14 fast-food workers warn: don’t order this!

In your own kitchen, you wash your hands, clean your cutting board thoroughly, and don’t leave food on the counter for hours before eating it. Unfortunately, some restaurants do things very differently. These fast-food workers warn you: you’d better not order this. ‘There were cockroaches in the freezer with the meat. Disgusting!’

Fast-food workers are airing their grievances on the American Reddit forum. Anonymously, so we finally get an uncensored look behind the scenes. A look you’d rather not see, because, good grief, the way they work is filthy. All we can do is hope things are different here. Surely they are?

Chili con eh…

‘Once a hamburger has been cooked, it’s naturally only suitable to eat for a limited time. Hamburgers that were too old went into a large container next to the grill. At the end of the day, the contents of that container went into the refrigerator, where they were stored with burgers from the day before and the day before that. Once the container was full, they made chili con carne from it. It all depends on what you feel like eating.’

Layer of grease

‘I worked at a cinema, and there I would only recommend popcorn and soft drinks. The oil in the deep fryer was always dirty. The fryer was cleaned once a week, and there was a whole layer of grime floating on the grease.’

Overcooked sausage

‘We had one of those hot-dog grills where you could watch the sausages turn. At the end of the day, the leftover sausages were of course supposed to be thrown away, because they were completely dried out and burnt. When the manager saw me throw away three sausages, he went completely crazy. We were supposed to put them in a cheese dog or a chili dog the next day, because the customer couldn’t see that the sausage was ancient.’

Horror

‘I worked at a steakhouse for a month. And there I saw cockroaches in the freezer where the meat was stored. Cockroaches. With the meat. Disgusting!’

Warm chicken

‘Those chicken sandwiches are hardly ever ordered, so if you get one, it has probably already been sitting in a warming cabinet for a few hours. So the chicken is dried out, and you don’t get your money back if you don’t like it.’

Flakes

‘Hello, this is someone who repairs equipment in professional kitchens. I will never order a soft drink at a fast-food place that also makes sandwiches. Do you know why? The yeast from the bread causes the most horrifying things to grow in the soda machine. That’s also why the cups aren’t transparent: otherwise you’d see all kinds of dirty black flakes floating in your drink.’

Infested

‘I worked at a pizzeria that was absolutely crawling with cockroaches. They were mainly in the room where the dough was rising, but we also found them in the ice machine.’

Just don’t order anything

‘Applebee’s? I wouldn’t order anything there at all. It’s the only restaurant I’ve worked at where I still don’t dare eat anything.’

Waiting for hours

‘Crispy chicken legs were ordered by no one. So they sat at serving temperature the whole time, sometimes for hours on end. That can’t be hygienic, can it?’

Paintbrush

‘We spread the garlic oil on the garlic bread with an ordinary paintbrush. Fine, but that brush was practically never cleaned. So it contained garlic oil from the previous day, week, month. In the two years I worked there, the brush was never cleaned or replaced.’

Dirty blood vessels

‘If people knew what kind of “butter” was poured over popcorn, they would never eat it again. It was a large bag of yellowish liquid that almost glowed in the dark. You had to pour it into a container, and naturally some of it always got on your hands. You could hardly get it off! So just imagine what that does to your stomach or blood vessels when you eat that filth.’

Old ham

‘I would never order ham pizza. At the pizzeria where I worked, the ham was always gray and dried out. Strangely enough, it turned pink when it was baked on the pizza, which I always found a little scary. There was no way for us to tell whether the ham was a day old or several weeks old.’

That smell

‘The fried-fish sandwiches were the worst to make. To begin with, those fillets smelled awful. Even after four minutes in the deep fryer, I would gag when I smelled them. And the sauce that went on them wasn’t kept cold. We didn’t sell many fried-fish sandwiches, so the sauce quickly changed color and developed mold. We simply stirred it back together. And the sandwiches sometimes sat under the heat lamp for hours, because, as I said, we didn’t sell many of them.’

Sugar bomb

‘I never order a caramel frappuccino with extra caramel. I worked at Starbucks for four years and honestly, that stuff is so sweet that a can of cola almost seems like mineral water by comparison. It’s truly awful that even children are given such a sugar bomb. It’s just syrup, more syrup, extra syrup, and that sauce. With a little bit of coffee and ice.’

Spuds

‘You’d better not order baked potatoes if they aren’t sure they’re fresh. At the place where I worked, we sometimes kept them in a warming tray for days. We only threw them away once they had actually started growing mold.’

Read also:

• Fast-food workers share their favorite hacks
• These are the strangest fast-food items ever
• Calls for a fast-food ban in and around schools

Source: Bored Panda