Stay Out Of The Sky Tubes
“I worked at Chuck E. Cheese for a year in high school. It was the worst job I ever had. The absolute worst day was having to clean poop and vomit out of the skytubes. Two separate occasions, several hours apart. I’ve never been the same since.
The funniest thing, though, was the coworkers who had a threesome in the closet where we kept the Chuck E. costume. The guy asked me to cover for him during closing and took two other coworkers into the closet and banged them. Thing is, there was a camera in that closet. That was the last time I ever saw all three of them.”
When He Pulled Down His Sock, A Pool Of Blood Poured Out
“I was the technician at a Chuck E. Cheese in high school. One day, I was covering someone and I had to wear the suit and do the show. On my way back to the room, a little kid ran up to see Chuck E. and stabbed me in the ankle with a pencil as hard as he could. I rushed into the back room and took off the pants portion of the suit, pulled down my sock, and a bunch of blood poured out. I didn’t even go home early, the boss just had me stand at the door.”
The Worst Kid On Earth
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“I received a complaint that a kid was dipping toilet paper into a women’s toilet then eating it. He was.
That same kid beat me mercilessly while I was wearing the ‘Rat in Hat’ suit while screaming, ‘MAN IN SUIT!’ The best was a complaint about the same kid eating from other families tables. He was and he looked them dead in the eyes while doing it. These were all different days.”
Poor Chuck Has Seen Some Terrible Things
“I am a former Manager. I have a few worsts, I have divided them up below.
Actual worst: The time a custody dispute carried over into a birthday party for a three-year-old. Multiple people had weapons and knives, someone actually fired at the mother, and someone else tried to cut the father. This caused a full-on riot resulting in a lockdown. Luckily, we were very close to a police station and no one was seriously injured.
Hilarious worst: Two employees hooking up in the ‘Chuck E. Closet’ (Where employees could go change without being in the way of the kitchen or in sight of the kids) while one was wearing the Chuck E. head. This was bad because once the closet was unlocked/open, you were in sight and we had lots of horrified parents and terrified children and it was really hard to not laugh.
Creepy worst: One of the animatronics failed and became possessed. We were about two weeks away from becoming a Stage 2 store, (next level of upgrades/improvements including removing the animatronics) so they told us just to let it go and try to keep it in check. It sounded demonic and would turn on at random, like in the middle of the ‘Happy Birthday Song.’ It’s head hit a point that it couldn’t turn anymore and got stuck moving a few inches back and forth and then, once, it caught on fire while trying to demonically still sing.
Sad worst: We all had to get background checks if we had been employed for more than 30 days because of a manager in our district who turned out to not be taking care of his dying mother for a month as he had claimed. He was actually in jail for drinking and driving. The area manager was concerned about what else they didn’t know because he had been with the company for like 25 years and worked up from a cashier. They ran a background check and he had multiple issues with the law. His ‘family vacations’ were all timed with when he was in jail. He was also a registered offender.”
When Parents Brawl
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“I was 17, it was New Year’s Eve, I had plans for midnight and I was getting out of work at 10. It was getting close to 10 and I was working the kid check near the ball pit. It was pretty slow since most had left early to go and ring in the new year. There were still a few families sitting at the tables by the ball pit. I was watching the kids play and noticed two kids throwing balls out of the pit. Those things take forever to round up.
I walked over there and told the kids to stop throwing the balls out. The little twerps wouldn’t listen so I turned to the parents sitting in the booth, who didn’t even notice. I told the parents to make them stop and they started yelling at me for assuming those kids were theirs. Now, to be fair, they were the only family there of their race, but what she didn’t remember is that I was the one who checked them in.
Before I could respond to her, a father at the table behind them started yelling at the family that was getting angry with me. Next thing I knew, it was group brawl. From every direction parents were snatching up their crying kids and they ran for it. Arms and knees are flying and I’m trying to get out of the area without getting hit.
That’s when I saw the woman next to me pick up the metal napkin holder. She swung it almost hitting me and smacked a man in the head with it. Blood started pouring out of his head. Great. She goes to swing again and another person had grabbed a dispenser of their own and swung just in time to hit the other woman’s dispenser. So now those two were going at it while the guy who got hit made his way to our office. I ran back there with them and police were already on their way.
The fight started to spill into the main entrance/front counter area and one of the brawlers wanted to go into the back to fight the guy who just got smacked in the head. My boss finally yelled that the police had been called and they were on the way. All the families involved in the fight couldn’t get out of there fast enough. We did get the plate number of the woman who hit the man.
The police showed up and questioned everyone who stayed behind after the fight. It took forever. I spoke to an officer and gave a written statement. The man was taken to the hospital and after the EMTs cleaned him up it looked a lot better than it did before. Finally, I got the okay from the police to leave. It was just before midnight and there was still a chance that I could make it to my friends in time. I walked in with two minutes to spare. It was a crazy way to end the year that’s for sure. Not long after that, I moved out of state. About a year later I got a notice that I’d been summoned as a witness to the fight. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to go because it was just too far. Other than that crazy night I usually had a lot of fun at work.”
The Suit Is The Grossest Thing Ever
“The worst part was wearing that rat suit after this one dude was in it. He took it seriously and would get up on the prize tables and get the kids to chant CHUCK E, CHUCK E…I could freakin hear it back in the kitchen over the noise and music.
Dude was buck naked in the suit. And he sweats, a lot. I probably have hepatitis.
The best part, though, was taking the leftover pizza dough into the back lot after closing and having a 1v1 deathmatch, throwing softball sized dough balls at each others’ heads.”
It’s A Really Dirty Job
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“Former employee for about 9 months. Here are my horror stories:
- A very old woman peeing on the carpet in the entrance while standing up.
- Cleaning pee out of the skytubes after a complaint that it got in a kid’s eyes and he couldn’t see.
- Walking into the bathroom to find an abandoned pair of underwear with poop in it. Took everything I had to not throw up when throwing it away.
There were definitely many more less-than-enjoyable experiences, but these are the ones that stand out to me.”
Seems Like The Perfect Place To Drop A Deuce
“I worked at CEC as my first job. On more than one occasion, kids went up to the sky netting (basically a birds nest made out of rope suspended in the air) and would take a dump. Naturally, since it was netting, the dump would fall through and on to anyone who happened to be below.
After this happened a few times, we decided to move the carousel ride (which had a roof) under the bird’s nest so at least it would land on the roof and not someone’s head.”
He Dealt With Both Situations Well For A Boy His Age
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“Worked at CEC for nearly two years during high school and then again later for another year. The worst parts almost always had to do with the parents of course. The one that sticks out in my head the most is the super trashed, very unattractive, older woman who stuck her hands down the front of my pants.
It was just after I started, I was 15 and spent the first few months there working the game room floor. This lady came up to me saying one of the machines was not giving out tickets and I needed to check it out for her. I sat down on the stool to open up the panel and check things out; during this time she began rubbing my back saying how cute I was and how much of a help I was being. It was about this time I realized she reeked of drinks and was hammered. Next thing I knew, one of her hands was down the front of my shorts and she had found the prize she was after. I quickly sprang up from my seat saying I had to get some tools from the back. I went and told the games manager what happened. I’m not really sure what happened after that as I stayed in the back for a while. Next time I came back out she was gone, thankfully.
But that wasn’t even the craziest thing that ever happened while I worked there.
Next door to us was the DMV and one day a lady parked in the fire lane in front of it to help her elderly passenger inside to find a seat. Well, in the time it took her to do that, a tow truck swooped in to tow her. This happened fairly frequently in our parking lot so my coworker buddy and I got closer to the glass at the front of the store to watch the shenanigans.
The tow truck backed right up to the car, lifted the front end, and started pulling away with it. As the towed car passed our windows, we realized there were kids in the back seat! My buddy and I ran out the front doors of the store and started chasing after the guy, screaming about the kids. We finally caught up to him in the back of the parking lot where he would usually secure the car to the truck before taking it back to the lot and told him what he did. He just said, ‘Oh crap,’ dropped the car and took off.
At this point, the mom of the kids had run to where we were, understandably screaming about her babies. The cops were called and since we knew which company the truck belonged, the tow truck driver eventually showed back up. Not sure how much trouble the driver actually got in, but the cops were telling us that the law states that tow truck drivers must verify there are no passengers in the car before doing a snatch and grab. Adrenaline was definitely pumping with me and my coworker for a while after that one.”
That Takes The Cake
“One time when I was working at Chuck E. Cheese, a food fight broke out and one kid chucked his entire cake straight at Chuck E. and then he cried about how ‘he didn’t get a cake.’ The kid’s mom went into the bathroom and she was in there for a good 15 minutes. I went in there to ask what was up and I saw her having a mental breakdown. Turns out she spent hours making that cake special for him, and it was all ruined in about 30 seconds”
The Parents Were Worse Than The Kids, But Not By Much
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“I worked at one for several years, I didn’t have extremely horrible things happen to me, though. I was a Game Tech, which meant I would unclog tokens and perform minor repairs on games while also delivering pizza to tables and cleanup. Things I can remember that did happen that were weird/funny were:
- Having to carry wasted people out of at closing. Cashiers would try to limit people’s intake, but when others would buy for them they could still get plastered.
- Parents fighting over video games. I never had an issue with kids, it was always the parents wanting their little snowflakes to play on some game (usually skeeball). We were told not to try and break them up, the manager would just call the cops. So I would go over to them and say they could either leave or deal with the cops, they always left before the cops arrived
- I got hit with skeeballs a few times when going up on the lanes to unclog a ball or fix something, nothing major, but it got to the point of making eye contact with all the kids before going up with warnings that I would throw them back.
- Riding the drink trays down the slide at closing time and getting up to some impressive speeds and sliding across the floor.
- Cleaning out the tubes that run around the ceiling and finding poop and puke and stuff up there.
- Seeing how dirty the ball pit was. Seriously, don’t let your kids go in there because they only get cleaned out like every few months and if some kid urinates…unless we were told, we didn’t know.
- Cleaning up the massive mess some people leave after doing their DIY party, including dirty diapers and all kinds of mess under the tables that made me question how they can live with themselves after making such a massive mess and just leaving it.
- Not me but another person wearing the Chuck E costume got groped by some hot mom, not that he complained, but I know that a few of the times it would be one of the female staff in the costume and I could imagine it going down worse for the guest in that situation.
- A tech was replacing a broken CRT in a game and while lifting the tube/electronics, he held it with the tube out and pressed against his thigh. It proceeded to discharge into his leg, leaving him in a fetal position and me laughing so hard I had to close the door to the repair room to stop laughing.
- For a while, I was emptying the tokens from all the games every Sunday, would start out with clean nitrate gloves, and by the end of the day they would be a dull grey/gold color, I stopped trying to handle coins after doing gig and realizing how dirty most money is, especially stuff handled by those little walking waste dump children.”
When You Have A Friend Who Takes Jokes Too Far
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“My dad worked at Chuck E. Cheese decades ago and told me this story. He worked as the man in the suit and all his friends knew it. He had this one friend, we can call him Gene, who liked to take things over the top. My dad was working and suddenly, he heard a roar. He turned to see his buddy Gene sprinting at him, full speed, no stop in sight. Boom, my dad was on the ground, head off and the only thing to be heard was the screams of young children.
My dad got fired that day.”
Well, That’s Just Crappy Parenting Right There!
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“Ah, I remember when I worked at that crap hole. I had to take out the coins out of the machines, refill the tickets, and clean.
The worst thing that happened was not the poop or vomit in the tubes above that the kids crawled in, but the time a kid apparently had to take a dump but didn’t want to go to the bathroom because he would lose all his progress in the game he was playing. So he took a dump right where he is standing. Guess he was three tokens deep, so he committed to the game. Well, at one point he lost and ran out of tokens. Guess what he did next? If you guessed walk away with the poop on the floor like it wasn’t his, you are wrong. He freaking grabbed his poop and just smeared it all over the machine like he was frosting a cake. He went into a full-on tantrums while trying to talk smack. Then just he wiped his hands on the carpet.
Boy, was I glad I heard about this from a coworker.”
He Never Suspected Those Sweet, Preteen Boys
“This happened 15 years ago or so. I was designated to be the big cheese himself, a glorious honor (not), and the fact that I was one of the only guys that worked there which meant I was almost always the chosen one for that hot freaking suit.
This day, a football team was having a party there (12-year-olds or something). My manager knew what was going to happen. But me? My young, naive brain only had innocent thoughts about making the children happy. Then the coach playfully tossed me a football (in my vision at least so I actually caught it).
It happened. A hoard of 12-year-olds descended upon me in the cramped area between two long tables. Valiantly as I tried to resist, these little demons proceeded to tackle me onto the ground. I thankfully didn’t break anything and I kept my head from falling off while being knocked around, but I was ticked. As soon as they got off me, I got up and left to go to the back and take off the outfit.”
It’s Hard To Be A Woman At Chuck E. Cheese
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“I was a party hostess for a year and a half, so I have plenty of stories. Some were just general situations.
- A kid pooed in the sky crawl slide and another poor kid slid through it and spread it all the way down the slide. My manager told me to meet him by the skytubes with no context and then picked me up and shoved me into the entrance with some Windex and paper towels. I had to scale down the slide with paper towels on my butt.
- While cutting the cake for a 3-year-old’s party, some kid started rubbing my back. I thought, ‘Oh that’s sweet,’ until I went to the kitchen and my boss told me I had cake all over my back. I had to work five more hours like that.
- An adult man followed me around for hours trying to get my number until my manager had to tell him to leave or he was going to call the cops for harassment. The guy looked me in the eye and said, ‘This isn’t over.’ I watched him lingering in the parking lot for a bit after.
- There was a guy that was a regular to Chuck E. He would in bring in a lot of different children. We just assumed that he had a lot of kids. One day, the cops come in with his picture and asked us if seen him. He was a registered offender.
- A father and his teenaged son ran into Chuck E Cheese with bags. They hopped over the kid check rope and ran to the back. Cops came barging in right after and chased them around the game room with tasers out before tackling them to the ground.
- I don’t know what was in the pizza, but it did some terrible things to people’s stomachs. One morning, the toilet in the men’s bathroom was clogged. My manager brought in the wet bag vacuum and stuck the hose into suck the clog out. The vacuum was on blow and when he turned it on, it blew crap all over him, me, my coworkers, the ceiling, stalls, and the floor. It was everywhere.”
People Like This Aren’t Fit To Be In Public
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“I’ve been at Chuck E. Cheese for 4 years.
I’m a cashier, and I remember I had a closing shift one night. Cashiers close down the cash area, salad bar, beverage bar, and restrooms (at least at my location). I usually leave the restrooms until last, so on that night I had finished up everything else and went to clean restrooms. My location is typically very clean, so I had never had an issue with restrooms. Until that day.
When I walked into the women’s room, I saw what no employee wants to see in the restrooms.
It was in the biggest stall. Just imagine poop, but everywhere. On the walls, on the seat, on the floor. It was like, only semi-solid. Almost liquid-like. On the floor near the drain was more poop (imagine the poop emoji, but in real life. That’s what was there). I remember a coworker came in and Snapchatted it for some reason!
I have no idea how a human could have accomplished this.
I called my manager for backup.
He came in and screamed.
I screamed.
We then cleaned it up begrudgingly. I wore like five pairs of gloves at the same time. It took us far longer than usual. I wasn’t happy, to say the least.
Luckily it has never happened since! Nothing has ever been worse than that.”
