Fast food workers see all kinds at their job. They work at a weird intersection where they not only deal with the general public at their hungriest, but they also have to deal with all the weird food stuff that's just part of the territory. Outrageous stories are sort of the lifeblood of their profession, but these stories are seriously ridiculous!
Beware The Coleslaw
“A KFC employee I knew would erm, release his little swimmers (if you caught my drift) in the coleslaw every once in a while. Not because he was disgruntled or hadn’t received enough hugs as a child. Just for funsies. He thought he was being so hilarious and would brag to other people about it; not surprisingly, he was fired.”
After Making A Mess, She Had The Nerve To Say This!
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“A good friend of mine was working at Zaxby’s while she was in college. She was a full-time student, part of the marching band, and working almost every night. One day she gets called upon to clean the women’s bathroom. The toilet and floor were covered in oily, watery diarrhea. My friend is an angel of an employee and a hard worker, so she got down on her hands and knees and went to work.
While she was working, the perpetrator returned to the scene of the crime. She then created a second crime scene in the stall next door. As this dirty lady was leaving, she stopped and watched my friend cleaning for a minute before announcing, ‘I bet that makes you wish you’d gone to college.'”
Her Friend Had A History Of Drinks Being Thrown In Her Face
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“My best friend worked at a McDonald’s for several years in high school, and there were two stories she told that stuck with me:
One day, her McDonald’s experienced some sort of malfunction with the machine that produced milkshakes. Apparently, they were coming out pretty much melted. A customer demanded a chocolate milkshake, and said he didn’t care if it was melted. She did one up for him, and handed it to him so he could get a look at how melted it was. He freaked out on her for ‘ruining his milkshake,’ and threw it at her. She was completely covered in chocolate, and yet was expected to stand there and finish the rest of his order.
The second story is an experience she had as a manager. One cold winter day a hobo walked into her store and went to use the washroom. He came out about ten minutes later, and politely provided the dollar whatever needed for a cup of coffee. She gave it to him at no charge, and told him to enjoy the rest of his day. That pleasant phrase threw him into a rage, and he ended up throwing the hot coffee at her. She ended up calling the cops on him, as he refused to leave the restaurant after doing this.
The story doesn’t end there, however, as later, when she was doing a store inspection, she peered into the men’s washroom and discovered bloody poop smeared around the room.”
His “Vampiric” Coworker Had Strange Tastes
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“I worked at a Wendy’s when I was a teen. The guy who worked the grill was a self-styled vampire. Our patties were fresh, not frozen. This guy would cut open the sleeves that the beef was shipped in and then guzzle the ‘blood’ that accumulated in them. Disconcerting to say the least. One time, a customer saw him do it. That was a fun time.”
“The Second I Walked In, I Was Hit With The Utter Most Disgusting Smell I’ve Ever Faced”
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“I worked at a McDonald’s in Iowa for around three years. One Sunday, I got called to come in and help with the lunch rush as they were ‘having troubles.’ Figuring I would only be assisting them through rush I would come in for a couple hours. Dear lord, I had no idea what I was in for.
The second I walk into the place, I get the utter most disgusting and gut wrenching smell I’ve ever faced. The sewer had backed up and was coming up through drainage grates in the floor all through out the back of the store. There were literal turds floating in sewage water, about 1 inch high, from behind the counter all the way to the back by the storage.
I told the managers that were working we had to close down immediately, because this violates countless health codes. I was told to call the owner and tell him this (everyone else was afraid of the old money hungry hag). After explaining the situation to him he basically told me to nut up and squeegee the crap out the back door. So that’s what we did. There were countless comments from customers about what the smell was, so I blatantly told them exactly what it was. Not a single customer left. Not a single one cared at all. They all ordered their food, even though they could see the feces. This is also the day I lost hope in people.”
Leave The Bread Alone!
“I worked at a Subway. The owner had a desk in the back, not an office. I walked back there to get some cups and caught him looking at porn. Awkward. Not three minutes later he came to the front of the store and tested the softness of every loaf of bread without wearing gloves. It was during the lunch rush. I had to serve it.
He Was Several Bites In When He Noticed Something In The Cheese
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“Back in college one summer, I worked at a pizza place in Ithaca, NY.
The sanitation was pretty questionable, and while there were timers hanging above the pizzas to symbolize that we were supposed to throw pizzas away after being out two hours, those were just decorations for the health inspectors.
Anyway, I’d get a free slice of pizza during my break. I’d normally go for the cheese since it was almost always fresh (and thus the least likely to kill me), but I decided to go for the baked ziti pizza one day because pasta on pizza fulfilled a carbo-load dream of mine.
So I throw the pizza in the oven for a few minutes, take it out, and take a few bites only to realize something was WRIGGLING in the pizza. Between the gooey, saucy ziti pieces were a half dozen or so larvae who were rather alarmed at having just been thrown in a 500-degree oven.
Management always left the door open in the summertime, and apparently that invited fruit flies that laid eggs on the pizza. After gagging and spitting and contemplating what possibly was wriggling down my esophagus, I showed the wormy slice to my boss, who claimed it was just ‘garlic,’ and then yelled at me for throwing the slice away. It was a long time before I ate pizza again.
What was almost as disconcerting, however, is that one time a customer (wasted Cornell frat guy) got a wormy slice and came to the counter. Instead of asking for a refund, he asked FOR MORE PIZZA.”
These Jersey Shore Wannabes Made Her Hate Working Drive-Thru
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“I was working the night shift at McDonald’s on drive-thru last year when a car came through at around 3 am. When the car pulled up to my window, I saw two dudes that looked like they were straight out of Jersey Shore. The driver had his shirt unbuttoned.
Now, I wouldn’t have even noticed the shirt if he hadn’t looked down at it, looked at his friend, and said to me, ‘Oh… no, don’t get the wrong idea. We’re not gay. We have sex with girls. We actually just had sex with girls like 20 minutes ago. Would it be weird if I told you that it was the same girl? Yea, we had sex with this chick at the same time. Hey, you’re hot. Wanna party?’
I just stood there, dumbfounded. I think I finally found words and said something along the lines of, ‘Uh, no thank you. So…your order comes to $2.92.’
They didn’t give up though. They just kept trying to get me to party with them and were trying to ‘entice’ me by bragging about their junk. I finally had a manager handle the situation and they left, only to return 10 minutes later to try it all again. This time, as they were leaving, they said, ‘We’ll come pick you up when you’re off at 7. We’ll show you a good time, babe.’
So that’s why I hate working drive-thru at night.”
She Was Serious About Her Discount
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“While working at Pizza Hut, a black lady came in and ordered $150 worth of pizza, soda, and wings. I told her the total and then she without missing a beat asked if I remembered to apply her African American discount. I questioned her about this and she proceeded to yell at me about how she gets a federal mandated 75% off all food for being black because of slavery.”
The “Hambeast” Apparently Had No Idea How Drive-Thrus Operated
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“I had a dirtbag customer once while I was working at McDonald’s in high school. McDonald’s ‘premium salads’ had just been released, and the chicken used in them was the same as the grilled chicken sandwich. It took eight minutes to cook, and we typically didn’t keep very many cooked and in the warmer because they didn’t sell fast.
At noon on a weekend, during a very busy rush, some fat hambeast rolled up in the drive-thru and ordered six of these salads. When some product wasn’t ready, the practice was to have them pull up into a parking space and we’ll run the order out when it’s ready, so the guy behind her who just ordered a large Coke doesn’t get trapped in the drive-thru. She refused to pull ahead and forced about nine cars behind her to wait for between 10 and 15 minutes, even after we explained that this is what was happening; Inconsiderate sow.”
Poor Girl
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” I worked at a Subway in high school and a few weeks before I started the place was robbed. The robber forced the only employee who was working (a pregnant woman in her early 20s) into the walk-in freezer and moved a huge metal prep table in front of it so she couldn’t get out. Eventually, another customer came into the store and figured something was up, he was able to get her out of the freezer and she was totally fine.
Maybe 2 months later we were robbed again after the store was closed. The only thing they took was a jar of money we had pooled to buy gifts for the same employee’s baby shower, poor girl.”
He’ll Never Look At Slides The Same Way Again
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“When I was 15, I worked at Chick-Fil-A. I was cleaning the playground one day when a customer complained about some kid pooping in a slide. I promptly got my coworker to help me inspect the poopy slide. When I looked at the slide, I noticed the poop was smeared from the top of the slide down to the bottom, so I cleaned the bottom half first then I began cleaning the top half. The result of this was that the middle of the slide was still covered in poop, so my friend lowered me from the top of the slid by my two feet to get to it. As he did, my cell phone fell out of my pocket and slid through the poo. Then my friend let one leg go, and then the other, resulting in me sliding head first through poop.
Never again will I clean a poopy slide.”
So That’s What Gave The Orange Juice That Weird Taste!
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“Worked at Denny’s a few years back. We had an orange juice machine that would always get clogged every few weeks. We’d run a cleaner through the machine and it would work again for another few weeks. Eventually, even the cleaner didn’t help so we had to call a repairman. He had to disassemble the entire machine and he found a dead rat that had been the clog the whole time. I kid you not, over six months of rat filtered goodness. Yum.”
Ants, And Gnats, And Beetles, Oh My!
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“I only worked at Taco Bell for a month but I’ve got stories for you.
We had a bunch of the mild stuff that seems to occur everywhere. Tick us off in the drive-thru? Burrito gets a triple dose of onions, just little things like that. Supposedly, we were the better of the two in town, rumor was the other site had problems with hand washing being optional. Yet with our site, it was the bugs that were a problem.
You know the soda machine that’s always stationed by the drive-thru window? The one with that nice big stack of paper cups that are kept next to an almost constantly open window? Well, ours always attracted gnats. I’m not sure if it was the paper or the moist humidity, but they loved climbing inside of the paper cups and waiting to be covered in shining dark soda.
Our other big problem was the ants. Now this town has a fairly significant problem with the Argentine ant and we could never keep the food line clear and clean long enough to not attract a line. We’d find them almost daily crawling through one of the open containers, swarming at whatever piece of chicken that wasn’t pushed into the bin all the way. I’d chuck the whole bin if I was the one to discover it, and only if the manager wasn’t around to notice. Oh, how she hated ‘wasted’ food, so more often than not, the ant bins were kept in service.
The worst incident, however, was the beetle burrito. Ever see a beetle crawl out of a burrito you just took a bite out of? Nice writhing legs, shiny wings, and a crunchy taco-like shell? Luckily neither did this poor sucker who ordered it because the beetle crawled right out of the burrito right as one of my co-workers was wrapping it up (honestly much to both of our surprise). He was about to toss it when the manager asked him what he thought he was doing. Needless to say, ‘There was no wasted food in my restaurant,’ and because ‘the beetle crawled out and not in, the burrito was fit to serve.’
I put in my two weeks notice that night.”
They Could See Feet Under The Stall, But There Was No Response
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“I worked at McDonald’s and I had put in my two weeks notice because I got a different (nicer, thankfully) job. One of my last days of work something extremely screwed up happened. A young woman brought her two children with her to the store. Not an unusual thing. The same day, a large group of senior citizens from a local retirement home were there as well. One of the old ladies walks up to the counter and tells the boss that one of the bathroom stall doors was locked and she could see a woman’s legs on the ground. She knocked on the door to no response and therefore told us. Our managers got in there and found the woman passed out on the ground and she was apparently turning purple and not breathing. She drank a bottle of bleach that she brought with her and left her two kids in the play area while she tried to kill herself in our bathroom. These children were about 3/4 years old. All of the employees were freaking out. The paramedics and police came and there was a huge commotion. Everyone thought she was dead. However, the paramedics were fortunately able to revive her and she was sent to the hospital.”
The Cookie Spitter
“I worked at Subway for about two years when I was in high school. There was a lady I worked with who I will never forget. Picture this: A 72-year-old woman who constantly coughs up chunks of m&m cookies onto every surface available – including subs.
Her and I were chatting in the back of the store once, and while she was talking to me a chunk of cookie flew out of her mouth and landed on my lip. I almost gagged. She also would wear the same pair of gloves for cleaning, prep and for serving customers. It was disgusting. For some reason, my boss never said anything to her about it. I guess he felt bad that she was so old and still working.”
He Asked For Peppers, Then Lost His Mind
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“I had a customer that must have been schizophrenic or bipolar have a mental breakdown while I was the only person there at night.
It was a sandwich/pita restaurant. Subway-style, except that we prepared all the veggies and bread fresh (no bagged lettuce, we cut it ourselves, same with everything).
A customer came in at a very slow time and ordered a pita with extra peppers. He asked for more and more, and his hands were trembling.
He paid for it, sat down, took a bite, then went insane. He started screaming obscenities about how much he hated peppers.
He threw the pita at the wall and started rubbing the peppers all over. He took off his shirt to rub them on his chest, which must have burned something fierce.
So I called the police as he trashed the cooler full of drinks. They came and restrained him and took him away.
Damage to the business was only about $200 worth of broken bottles and a screen in the cooler. Never heard from him again.”
Sometimes, It’s Not Just The Customers Who Cause Ridiculous Situations
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“I worked at McDonald’s in high school and I have a few stories:
I had an old man pick up his biscuits and gravy and watched him take it back to his seat. I watched him flip the carton over then open it, causing the entire inside to be coated in gravy. He looked at it for a while as if thinking about it, then brought it back for a new one. Wash, rinse, repeat. This guy came back no less than three times. No idea why he did that.
Second one was an old lady mumbled her order on the first and last day I was at the register. I repeated it back to make sure and she hurriedly said, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ as I was rattling it off. I put in the order and waited for the grill guys to assemble it. When I handed her the order, I didn’t think much of it until she stormed back up, interrupting me and yelling something about too many pickles, or not enough pickles, or she wanted a pickle in her bum or something, and then hurled the burger at me. I started to calmly explain I could get her a new one, but my manager heard her say the word ‘refund,’ so she ran over and took over for me. I opted to stick to the grill after that.
Lastly, I have a story about my co-workers. It was 115 degrees outside and suddenly our AC for the kitchen broke one hour into my 8.5 hour shift. As the heat rose, the other two grill crew members re-assigned themselves to other jobs. I didn’t have a problem with it until I saw all the orders I was sending forward to the counter were piling up. A panicked newbie, who had just learned to be at the cash register, was running around trying to assemble everything. I looked around and realized we were the only two working during the lunch rush. I kept working through the orders when I ran out of patties, so I went into the freezer and found the entire crew. Two managers and five crew members just chillin’ in there because of our lack of A/C. I quit the next week and got a real job.”
“It Was Like His Mind Was Expired”
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“My friend works at Dairy Queen. I went there one night to wait for him to finish his shift so we could go to a theme park afterward.
An old man came in and ordered a DQ cake. You could tell he was one of those old guys that was just off, like his mind was expired. He was mumbling stuff as he walked in and kinda stared at me as he entered. I was sitting at one of the tables. My friend took his order for the cake. When the guy got it, he also ordered a small Blizzard. The moment this guy got the Blizzard, he began to scoop the contents into the trash, and then he asked my friend to watch his cake at the counter while he went into the restroom. After coming out of the restroom, the guy took the cake, said thanks, and left.
About 20ish minutes later, my friend finished his shift. I went to use the restroom before we left and, to my surprise, there was a small Blizzard cup on the bathroom counter, near the sinks. Inside it were several poo nuggets. Well played, old man, well played.”
There Was No Food Waste At Wendy’s When The Manager Was Around
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“When I worked at Wendy’s during high school, my manager was a cheap penny pincher who would regularly pull lettuce out of the garbage and rinse it off before sticking it into a salad. He would scream at whoever was chopping salad lettuce that they were wasteful and then inspect the garbage to see if there were ‘usable’ scraps. He also found a disgusting package of sweet n’ sour sauce under the fryers and served it in the drive-thru.
Also, I once blacked out while using the grill and my face landed three inches away from the grill top. I had a nasty bruise, but I shudder to think what could have been.”
There Was A Little Something Extra In The Tortillas That Day
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“I worked at Taco Bell on/off for years. Never really had a bad issue except once. Our power had gone out (some jerk took out a transformer), but our boss had us continue serving until food no longer held its temperature. As I was making a burrito supreme, I got all the way to the cold side before I noticed a centipede in the tortilla. I told my boss, but seeing that I didn’t know if it came out of the beans, beef, rice, or red sauce, I couldn’t toss the contaminated batch without tossing a lot of product. I was told to toss the centipede burrito, and make a new one with the same ingredient source.”
