If you’ve never worked in food service, then you might wonder if the practice of sabotaging a rude customer’s order is an urban legend or something that actually happens.
As someone who has worked in food service, I can tell you that it’s not just an urban legend, but that most people who work in food service have a very high tolerance for d%*ks, so your food is probably safe from meddling.
That said, there are exceptions to every rule, and these 14 restaurant workers are making some confessions that might surprise you.
14. 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.
12. 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.
11. 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 spciy dish and grumbled how “I can’t eat this.”
10. 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.
9. 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).
8. 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.
7. 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.
5. 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.
4. 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.
3. 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.
2. 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.
1. 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.
Just resolve to be super nice when you go out to eat and none of this will be your problem, y’all! Easy!
Have you ever resorted to something like this while working in food service? Tell us the story in the comments!
