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So, I worked in the food industry for about 7 years. I made my way upto general manager at an IHOP. I genuinely believed we were all there to do the best job we could. I lived by the book, fired employees who I caught smoking weed and then I would go home and smoke a bowl..... I was a corporate, brainwashed dick. Now that I am older and not trying to prove my self or have high hopes of becoming a regional manager or whatever, I realize how stupid the whole thing was. I have deep regrets for not banging hot hosts, drunk servers and being a total cool slum bag lol. I had one server practically ready to ride me and I turned her down because I was at work and trying to be "professional" and company relations were clearly in the handbook. I also spent years serving and was never invited to a party or got laid. I really wish I could go back in time and relax and not take the job so seriously. At one time I really thought that was my career path and I was really trying to be the best while being hated by my coworkers in the process. I was an idiot! Now, I am not in the industry anymore, make a hell of alot more money and actually get good benefits. I might go wait tables part time... 
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Oct 8, 2015 00:30
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Scandalous Wench posted:I second this motion. This one is my favourite, personally
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Oct 8, 2015 04:36
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Brawnfire posted:You know what's weird to me? How I'm the only one to clean around the dish sink walls even though literally all you need to do is spray it with the high-powered hose. Like, two seconds of spraying, and I'm the only one who does it. What the actual gently caress is wrong with people? And how do restaurants work that don't even have one OCD employee doing all the cleaning? Or is that how you end up on Restaurant Impossible... Pretty much. I can't get any of the staff except for one guy to clean the final filter under the dishwasher. Which I only learned existed after about 6 months of working there. That's a smell I'll never forget and one that still lingers on the metal months later even with repeated thorough cleaning (also because only 1/10 of the staff does it and I'm supposed to be a line cook but I care too much about the job being done right/afraid of health inspectors/Robert Irvine/Gordon Ramsay/Jim Taffer that I stay after to double-check everyone else's poo poo). There's a lot of apathy in restaurant jobs because people get complacent and only want to do the bare minimum so long as no one's watching, especially when their other job is the one where they work the hardest. Also we're all sort of prep and sort of line and sort of dish so any one thing could be anyone's fault unless you inspect literally everything before a shift and assign specific tasks to only one person. I want to trust my fellow employees because I want work to be a chill time where everyone does their part and no one feels micromanaged or targeted, but on the other hand I have personal standards that are not hard to live up to. Which is why I would be a horrible manager. Because food industry workers, by and large, suck. (See also: this thread) I once got promoted because I got on a ladder and cleaned a ceiling fan. It had not been cleaned since it was installed. No one was sure how long ago that was.
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Oct 9, 2015 20:18
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EUCH, dishwasher filters make me throw up. Grease traps have literally caused me to throw the gently caress up too. I'm gagging just typing this. I'm supervisor and training as assistant manager where I work... and they're looking to open a new location and have me manage it. I'm kind of thinking I want to turn it down, because I can see it hollowing out our current manager and the last one certainly didn't seem to be very lively at the end of a week either...
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Oct 9, 2015 21:30
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Picnic Princess posted:Mild is hitting a line cook in the face with a pickle tossed frisbee-style from 30 feet away while he's trying to flirt with other kitchen staff. Caked on old filth is gross. What is it when you pile progressively-larger stacks of empty fry cases in the middle of the floor then take a running leap over them and laugh hysterically when you fall and break your tailbone? Because whatever it is, one of my former coworkers is that. ^^ Oh god, don't even get me started on dish line! Steak and Shake's chili is roughly 90% grease with a few haphazard beans and bits of meat stuck in there, going by what ended up in the sink grease traps. These, of course, might SOMETIMES get cleaned once a week, by which time the pores were so clogged with used straws and bits of pancake and clots of gravy-laced ketchup that the water would back up and stagnate and draw little swarms of drain flies. Not to worry though! The mop water contained a chemical specially to kill them. Oh, and often, there wouldn't be a specific person clocked on to do dishes (for some reason my location was chronically over on hours, to the point it was possible to be there literally for two hours and then get told 'okay go home I have too many people!' or arrive and go to clock in only to be suddenly told your shift has been cut last-minute) until afternoon or late-night; so unless someone had a free second to throw a load or two in the machine (usually only happened if they had a new hire they weren't sure what to do with or the plates ran out) the breakfast-service dishes would sit and fester for hours. Oh, and the slugs! My god, I have no idea why but the place was practically infested with them. We'd find them on the walls, on the freezer, in the dining room (I got to show some little boys what happens when you salt a slug; they thought it was cool but the mom was grossed out), under the prep table----just everywhere, slugs. Of course, might have something to do with the plumbing failures. Nothing like having a pipe slowly leak underneath the radiant heat of the chili kettle, filling the entire back of the house with the smell of warm manure! Even more fun was killing the tiny red worms that peeped out of the message as we scooped it out. Astrofig has a new favorite as of 00:25 on Oct 10, 2015 |
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Oct 10, 2015 00:15
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Just wanted to get this down for posterity; the kitchen porter, Horton, that I used to work with, has now found himself so short of friends he now hangs out with heroin addicts, and has "fallen in love" with one of them. He, in his garbled pattern of english, sent me this text: "If a girl jacks up in her groin where's that to?". I replied "This means all of her veins are hosed because she's a smackhead, and the only ones left are downstairs". After some back and forth over a few weeks, where, after advice, bullying, and shaming, he decided that he'd much rather keep doing heroin than actually sort his loving life out, so ends the ballad of Horton, as far as I'm concerned. Amazing Kitchen Porter. Not a great thinker. Hopefully there will be a full pot station in the sky for him to get into, when he finally gets there. Godspeed you ceiling-mopping fuckwit.
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Oct 10, 2015 00:20
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Any time I get hungry, I need to read this thread so I go and make my own food rather than eating out.
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Oct 10, 2015 03:32
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One of the greatest things I've seen was when I worked at a BK. We had a new guy transfer in from another state- I can't recall his name, so I will call him Brian. Brian was about 30, and a cool as poo poo dude to work with. New all the short cuts, actually gave you tips to be a better employee, and was always ready to cover down on a job...which lead him into trouble. The girl doing drive through had to pee, so he took the headset. Like every loving BK, the speaker system sucked. Add any bit of wind, and we were casting bones and reading entrails and hopefully got your order in the right ballpark. Dude placing his order is a dick. After asking to repeat his order one more time, he gets mouthy and vulgar. Brian calmly reads his order, turns to me, and says, "I'm going to gently caress this old dude up". He said poo poo like that all the time, NBD. Except he actually climbed out the drive through window and started beating the poo poo out of the middleaged man who wanted a chicken sandwich made like a Whopper. He was arrested and fired, but his motorcycle was there for like a week. We also had a dude who every night- EVERYFUCKINGNIGHT- 10 minutes before we killed the lights, and would ask for a Whopper well done. We would almost be done, just staring at the clock, and this dude would pull up and ruin our mojo. A "Well Done" Whopper is run through the broiler twice. One night, we had enough of his poo poo. We sent a patty through 4 times. It came out looking like a charcoal briquette. And we waited. He showed, we sent it. The next day, the manager pulled us all in and told us she had gotten a call from the dude. He said it was the best burger he ever had and would only come to our store from now on. I can only hope he still is doing it, nearly 20 years later. Shine on, you madman. Off topic- link to current OSHA thread?
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Oct 10, 2015 08:58
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mostlygray posted:I will say though, disgusting-wise, there is a very popular trendy restaurant near my work that always has flies. Constant flies. Unbelievable flies. Year round. Summer, winter, spring, and fall. I do not trust them. Flies in a restaurant always come from a very, very filthy kitchen. I don't go there anymore. There are never flies in the winter in MN yet they somehow always have them.
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Oct 10, 2015 09:52
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I don't have any kind of particularly horrific stories to tell, but I'll tell you that if you ever go to a buffet that sells something called "Seafood Dynamite", don't order that poo poo. Where I worked, the guys would take any leftover food item from the buffet line (crab legs, fried noodles, tempura, seafood stir fry), mash it all together in a big bowl, portion it out into fancy scallop shells, top it with tobiko mayonnaise, then throw it under the broiler. Twenty minutes later, it'd be out there, amongst the unsuspecting public. That in itself doesn't sound bad, but any leftovers of that, they'd recycle for days. Lemme tell you, mayonnaise that's been heated and left to cool over and over doesn't smell that amazing. We did the same thing at the bakery I worked at, except it was labeled as a parfait. Those usually weren't bad, and we'd My brother works as a dishwasher and he got in trouble for a good while because he wouldn't stop eating the food left on the customers' plates.
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Oct 10, 2015 11:53
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bulletsponge13 posted:Off topic- link to current OSHA thread? http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3693945
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Oct 10, 2015 16:10
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kinmik posted:I don't have any kind of particularly horrific stories to tell, but I'll tell you that if you ever go to a buffet that sells something called "Seafood Dynamite", don't order that poo poo. Where I worked, the guys would take any leftover food item from the buffet line (crab legs, fried noodles, tempura, seafood stir fry), mash it all together in a big bowl, portion it out into fancy scallop shells, top it with tobiko mayonnaise, then throw it under the broiler. Twenty minutes later, it'd be out there, amongst the unsuspecting public. That in itself doesn't sound bad, but any leftovers of that, they'd recycle for days. Lemme tell you, mayonnaise that's been heated and left to cool over and over doesn't smell that amazing. We did the same thing at the bakery I worked at, except it was labeled as a parfait. Those usually weren't bad, and we'd Oh man, those types of dishes are my favorite! If it's named something like "X surprise" or "X festival" or whatever, you can safely assume that's what's going on. We used to do it all the time at the buffet I worked at. Fresh pineapple, cantaloupe, and grapes all about to age out? Mix those pans together with some whipped topping: FRUIT PARTY SURPRISE! The absolute best was when, after less than an hour, that pan would be completely empty. Nobody's eating this old food? This is America--fuckin' smother it in something and watch it fly off the buffet. Re: eating leftover food As a general rule, I avoid taking the first bite no matter how untouched or good it looks because that's setting foot on a dark path. Sure, that breadstick was completely untouched, but one bite and a week later someone walks in on you hovering over the food waste bin munching on half eaten sandwiches and finishing customers' soup. Customers' leftovers: not even once.
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Oct 10, 2015 16:17
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GOTTA STAY FAI posted:Re: eating leftover food I was with some friends at a pub some years ago, getting comfortably drunk. Table right next to us is some dude on what looks to be his first date with a girl, they order this huge platter of fried chicken. Girl nibbles on one piece because what girl is gonna just pig out on first date, guy eats like two pieces and stops awkwardly. They chat for maybe ten minutes and then get up, leaving the 10+ pieces of perfectly fine chicken untouched on the big plate. We are very broke college students. We look right, left, notice no waiter is coming to clean it up just yet. I grab our empty platter long since voided of food and swap it with the abandoned plate. Waiter comes by and scoops up empty plate and leaves while we chomp away happily. Everyone wins!
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Oct 10, 2015 16:55
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Maggie Fletcher posted:I've posted this on SA before, but it's been a few years. In high school, we were allowed to leave campus for lunch. The nearby Taco Bell was pretty popular with the students, and me being a smug vegetarian I never ate there with the cool kids, so I was saved the trouble of contracting hep A like everyone else when one disgruntled worker decided to add a special ingredient to the ground beef. Marion, Indiana in the 90s by chance? Taco Bell workers pooping in the beans may be more common than I think. When I worked at McDonald's during high school and early college, it attracted odd workers on the night shift. Most of the people who opened were fairly decent people, but at night it was split between high school kids or weird people nobody else would hire. A new guy came in for training one night and they sent him back to me to show him the ropes. One of the first things he does is look at me with a dead stare that Charlie Manson would be proud of, say "I don't have any feeling in my right hand", then proceed to place his hand on the grill and let it sizzle for a few seconds. Kirk Vikernes has a new favorite as of 18:26 on Oct 10, 2015 |
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Oct 10, 2015 18:20
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GOTTA STAY FAI posted:Oh man, those types of dishes are my favorite! If it's named something like "X surprise" or "X festival" or whatever, you can safely assume that's what's going on. We used to do it all the time at the buffet I worked at. Fresh pineapple, cantaloupe, and grapes all about to age out? Mix those pans together with some whipped topping: FRUIT PARTY SURPRISE! The absolute best was when, after less than an hour, that pan would be completely empty. Nobody's eating this old food? This is America--fuckin' smother it in something and watch it fly off the buffet. I admit to having seriously considered this on multiple occasions when I was too poor even to eat at work and finicky customers would send back nearly-full plates of food because the burger was 'too meaty' or we changed sauces on our chili mac and they don't like this kind or whatever stupid poo poo. In practice we mostly just stole the abandoned chicken strips and orders of fries that got made and then either forgotten to be bagged with an order, or the customer went, 'actually, I don't want that; can I get x-thing instead?' If we cooked it we had to dispose of it, and if no one ate it it was just going to get thrown away. and that's the story of how Astro brought home whole bags of perfectly-good but cold biscuits from work after the breakfast shift.
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Oct 10, 2015 21:17
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I know this doesn't help the assessment that I am a gimmick account/a real raccoon, but I used to eat off dead plates all the time. It's not my fault people would order a shrimp vodka penne, eat one shrimp and send it back, what a waste. It's mine now.
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Oct 11, 2015 03:48
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I've seen people eat the food, I'm not eating it after they're done with it.
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Oct 11, 2015 03:53
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cash crab posted:I know this doesn't help the assessment that I am a gimmick account/a real raccoon, but I used to eat off dead plates all the time. It's not my fault people would order a shrimp vodka penne, eat one shrimp and send it back, what a waste. It's mine now. I'm bad about this. Some days I'll be like "I could really go for a burger" and then sit down and like take one bite of the burger and a handful of fries and my stomach is like "Nope you're done for the day" and I feel like an idiot for wasting money. I've known people though who if they didn't eat their whole meal would intentionally ruin the food "because someone back there might be getting a free meal! Nu-uh not on my dime!" and so they'd soak chicken in left over soda and poo poo. In an attempt to stay on topic; we used to not have like, health inspections and stuff until fairly recently and a lot of smaller places have gotten shut down since they were implemented. One of the McDonalds nearby had to undergo a complete rennovation, it's one of the busiest ones because it's right on the side of the road for people going to and from work so tons of people stop in to grab something quick if they don't want/didn't have time to cook. Usually through the drive through, however. I went inside the actual place once because I didn't feel like waiting an hour or more for the next bus in the hot sun and holy poo poo, it had been like they never cleaned it. It was like something out of a horror movie with no lights on and the smell of rot, flies and bugs everywhere. The windows were lined with them, maggots crawling out of the garbage cans and one slightly green looking teenager stood behind the counter. I turned around and decided that sitting in the sun for an hour wasn't actually that bad. I've never eaten there since, even after the complete renovation.
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Oct 11, 2015 04:12
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GOTTA STAY FAI posted:Customers' leftovers: not even once. Correct. I assume that all restaurant customers are covered in poo poo that I know nothing about. Literally feces. It's a safe assumption and it keeps me safe. Now plates that get sent back without getting touched? Fair loving game. Nuebot posted:I've known people though who if they didn't eat their whole meal would intentionally ruin the food "because someone back there might be getting a free meal! Nu-uh not on my dime!" and so they'd soak chicken in left over soda and poo poo. I am always amazed but never surprised at just how deep some peoples' assholery can be. Who gives a gently caress if some poor disher gets to eat your leftovers? Take them home if they're so precious, you gently caress. SHVPS4DETH has a new favorite as of 08:01 on Oct 11, 2015 |
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Oct 11, 2015 07:59
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Yeah, I'm not gonna judge if you help yourself to something mostly uneaten that like, comes in multiples that don't have bites taken out of them like the fried chicken or leftover breadsticks. It seems better than letting it get recycled into the next week's spread or worse, go to waste in the garbage.
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Oct 11, 2015 08:36
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Nuebot posted:I've known people though who if they didn't eat their whole meal would intentionally ruin the food "because someone back there might be getting a free meal! Nu-uh not on my dime!" and so they'd soak chicken in left over soda and poo poo. I wonder what kind of a Dickensian supervillian you have to be to douse uneaten food in soda because of the possibility that someone might actually consume said food.
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Oct 11, 2015 17:12
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Jokes on them, I already douse all my food in soda. The hfcs really brings out the hfcs.
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Oct 11, 2015 18:06
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Nuebot posted:I've known people though who if they didn't eat their whole meal would intentionally ruin the food "because someone back there might be getting a free meal! Nu-uh not on my dime!" and so they'd soak chicken in left over soda and poo poo. When you say "people" do you mean one insane weirdo? I have trouble imagining a large amount of people devoting that much thought to petty spite.
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Oct 11, 2015 18:09
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cash crab posted:I wonder what kind of a Dickensian supervillian you have to be to douse uneaten food in soda because of the possibility that someone might actually consume said food. I actually saw people come in to the restaurant pretty regularly who would intentionally waste food while there, overspend, and tip like rear end because they knew the staff was all poor and would see them doing it. You have no idea how badly some people just want to feel superior. They'll seriously be wasteful and blow money for no other reason than because they can and you can't.
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Oct 11, 2015 18:10
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On the other hand, we have one woman who comes in, gets free bread for her kids, and tips a tenner... Still flaunting it, but we get some at least
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Oct 11, 2015 18:15
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ToxicSlurpee posted:I actually saw people come in to the restaurant pretty regularly who would intentionally waste food while there, overspend, and tip like rear end because they knew the staff was all poor and would see them doing it. You have no idea how badly some people just want to feel superior. They'll seriously be wasteful and blow money for no other reason than because they can and you can't. I imagine their meals were mostly made of spit.
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Oct 11, 2015 18:26
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The Moon Monster posted:I have trouble imagining a large amount of people devoting that much thought to petty spite. Just arrived on Earth, eh? For every person who flags you down and apologizes to you for asking to send her salad back because she wanted Italian dressing and we gave her ranch by mistake, there are countless dozens who do poo poo like hollow out dinner rolls and fill them with ketchup, dump soft drinks all over the plate before leaving, or ask for a take-out container for their leftovers, which they will then throw on the ground in the parking lot "just so the staff can't eat it." People are fuckin' monsters, man.
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Oct 11, 2015 19:26
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The dinner rolls thing does sound hilarious
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Oct 11, 2015 19:29
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GOTTA STAY FAI posted:Just arrived on Earth, eh? That's so cartoonish. I'm just really having a hard time wrapping my head around this idea, but the more I think about it, the more it makes perfect sense that people would do this. By the way, when I said the whole "order a shrimp penne, eat one shrimp and send it back" thing, that was a real thing. This woman ordered it, ate one shrimp. I asked if everything was okay, and she said she just wanted a little bit of shrimp. This is a restaurant that would have happily just grilled one or two shrimps for you, if that's what you wanted, because we literally had a scale set up so that people could do insane poo poo like that.
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Oct 11, 2015 20:25
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Slime posted:I imagine their meals were mostly made of spit. This is actually why I confronted them about their behavior, I didn't like getting lumped with them in offending the staff because I generally try to be polite to people who work poo poo jobs. Some of them have improved, entirely but they're not always spiteful monsters anymore. But some have not and I usually try to avoid eating out with them anymore because it's embarrassing. I should probably mention most of them are also older people, one of them will refer to misbehaving children as "saucy blacks" and try to insist it's not racist. cash crab posted:That's so cartoonish. I'm just really having a hard time wrapping my head around this idea, but the more I think about it, the more it makes perfect sense that people would do this. By the way, when I said the whole "order a shrimp penne, eat one shrimp and send it back" thing, that was a real thing. This woman ordered it, ate one shrimp. I asked if everything was okay, and she said she just wanted a little bit of shrimp. This is a restaurant that would have happily just grilled one or two shrimps for you, if that's what you wanted, because we literally had a scale set up so that people could do insane poo poo like that.  people can be cartoonishly meanspirited. Back in middle school my home room teacher once caught my picking my nose because I was like eleven and bored in a class where we weren't even allowed to read books what the hell else was I going to do. And decided to subject me to a five minute lecture about how it makes me a literal retard and horrible person. Loudly, where everyone could listen.
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Oct 12, 2015 00:21
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Probably the most spiteful thing I ever saw when I worked in restaurant land was somebody promise the server a $20 tip if they gave good service. And, well, they did give a $20 tip but they also covered it in syrup, flattened it on the table, then glued the paper place mat down over the $20 with more syrup. All told they ended up plastering half a bottle of cheap, sugary syrup over the bill. The table took for loving ever to get completely clean.
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Oct 12, 2015 00:28
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Probably the most spiteful thing I ever saw when I worked in restaurant land was somebody promise the server a $20 tip if they gave good service. And, well, they did give a $20 tip but they also covered it in syrup, flattened it on the table, then glued the paper place mat down over the $20 with more syrup. All told they ended up plastering half a bottle of cheap, sugary syrup over the bill. The table took for loving ever to get completely clean. Christ, what an rear end in a top hat.
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Oct 12, 2015 00:34
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What series of events creates someone like that?
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Oct 12, 2015 01:16
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Dirk Squarejaw posted:Marion, Indiana in the 90s by chance? Taco Bell workers pooping in the beans may be more common than I think. The 90s yes, but it was Huntington, WV. Also hilariously known as the former (and possibly current) Least Healthy City in America. I would hazard a guess that this is more common than we think.
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Oct 12, 2015 03:28
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The Moon Monster posted:When you say "people" do you mean one insane weirdo? I have trouble imagining a large amount of people devoting that much thought to petty spite. I saw this on multiple occasions, so either it's one guy who REALLY gets around, or this mentality is more common than you think.
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Oct 12, 2015 03:55
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Astrofig posted:I saw this on multiple occasions, so either it's one guy who REALLY gets around, or this mentality is more common than you think. Getting increasingly off topic but the local safeway near my old house used to tell the employees to cut or tear any plastic bags they threw out so people(the poor and homeless) wouldn't take and re-use them. I lived near a pretty upscale neighborhood where this kind of behavior was really popular, like cutting aluminum cans so the homeless would be discouraged from rummaging through trash for them instead of just bringing them back yourself or something.
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Oct 12, 2015 04:00
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I just want to point out that I intended that the spirit of this thread also include lovely customers, because those are the best stories (although I maintain that nothing will ever top Weekend at Bernie's Bakery) My least favourite customer of all time was a guy named Todd who used to come into the restaurant three times a week, order pasta and his "special coffee" (the preparation of which was not explained to me; I think it was a double Americano with milk foam or some poo poo) and then hide his dishes around the restaurant. I'd see him dart out the door, and the hunt would commence to find out where he'd stashed his plate and silverware. Ugh.
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Oct 12, 2015 04:50
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cash crab posted:My least favourite customer of all time was a guy named Todd who used to come into the restaurant three times a week, order pasta and his "special coffee" (the preparation of which was not explained to me; I think it was a double Americano with milk foam or some poo poo) and then hide his dishes around the restaurant. I'd see him dart out the door, and the hunt would commence to find out where he'd stashed his plate and silverware. Ugh. Ok that's loving hilarious
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Oct 12, 2015 07:14
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cash crab posted:I just want to point out that I intended that the spirit of this thread also include lovely customers, because those are the best stories (although I maintain that nothing will ever top Weekend at Bernie's Bakery) And then you still have to wash all of the dishes. 
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Oct 12, 2015 07:23
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I don't work in the food industry, but before smoking was banned in restaurants I'd regularly see people put out their after-dinner cigarettes into their food. For a lot of them I don't even think it was out of spite or anything. It was just a convenient wet place to put out the cig.
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Oct 12, 2015 07:23
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