There's something about fast food that just tastes so good. But after reading all about these little secrets...we're not sure fast food is remotely worth it.
It’s All About The Five Guys

“If there’s anybody scared about Five Guys, it’s fine. There’s no freezer. The burgers are made from slabs of raw meat the day of or the day before. Fries are made every day from the potatoes you see stacked up.
All of the toppings are fresh except for mushrooms. They come in sealed bags. But nothing is notoriously gross.
One thing I will say is that ordering a large fry is always a bad idea. The difference between a large fry and a regular fry is surprisingly small (especially when it’s busy). Just order two regular fries and you’ll get a huge number of fries” Source
A Stick Of Butter A Day Keeps The Doctor Away

“I worked at steak n shake. the “wisconsin butter burger” has a quarter stick of butter on it which is pretty gross. but i guess if youre even considering ordering a butter burger you really dont care how much butter is on it” Source
You’re Better Off With A Doughnut

“At Tim Hortons the muffins contain more fat (on average) than the doughnuts. Do yourself a favour and have a doughnut instead” Source
More Mayo Please

“I was a Sandwich Artist as well and the only thing that disgusted me was the “seafood salad”, by seafood they meant imitation crab and the rest was just mayo, a lot of mayo. The killer was when people got extra mayo on their mayo and fake crab sandwich” Source
A Chili Secret

“Not really a health concern but most people are surprised when I tell them about Wendy’s Chili. The meat comes from hamburger patties that sat on the grill too long to serve to customers. They take them and put them in a bin and then throw them in the fridge. When the chili is made they take it out, boil it, chop it up, and dump them in the chili. It’s all safe, but a lot of people seemed upset when I told them about it” Source
Unfit For Consumption

“Not fast food, but I used to work in an Italian restaurant that made a lot of pizza. Try to avoid “quirky” pizza toppings, such as green olives, meatballs, spinach, artichokes, sauerkraut, sun-dried tomatoes, etc. Basically anything that’s not on any of the pre-set specialty pizzas offered.
In general, the food handling was about the same as any other restaurant, but the issue with these toppings is there just isn’t enough turnover. The ingredients are purchased in bulk, just like pepperoni or black olives, but they aren’t ordered frequently enough to be replaced once they’re no longer “fresh”. They’ll be replaced before they’re actually rotten, but that’s a long time after they’re considered unfit for consumption, particularly at a nicer restaurant”Source
A Pool Of Nuggets

“I don’t work there anymore and things are probably different now but when i worked at McDonalds i accidentally left a whole bag of about 100 chicken nuggets out on a counter for way too long.
They melted. Into a pool of liquid. I never understood why. But they were completely indiscernible as being the nuggets i once knew.
Had to make myself a twenty piece just to get over the sight of the nugget pool. Still delicious” Source
Hello Carbs

“McDonalds sweet tea. Pound. Of. Sugar. Per gallon” Source
A Grilled Fiasco

“From McDonald’s, unless you’re willing to wait on fresh meat, don’t order anything that has grilled chicken or angus on it. Not to say that they’re cooked improperly, but (at least at my store) they’re not ordered very often and therefore you may be ordering one that’s been sitting around for awhile.
Depending on the manager on duty, your food may be prepared correctly or incorrectly. We used to have an assistant manager who, one night, cooked some filet to order for a guy that comes in every night for them. When they came up, one fell on the floor, and she tried putting it on the sandwich anyway. The customer saw the whole thing and filed a complaint, which is now sitting up on the wall. She works at a different store now” Source
Don’t Do It

“I worked McDonalds for almost 7 years. The advice I would give anyone who ask questions like this is to simply not go to ANY restaurant in the hour before they close” Source
Lies All Lies

“I work at Chipotle, and nothing is really gross safety-wise, but there are 300 calories in a tortilla ALONE. That, plus all the calories in everything else, you could easily have a burrito with 1500 calories or more. And there’s an assload of sodium in everything. Pretty much the only purely healthy thing there is the brown rice” Source
Frapp Lovers Beware

“I worked at Starbucks. Everything is SAFE and fresh, so no need to worry about that.
HOWEVER if you are health conscious at all stay away from white mocha (650 calories in a venti WM frap), any of the regular fraps for that matter, and scones (highest cal pastry, surprisingly)” Source
Be Safe

“Let me chime in. I worked at McDonalds for a yr or two and learned enough about the back of the stage. So here’s what I can say; your experience will vary.
1st: My first few days wroking there, like someone said the policy to follow is “if you wouldnt eat it, don’t serve it” I accidently dropped two patties before getting them to the cooker/grill. I quickly tossed them and grabbed two from the freezer. The working shift manager looked at me and said these exact words, “Hey man, don’t throw the stuff away. The germs and bacteria is gonna get killed when you cook it.” That made me think twice about this paticular location, which I will say I never ate from again unless I went on break.
2nd: I switched to the overnight shift as they got paid a bit more than minimum wage and I needed the extra hours to add up more cash. (Had a bill to pay off) so every night around 2 to 3 am, the walmart workers would go on break between this time and come to our drive through. We called it the “walmart rush.” Here’s the thing, I’m not sure if its the same way now, but we weren’t suppose to pull more than six patties and ONLY suppose to drop fries, nuggets, and tenders as they were ordered. When the walmart rush started, if we had any thing left over instead of cooking them fresh, we were told to just throw the amount ordered in the microwave to make it seem as if they were just cooked.
Still on overnight. Sometimes when it was late and people would do a big order, I didn’t do this but I seen it happen, people would grab and pull apart older burgers on the draw and just slap together what was needed to be made.
3rd: When people would come to the window (day or night) instead of the inside to say something was wrong with their order, a quick pull apart and replace of the buns was the quick fix. It worked on everything. “I asked for no ketchup.” Pull the top bun off, grab a new one, put it through the toaster, and slap it on. If you’re going to get an order fixed PLEASE go on the inside and do so.
4th: Ice cream cones. Believe it or not, its not as good as it looks just because they have paper wrapped around the bottom and hand it to you in a napkin. Before the napkin, it was touched by someone’s bare hands. You do not have to put on gloves to handle this product. Not at all. Actually this goes for ANY product McDonalds serves. Only time they care, is when the person is a cook. Oh god. The cook who taught me on the grill, was a big sweaty guy who had his dreads hang all over the food. And he smelled horrible. I won’t say his name.
If ever happens and the cook looks like he’s dirty, you can request for a change of person who handles your food. They can not deny your service for doing so.
I could go on forever and even tell you the horrors of what ever but I truly wanta go and watch movies with my girly-girl.
Hold up. One last thing! The storage/back room. The foods are frozen solid yes, but when a box of packed meats were knocked over, “they’re frozen just put ’em back in the box. XtotheV help Derp put the stuff back and come you two come back out front.”
Tomatoes, pickles, and onions. You put on glove(s) when you put them on the bun. BUT, most of the time, the workers I was around DID NOT change their gloves. They just grabbed onions and dipped right on into the pickles and put two or three on the burger. Let’s not mention the fact the products soaked in their juices to maintain the flavor. So when you didn’t change gloves you basically cross-contaminated. Feel sorry for any one alergic. But this problem was dealt with as they started using seperate tongs in order to grab the items.
Ok. I’m done. No one is really gonna read this anyways. I’m going to watch movies now.
Be safe when you order food” Source
A Sticky Situation

“I can’t eat the roast beef after working at Arby’s. If you touch it while it’s raw you’ll never get it off your fingers” Source
A Veggie Nightmare

“I worked at a popular fast food joint for a few years in HS. Do not order veggie burgers, ESPECIALLY if you do it for religious reasons. It’s cooked in a microwave, and handled by people and utensils that have made contact with meat products. Seriously, if you want a veggie burger of such a low quality, just buy some frozen patties at a store, grill them yourself, and you will be way better off”Source
How Gross!

“I worked at McDonald’s for a while and I would have to say the McRib. The way it looks before we put the sauce on it is absolutely revolting. It doesn’t look like meat at all, it looks like a scab” Source
Protect Your Bowels

“I worked in a movie theater, please please please do not eat the hot dogs. No one buys them ($4.75 for a hot dog?!) so they literally sit on the warmer all day and if they’re not bought at the end of the day they get frozen and reheated the next day. Protect your bowels” Source
There’s No Health In Fast Food

“McDonald’s employee here. A lot of people choose to be healthy and order our grilled chicken instead. Not a lot of people realize that they’re eating at a fast food joint and we WILL find a way to make anything unhealthy. Anything grilled chicken, on principle, I wouldn’t eat and here’s why: to keep it from sticking to the grill, we use three squirts of liquid margarine on the bottom of it. To keep it juicy, once we’ve lain the frozen blocks of chicken, three more squirts of liquid margarine are applied to the tops.
TL;DR: You can’t eat healthy at a fast food joint. Even if you order grilled chicken” Source
Strips Over Breasts

“So I’ve been told that this has changed since I worked there but even then I refuse to eat it. I used to work at subway and as many of you know there are two types of chicken. The strips and the chicken breast. Both come into the store frozen and well taken care of. The gross part comes into how we keep them ready to serve. The strips are fine no need to fear they are kept the same as any other meat, the breast however is disgusting. At the beginning of the day we are told to get them out of the freezer and put them into hot water where they remain ALL DAY. then at the end of the day you have to take them out and SQUEEZE the gross ass chicken water out of them which by now has made the meat soggy. Then we put them in a plastic container where they await the same treatment the next day. You may think this is a good way of keeping it fresh but I assure you it’s not, after a while at breast starts getting really mushy and smelling like a– yet we are told to just keep on serving it.
Tl; dr: Whenever ordering chicken ANYTHING at subway always ask for strips never the chicken breast” Source
Beware Of MSG

“I worked at a Chick Fil A in Southern California for nearly 2 years, and ALMOST everything there is made fresh to order. In general, any of the fried and grilled items are a safe bet in term of the conditions the food is prepared under
But I will say that NOBODY should EVER eat the Chicken Salad Sandwich under any circumstance. The Chicken Salad itself is several day-old frozen chicken patties manually stripped of breading, then chopped up and mixed with celery and mayo and whatnot. How anyone can pass this menu item off as healthful is beyond me. It’s nasty.
Also Chick Fil A cooks nearly everything on their menu using MSG. But I heard managers lie to customers about it on several occasions” Source
Large Blizzards: Where Hopes And Dreams Die

“Dairy Queen – don’t get a large blizzard. The spindles for the blender aren’t long enough to go to the bottom of the cup so it’s impossible to blend it properly. You end up getting two or three inches of plain ice cream at the bottom” Source
A Stand Up Place

“Chickfila: The Spicy Chargrilled sandwich. It has a massive amount of sodium. Think “soy sauce”.
Other than that the rest of the sandwiches are fine. Fun fact: if you order any sandwich on the menu, the way it comes, they are all less than 500 calories.
Ohh yeah and the sweet tea and lemonade(which is made by people on site) contains many pounds of sugar per batch. The lemonade has significantly more than the tea.
With that said though the lemonade has exactly three things in it: water, sugar, lemon juice. Yes we had to juice every single lemon in the back. No I did not enjoy it.
Procrastinating at work edit: This goes for all fast food restaurants, but DO NOT GO TO CHICK-FIL-A LESS THAN AN HOUR BEFORE CLOSING. They will be trying to get rid of what’s left. If you manage to order some combination that requires them to cook new food, two things will happen:
1) It will take a long LONG time. Chances are everything is broken down and being washed by the dish washer by then. It’ll have to be set back up and rewashed for your one sandwich. This will keep everyone there another 20 minutes on average each time it happens.
2) As a result of (1), they all hate you now. They will remember you.
Finally: You would be surprised how long it takes to stop instantly responding to “Thank You” with “My Pleasure” Source
The Bloomin’ Oil

“Not quite fast food, but at the Outback I worked at: the Bloomin’ Onion. Not because it’s just almost pure oil (it is), but because of which oil it is drenched in.
every night, we drain and filter the french fry oil, and put in a chunk of new shortening.
the old french fry oil gets filtered in this weird box on wheels and drained into the appetizer deep-vat frier (shrimp, and i think mushrooms).
the oil form the appetizer frier is filtered in the box and then dumped into the 2nd appetizer frier (for chicken tenders, etc.).
the old oil form the 2nd appetizer frier (the third frier in the line) gets filtered and dumped into the fourth and final frier, which is used exclusively for Bloomin’ Onions.
so basically the oil used to make the trademark appetizer at Outback is cooked in 4 day old, 4 times filtered shortening. the same oil used to make french fries, then coconut shrimp, then chicken tenders, all finally getting infused into the thick eggy batter that encases that husk of a vegetable.
don’t eat those”Source
Fat For Days

“Used to work at Pizza Hut. The stuffed-crust pizza has an entire stick of mozzarella cheese crammed into the crust of EVERY SINGLE SLICE. The pizzas are cut eight ways, so that’s eight full mozzarella sticks you’ll be getting per stuffed-crust pizza.
Also, we take a brush (an actual paintbrush) and slather oil/grease all over the pizza after it comes out of the oven.
Seriously Pizza Hut fans, start checking off your bucket list now, because you probably don’t have long left” Source
Never Again

“The ice, unless they break down the whole ice machine, any ice machine over lets say 3 years old is going to make mold, and fast. We clean our badboy once a week, and im still greeted with mold. Been an employee for 4 years, completely stopped drinking ice from all fast food places soon as i found a caterpillar sized chunk of mold in the ice about a week after it was “cleaned” Source
*Gagging

“KFC shredded buffalo chicken snackers are made with the “expired” chicken that sat in the heating bay for too long and can’t be sold to customers. Also, the coleslaw. The sauce was often mixed by hand into the lettuce with someone who had gloves that came to their wrists. When finished they would have sauce up their forearms. Mmmmm arm hair” Source
Moral Of The Story: Don’t Go To Subway

“All this may have been said already (I’m pretty confident some have). But I’m another former Subway employee (from Canada, weee).
Say no to the Tuna, or seafood,or anything else that has the “sauce” mixed in (chicken teriyaki,etc). It’s done by hand, often without gloves (I’ve seen band-aids lost in there, only to be found by a unwitting customer, with their teeth…). Also, anything mixed with mayo has a shelf life (I forget the time frame, but I’m pretty sure it’s only in the hours) and each “vat” of it should be labeled. Problem is, folks mix new shit, and don’t toss the old tub OR they just don’t check the labels, leading to “Artists” serving expired (sometimes from the day before) tuna.
Stay away from the meatballs, and the soups. They aren’t so bad when the first go in the bain, but after being there all day, they are just nasty, sitting there in their tepid waters… The meatballs are supposed to be completely dumped and re-done after so long, but most “Artists” just add a new batch of warm marinara sauce.
Oh, and whenever you are in a Subway, ask your “Artist” to change their gloves before they start. It is (or was) company policy to always comply to this request. They may hate you for it, and you might get some glares, but you will save yourself from pubes, ass hair, and a host of germs.
One last story from a friend, he was working at a KFC and one of his co-workers that did the over-night (and was in charge of making the coleslaw) would add some of his “special sauce” to the mix (I’m talking about jizz here folks)” Source