hot side guys, as there were different regulations and certifications for each. Anyway, I went into a popular, well known, common buffet because some of the steam wells on the line were not working. That wasn’t stopping them from having food sitting in them, it just wasn’t being kept hot.
The floor was wet. I don’t just mean damp, I mean there was standing water on the floor, because some of the wells were leaking. I grab some cardboard from the back and lay it down so I can get a look underneath. What I see are bare wires, not inside conduits, just hanging, the undersides of most of the wells nearly rusted through, with open electrical boxes. It was a nightmarish mess. I get up and I go down to the breaker box at one end of the line to turn off power, so I can start to fix the mess. When I open the cabinet under the serving table with the breaker box, I see that the conduit carrying the 280 volt main cables going TO the breaker box has split open. Those cables were on a 190 amp breaker back in the main. This split conduit with live wires was JUST SITTING IN A PUDDLE that the staff were working in AND was extending out in front of the line TO THE CUSTOMERS GETTING FOOD!
I refused to work. I got on the phone and told my boss and then got into an argument with my boss, because I was threatening to call the fire marshal and have the place shut down. The fire and electrocution hazards were real and present. I don’t mean electrocution as in simply ‘getting shocked’. Someone was going to die because of this.
I documented everything. The store immediately called an electrician to get the breaker box fixed. I left the site because I had other cleaner, safer places to service. My company did go back and repair the wells after, but I refused to service the place, as they would not shut down the line to do the repairs properly.”