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cash crab posted:When I started this thread, I was honestly expecting stories like, "one time the line cook threw up on himself" but naturally you guys have to go ahead and out-do yourselves. It's what makes this thread great. I love seeing relatively tame (but still entertaining) stuff and then getting hit out of the blue with "one time I made donuts next to a still-warm corpse" and "ask me about the late-night Waffle House special."
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Oct 21, 2015 18:21
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Yeah, a lot of these are really brutal and seriously WTF. Humanity is really something else.
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Oct 21, 2015 18:56
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Mexican Deathgasm posted:Denny's, on the other hand, is straight-up awful everywhere in the world.
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Oct 21, 2015 21:01
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Babylon Astronaut posted:Our lead line cook once saw a guy dipping caramel apples de-glove their hand in a stock pot of molten caramel. He was apparently blitzed on oxy and god knows what and didn't notice he failed to put an apple on the stick so he kept putting it deeper and deeper into the caramel until he was up to his wrist. Between the drugs and shock, he calmy said "oh poo poo" when he saw his skeleton hand and sat down to wait for the ambulance. Based on this thread, I"m only 80% sure that they would have thrown away the caramel afterwards.
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Oct 21, 2015 21:24
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I worked for a high-end catering company in SoCal every summer in high school (2001 - '05). We were based out of a yacht club, and occasionally went to people's houses or other locations for private events (I only worked at the club--being underage, me going to people's houses etc was too much of a liability). My mom worked there as well, and was close friends with the owners (they were present at my birth). I actually made decent money, but I gave most of it to my mom or spent it on books/supplies for school because I am a dork. It sounds like a cushy job, but catering is hard and I take all jobs seriously. I sometimes worked (regardless of the legality) 12 - 16hr shifts, two to three days in a row, because the company was often short-staffed. And let me tell you why. We had a chef, who I'll call Douchecamp. He was French. He was a good chef. He made excellent food. He was also a giant, raging rear end in a top hat of a person. Like, an rear end in a top hat the size of a basset hound, only not as attractive. He also smelled like fish soup. Douchecamp liked to scream obscenities, in French and broken English, at the top of his lungs, for every infraction, and he was very, very, very picky. If you walked too close to him, closed the walk-in too loudly, sang under your breath, touched his food before he was ready for it to go out (dude if you put it on the To Go table, SERVERS WILL TAKE IT), looked at him funny... the list goes on. Every single minute of every single day was punctuated by an angry, incoherent, bilingual outburst from Chef Douchecamp. Unfortunately it was so long ago I don't remember anything specific he said, but his favorite words were "oval office," "dyke," "twat," and just about every racial slur under the sun, so use your imagination. Anyway, Douchecamp was so atrocious that we had staff quit on us left and right. Why was he never fired, you ask, your eyebrows furrowed in disbelief. Come, you know why! He was a trained French chef willing to work for the same price as a loving line cook. No way were the bosses firing him, no matter how abusive he got. They couldn't look the other way when he hit a server, however. I wasn't there when this happened, but he slapped a woman so hard she fell down on the floor and cracked a tooth. But instead of firing him, they just got my mother, known for her revenge streak, to fill the backseat of his car up with fish heads. Douchecamp, you see, was a raging alcoholic and often slept in his car between shifts, trashed and baking slowly in the sun and his own French aroma. He didn't notice the fish heads, swear to God, for nearly two days. They were just sitting in the hot SoCal summer sun, gettin' nice and juicy. He was so sloshed at the end of each shift he just didn't notice until, I suppose, the smell overpowered him. Our company was fairly clean and everything, so I have no horror food stories. Even Chef Douchecamp had health standards, at least, and many of his tirades were about new staff not knowing protocol or not being clean enough for his standards--which were often contradictory and insane because he was always drunk. Always. I do have customer stories, however. Since I was 14-18 working at this place, I wore a lot of makeup to look older. This often went in my favor, as the yacht club was frequented mostly by elderly men and their wives, all of whom loved to drink a lot of wine and look at a small girl with big boobs and a little booty in her too-tight work pants. Lots of tips! I once got 175 from one man. Then he pinched me on the rear end when I passed him by, so I spent all his money on video games. It was the only time I did that. Another time a couple teenagers came in from yachting. I had cut off all my hair and had grown into my boobs at this point, so they were smaller, I was leaner, and you get the idea--I kind of looked like a boy. One of the young men at the table asked me to get him some juice. He's supposed to get it himself, so when I return I say, "If you'd like a refill, there's a self-serve at the back there." I went to leave, and heard him call me a "human being" under his breath. I didn't know how to react so I just went into the kitchen and started washing dishes. Then ten minutes later, a kid more my age comes to the snackbar (this was located in the kitchen, at a window, and not at the front.) He asks for food and as I am serving him he starts chatting me up. Since I have my break, I go outside and eat with him. He's nice and friendly and we're chatting a good while--at least, he figured out I was a girl, so he had that going for him. Then, he just stops talking, looking behind me at something, his face pale. "Quick!" He grabs my arm, "Make your voice deeper--pretend to be a boy." Confused, I turn around. There are these two elderly people walking up, in full yachtzee gear--polo shirts, khakis. The woman asks the boy who his friend is. He calls me, I poo poo you not, Steven, and then says goodbye and wanders off with them. Later that week he came back and apologized, and said that I was too poor for him and he didn't want his grandparents to get on his case, and he figured since my hair was short they would think I was a boy and not get him in trouble for fraternizing with the poors. I did not even know people like that existed. --- That is it for catering. The only other food service job I worked was for a bakery inside a local grocery store. The most exciting things that happened there were: 1) The man in sunglasses who came in to ask for "round bread. For sandwiches." I pointed to the bread and said someone would be with him shortly. "I want round bread. For sandwiches." I pointed to the bread again, again saying, "Sir, someone will be with you shortly. I cannot leave the back to help you." He repeated this request for round bread to me, the thoroughly confused baker who just wanted the FoH staff member to come back and take care of him, over and over and over. I kept pointing to the bread. "I want the round bread. For sandwiches." Eventually he walked away. He never took off his sunglasses, and he never came back. (EDIT: Forgive me.) It will haunt me to this day. 2) A woman called and asked me to read her our cake menu. After every single entry I read, she would say, "OH YEAH" in this increasingly exaggerated voice, like she was getting more and more aroused by loving cake: "Carrot cake," "Oh yeah..." "Chocolate cake..." "OH yeah..." "Uh... vegan chocolate cake..." "OH YEAH...!" "Um, uh, white cake?" "OOOH YEAH." She never ordered anything. I felt dirty. EDIT: I am not worthy. don longjohns has a new favorite as of 06:04 on Oct 22, 2015 |
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Oct 21, 2015 22:53
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Haymaker_Betty posted:1) The man in sunglasses who came in to ask for "round bread. For sandwiches." I pointed to the bread and said someone would be with him shortly. "I want round bread. For sandwiches." I pointed to the bread again, again saying, "Sir, someone will be with you shortly. I cannot leave the back to help you." 1) You met an alien trying to pass itself off as human. 2) See 1)
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Oct 21, 2015 23:19
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Haymaker_Betty posted:1) The man in sunglasses who came in to ask for "round bread. For sandwiches." I pointed to the bread and said someone would be with him shortly. "I want round bread. For sandwiches." I pointed to the bread again, again saying, "Sir, someone will be with you shortly. I cannot leave the back to help you." 
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Oct 21, 2015 23:58
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cash crab posted:When I started this thread, I was honestly expecting stories like, "one time the line cook threw up on himself" but naturally you guys have to go ahead and out-do yourselves. Ever wondered why people who work retail or food service for long time become bitter, cynical, jaded shells of their former selves? Well, if you did you can quit wondering. Trust me it doesn't take long until even horrifying work injuries just make you go "welp."
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Oct 22, 2015 00:50
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Ever wondered why people who work retail or food service for long time become bitter, cynical, jaded shells of their former selves? Yeah, I'm kind of glad I don't have any food industry work history because burns sound kind of terrible. Meanwhile, I've seen a guy slice open his leg during some landscaping and the blood fountained across the yard while the home owner's dog rushed out of the house and began lap it up from the driveway. Anyway! Here's a fun story from my childhood about Wendy's. Me and some friends got some food and went to a park to eat because it was summer and we had nothing else to do but wander around town. My friend unwraps her burger and takes a big bite of it, pauses then spits it out, the meat inside is just oozing a horrific foul smelling white sludge. She runs off to puke in a trash can, the rest of us decide not to finish our food either since it came from the same place. She went vegan after that. I've never touched a wendy's burger since, either but I'd rather eat the rest of their menu over McDonalds.
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Oct 22, 2015 01:43
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Haymaker_Betty posted:He repeated this request for round bread to me, the thoroughly confused baker who just wanted the FoH staff member to come back and take care of him, over and over and over. I kept pointing to the bread. You left us hanging!
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Oct 22, 2015 02:43
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Ever wondered why people who work retail or food service for long time become bitter, cynical, jaded shells of their former selves? I already told the story about the guy who cut off his finger, right?
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Oct 22, 2015 04:00
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The Macaroni posted:Apparently the ones in Japan are magical: clean, tasty, and dependable. But I don't think they're run by the parent company. And they don't have Denny's food. You can't get breakfast. 
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Oct 22, 2015 04:04
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Sure you can! Breakfast is the only meal I've had at Denny's in Japan. http://www.dennys.jp/menu/select-morning/ (there are a couple other breakfast menus in there, too) They cook their eggs perfectly--if they cook them at all. I had the misfortune to be there last fall when they proudly featured a dish inspired by the famous LA (?) restaurant Eggslut. Denny's Eggslut breakfast consisted of barely warm eggs you were supposed to mix into mashed potatoes, then eat. It was gruesome. I'm glad my dad took that bullet while I enjoyed some nice eggs, sausage, and yogurt.
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Oct 22, 2015 04:39
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Hirayuki posted:Sure you can! Breakfast is the only meal I've had at Denny's in Japan. Hunh. I only went once and omurice was the closest thing they had to breakfast food...but come to think of it, I went at 2 PM (so they may have stopped serving breakfast) and this was six years ago. Now I want to go to Japanese Denny's. Is that bad?
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Oct 22, 2015 04:46
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chitoryu12 posted:You left us hanging! I have fixed this. I am a Good Poster  Haymaker_Betty posted:He repeated this request for round bread to me, the thoroughly confused baker who just wanted the FoH staff member to come back and take care of him, over and over and over. I kept pointing to the bread.
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Oct 22, 2015 06:06
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Haymaker_Betty posted:I have fixed this. I am a Good Poster In my mind you met a Thin Man from the XCOM remake.
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Oct 22, 2015 06:18
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bringmyfishback posted:Now I want to go to Japanese Denny's. Is that bad? A good story is never bad, to be honest.
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Oct 22, 2015 08:37
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Outrail posted:What series of events creates someone like that? Maybe getting repeatedly molested by their step father. Or at least that's what I would say about people who were assholes to my subs when I worked in retail. To which my subs would usually reply "I fuckin hope so"
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Oct 22, 2015 12:37
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Haymaker_Betty posted:Confused, I turn around. There are these two elderly people walking up, in full yachtzee gear--polo shirts, khakis. The woman asks the boy who his friend is. He calls me, I poo poo you not, Steven, and then says goodbye and wanders off with them. Later that week he came back and apologized, and said that I was too poor for him and he didn't want his grandparents to get on his case, and he figured since my hair was short they would think I was a boy and not get him in trouble for fraternizing with the poors. I did not even know people like that existed. They absolutely do and it's baffling. I grew up in a tiny cornfield town in the Midwest--stories like this and movies and books depicting this kind of thing are like staring through a portal to a world so alien that it's beyond comprehension.
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Oct 22, 2015 13:02
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GOTTA STAY FAI posted:They absolutely do and it's baffling. I grew up in a tiny cornfield town in the Midwest--stories like this and movies and books depicting this kind of thing are like staring through a portal to a world so alien that it's beyond comprehension. I grew up in a town with a bizarre, almost cartoonish rich/poor divide and all us poors got to go to semi-high class public school with the rich, because there were no private schools near by. It could be pretty awkward how blatant the favoritism was, the teachers all knew who's parents were who and would treat the kids differently if they didn't come from a well off family, even if they were perfectly good students.
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Oct 22, 2015 13:21
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When i worked at outback steakhouse years and years ago they let the retarded dishwasher try doing the bloomin' onion station on a slow weekday. In the end he couldnt handle it but the point of this story is that while cleaning up at the end of the night he rolled one of the fryers full of 375 degree shortening into a floor drain with no cover and it spilled hot grease all over the place
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Oct 22, 2015 16:41
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The Goatfather posted:When i worked at outback steakhouse years and years ago they let the retarded dishwasher try doing the bloomin' onion station on a slow weekday. In the end he couldnt handle it but the point of this story is that while cleaning up at the end of the night he rolled one of the fryers full of 375 degree shortening into a floor drain with no cover and it spilled hot grease all over the place I forgot to put a pan under the fryer one time when I went to drain and clean it. I pulled the drain lever, and then my feet were suddenly very hot. I looked down at a rapidly-expanding pool of hot oil. Thankfully, we had a good huge jug of spill magic, so that was more of an inconvenience than a disaster.
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Oct 22, 2015 20:05
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GOTTA STAY FAI posted:It's what makes this thread great. I love seeing relatively tame (but still entertaining) stuff and then getting hit out of the blue with "one time I made donuts next to a still-warm corpse" and "ask me about the late-night Waffle House special." Christmas decorations covered in cheese is still making me giggle
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Oct 23, 2015 00:01
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Sometimes while doing completely unrelated things I'll just randomly think of Fish upending the blender of milkshake over his mouth and chuckle like an idiot
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Oct 23, 2015 00:09
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Man I don't know why I decided to Google degloving.
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Oct 23, 2015 03:44
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Lord Lambeth posted:Man I don't know why I decided to Google degloving. please new thread title please new thread title please new thread title
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Oct 23, 2015 04:39
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Deg loving is completely natural, no degshaming please.
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Oct 23, 2015 04:42
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Lord Lambeth posted:Man I don't know why I decided to Google degloving. I'm tryin to imagine how you deglove yourself by dunking your hand in molten caramel. Is it because its extremely hot like fryer oil? Or does the sugar sauce stay hot yet melty enough that it can pull your skin off? Hmm....
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Oct 23, 2015 05:30
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Wedemeyer posted:I'm tryin to imagine how you deglove yourself by dunking your hand in molten caramel. Is it because its extremely hot like fryer oil? Or does the sugar sauce stay hot yet melty enough that it can pull your skin off? Hmm.... Probably the latter. I've been burned heaps of times with brazing and welding rods. That hurts but doesn't blister, it sears. One time though I got splashed with a roux I was cooking creole style, and that stuck and puffed up the hugest blisters I have ever had
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Oct 23, 2015 05:50
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Wedemeyer posted:I'm tryin to imagine how you deglove yourself by dunking your hand in molten caramel. Is it because its extremely hot like fryer oil? Or does the sugar sauce stay hot yet melty enough that it can pull your skin off? Hmm.... The real question is how much money would it take to get someone to eat their own caramelized hand glove?
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Oct 23, 2015 05:59
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What the gently caress, man
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Oct 23, 2015 06:52
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It was only a matter of time before this thread turned to cannibalism.
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Oct 23, 2015 06:57
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I've been in the industry for 24 years or so. Here are some observations and stories. First thing you realize is pretty much everyone you work with (including yourself) is hosed up in some way. Substance abuse and untreated mental disorders are rampant. The pressure can be very intense. Pay can be great, but that's a rarity. You are expendable. My first month, at my first job, I watched two other cooks have a knife fight. Ms. Pearl and Lytel, rolling around by the dishwasher, with knives in hand. "I'm gonna cut your dick off!' "Bitch, I'll kill you!'" I'm just standing there mouth agape. Thinking about the mistake I had made at age 16. Twenty minutes later, it was like nothing had happened. I've seen finger and thumb tips removed by slicers. Made heat-lamp raisins and beef jerky. Too many slip and fall accidents. A waitress who could bounce glasses off a tile floor. Been burned by boiling cheese-grits. Played the knife game from Aliens with a manager. A waiter take all the orders with him when he walked out. Enough sexual harassment to write a book. I'll share some stories tomorrow.
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Oct 23, 2015 07:50
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Time... to die.
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Oct 23, 2015 09:35
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Fo3 posted:Probably the latter. I've been burned heaps of times with brazing and welding rods. That hurts but doesn't blister, it sears. One time though I got splashed with a roux I was cooking creole style, and that stuck and puffed up the hugest blisters I have ever had poo poo's like napalm
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Oct 23, 2015 13:46
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Fo3 posted:Probably the latter. I've been burned heaps of times with brazing and welding rods. That hurts but doesn't blister, it sears. One time though I got splashed with a roux I was cooking creole style, and that stuck and puffed up the hugest blisters I have ever had Yep, splashed with boiling water, that's okay. Burned by a hot oven rack, no big deal. Glob of hot glue on my finger? I cried so hard I almost dehydrated, and trying to pull it off was torture.
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Oct 23, 2015 16:38
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Maggie Fletcher posted:Yep, splashed with boiling water, that's okay. Burned by a hot oven rack, no big deal. Glob of hot glue on my finger? I cried so hard I almost dehydrated, and trying to pull it off was torture. Oh god I got hot glue on my belly one time. Teeny tiny spot, and I have just the smallest raised scar, but it hurt SO MUCH. The worst burn though was the one I got from baking cookies in a 500F oven. I went to turn the pans so the cookies would bake evenly, and the pan JUST brushed the insides of both my arms. At first I didn't notice. And then like ten seconds after closing the oven, I was racing to the kitchen sink to gush water all over my shaking, slightly smoking arms. The burns were disgusting... they got all green and puss-y. I have been burned numerous times by other cooking implements, but for some reason those were the worst. I have minimal scarring 8 years later, but its only been in the last year that they have faded considerably. OH! And once I was making fried dough for a special Halloween thing at the catering company, and the oil bubbled up and smacked into my underarm. Nice little blister that popped when I put my arms down and left a greasy smear of pus on my clean white catering shirt. Eugh.
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Oct 23, 2015 18:18
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Haymaker_Betty posted:Nice little blister that popped when I put my arms down and left a greasy smear of pus on my clean white catering shirt. Eugh. welp i puked thanks
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Oct 23, 2015 19:06
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Haymaker_Betty posted:Oh god I got hot glue on my belly one time. Teeny tiny spot, and I have just the smallest raised scar, but it hurt SO MUCH. Oh, gently caress those burns. That guy Damon from earlier, the one who tried to talk Allan out of putting cheese on fake foliage? When I first started working there, I gave him a wide berth because he had scars all over his arms. He was an enormous motherfucker, but very soft-spoken and level-headed. Basically, picture Michael Clarke Duncan's character from the film The Green Mile. I figured he'd either been through some rough poo poo or was into self-harm, based on the series of horizontal lines on the insides of both of his forearms. Either way, I figured I'd be better off staying the gently caress out of his way. One day, about two weeks into the job, Allan has his hands full when one ovens' timers goes off. He tells me to drop what I'm doing (mindless prep work for pizzas, which I was glad to be doing because honestly I'm 99% sure I was still drunk from the night before) and yank his pans of rolls out of the oven before they burn. I eagerly oblige, doing my best to make myself look like a good (sober) employee, but I'm a young idiot and way too enthusiastic about it and end up spending my lunch break with my arms up to my elbows in a bucket of ice water. Break's over, so I grumpily pull my arms out of the bucket and examine the wounds, when I notice something: They're a whole bunch of horizontal lines, on the insides of my forearms. They were the first, but definitely not the last of scars like that. They've faded away in the many years since, but if I get too much sun, their ghosts come back to remind me of each and every burn.
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Oct 23, 2015 20:38
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I once saw a manager grab for his watch that had fallen off as he reached into the fryer. The split second before the pain hit was the most amazing look I've ever seen a human face make. He was a black man but his hand came up a whitish gray when it peeled. Management told us to continue to cook with the same oil because "we don't have time to change it and wait for it to come up again". Saw a chef stab himself in the forehead trying to cut open the netting on a hanging slab of beef, cutting upward instead of downward. Lost a fingertip in a Hobart attachment making coleslaw. Don't know if anyone cleaned it or just dipped out the meat from the cabbage and continued on, I was in the break room applying pressure and freaking out. The back of the house is a lovely place. I also have the hash marks from oven racks.
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Oct 23, 2015 21:53
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