Fast Food Employees Share Their Worst Experiences And It’s Mind-Boggling

I worked at Starbucks and a woman ordered her coffee at 140 degrees in the drive thru. She walks back in the cafe after pulling out and complains that her coffee was 139 degrees because she has a thermometer in her car and she demands it be remade. I laughed at her and asked if she was joking and she demanded to see my manager. My manager remade it but I didn’t get in any trouble. She was ridiculous but Starbucks’ policy is to remake anything if a customer asks for it.
 
Another time there was a long wait during rush hour in the morning and I apologized to a guy that it was taking a long time to get his white mocha to him. He glared at me and yelled, “you don’t really mean you’re sorry!” and refused to be cordial. He continued to look at me with disdain for the next few minutes. It made me super sad at the time. I really was sorry! Asshole. I learned not to be affected by shitty people so much as I got older.

blatently_blunt

I worked at a popular Canadian coffee franchise almost ten years ago.
 
One day, a drive-thru customer had some sort of altercation with a pair of pedestrians who had been walking through the drive-thru. The way I understand it, the customer had almost hit the pedestrians–a man and his mother, and then had started shouting. This is what I heard over the drive-thru headset: “YOU WANNA FACE FULLA BICEP?!?! I’LL GIVE YA A FACE FULL OF BICEP!!”
 
I had a teenage coworker who believed in Santa. When a mall Santa came into the store, this coworker started looking out the windows for his sleigh.
 
I had a teenage coworker who asked me “What’s a Nazi?” with total sincerity. When I explained what a Nazi was, the follow up question was “So, do we like them or not like them?”
 
I had a customer hurl racial insults at a coworker because the coworker did not butter his bagel in the manner he expected.
 
I had a customer who requested a bagel “dripping in butter,” noting that she would “send it back if there’s not enough butter.” I buttered until the butter was soaking the paper. She sent it back, quite livid. I put a BURGER PATTY worth of butter on the bagel. She opened it again, inspected it, was clearly still not satisfied, and drove away angrily.

Saintv1

I worked at Ikea in the restaurant, not the main one, but the shitty one at the end. I remember we sold out of pizza and the next one was six minutes. We had six people ask for pizza and we asked if they were fine with waiting, so we eventually sold out of the pizza that was still in the oven. Well it’s finally ready, people are waiting, they already paid, and my coworker took it out of the oven, as another coworker was calling his name from behind him. When he turned his head to see who called the pizza slid off the peel and fell cheese side down, making a huge splat, the sauce went everywhere, it looked like this and there was just a collective “AHHH” from the people who had ordered that pizza. At first I was laughing because at least it wasn’t me, but then we had to process six refunds while the line piled up 

mystriddlery

This actually happened a couple of days ago. I supervise at a BBQ restraunt and the other day I had an employee get sick while on his lunch in the break room. I’m going over time sheets and out of the corner of my eye I see him run to the trash can with what looked like some sort of brown liquid in his hands and casually toss it in. I’m under the assumption that he maybe spilled his lunch in the break room and was cleaning it up. I go to investigate the situation only to hear a loud lurch followed by a loud splat onto the floor. I find said employee holding an impressive amount of vomit in his hands and all over the break room is corn tortilla scented bile. I ask if he’s ok and send him to first aid to make sure he’s not dying. I glove up and begin the process of clean the chunky mess that he managed to spread across the break room and doors. I also find a nice trail of vomit leading to the trash can, and despite his best efforts, only managed to get his vomit onto the SIDE of the trash can.

I just about finished cleaning the vomit and the employee comes back saying he ‘usually feels better after a puke a lot’. I’m getting ready to send him home when, SURPRISE, he decided he wasn’t done puking. He looks me in the eyes and says ‘i think I need a trashcan-‘ and vomits all over the just mopped and sanitized floor. He then runs to the only hand washing sink and decided it would be great to puke in there. I send him home and spend the rest of my shift mopping and scooping chunks of hot water and vomit from a terribly clogged sink. Hey, I wanted to be the boss right?

rootKRP

I worked at McDonald’s part-time while I was in college. One day, I was working the drive-through, and this guy ordered a lot of drinks. One of them was low on soda syrup, but instead of just telling me about it like a rational person so I could give him a replacement drink, he threw the extra large drink at me. Of course the lid came off and I was soaking wet.
 
The manager, who was actually pretty good as far as fast food managers go, saw this happen. He took off running into the parking lot, flagged down the driver before he could leave, and told him to never come back. Then he came back in, found me a dry uniform shirt, and let me have a few minutes on the clock to sit in the break room and calm down.

Trinkers

I used to work at Sonic. On rainy days, especially when it was pouring, people would intentionally park across the lot (the spare spots that weren’t covered by their famous awning), and make the car hops walk the food out there to them. We’d be standing there outside their car window with the food on a tray, waiting for them to roll down their window. They’d take their sweet time getting out their cards or cash while we were getting drenched. All the while, there were plenty of open spots under the awning, closer to the restaurant and out of the rain. By the time they took their food from us, they would demand the meal for free since it was wet. Mind you, not wet enough to give back the food, just wet enough to demand a full refund while they shoved the offending fries in their mouth. Those people also never tipped. Also- we had people who would make us go back inside and replace their 44oz drink four and five times, even when you insisted it was the right drink. “This aint diet.” “Sir, I poured this drink myself, I can assure you it’s diet. “I want you to go back in there and do it again, and I better not have to send this back a third time.”

EDIT: Don’t feel bad if you didn’t know until now that Sonic employees get tip wage. A ton of people have no idea, so they ever tip. That’s a known thing when you work there, or at least at my location. Also- you can’t tip on a card there, so even if you wanted to, there wouldn’t be a way to do it. And cards were 50% of our business. Now they’re probably even more.

SydneyDavisJrJr

I worked at a place known for waffles. We actually kept our store fairly clean, so there wasn’t an issue there. Two of my favorite stories actually involved equipment breaking down.
 

1. You know the waffle irons? Apparently they sound like a stereo shorting when they decide to die. I worked third shift, so it’s nice and quiet at about 0200, and then zzzZZZBOOM. I nearly hit the roof. The electric outlet was sparking and on fire. Thankfully, our cook managed to get the fire out and the damn thing unplugged before it caused any real damage, but the whole place smelled like smoke and fried wires for a good day or so.
2. This is probably the worst, but even then I’m still warmed by how well our crew held together. A couple minutes after midnight on what was now New Years Day, our dish washer decided to journey to the giant garbage heap in the sky.

HAPPY NEW YEAR

So we are absolutely slammed with drunk people ordering a heap of food and no working dish washer. Fuck. The entire night, us three servers and the one (!!!) cook, who is the same from the first story, took shifts hauling all the dirty dishes onto a cart and running them into the back room to wash by hand in the three section sink. One part for dirty dishes, one for soaking/washing, and one for drying. One of our servers was trained on the grill, so she and our cook would swap out every half hour, and even the cook was taking orders at times. Our regulars were stacking plates and acting as bus boys, my own friends were wiping down tables so the people standing could sit down, the plates and bowls were being used as soon as they hit the shelves. It was a nightmare.
 
At the end of the night, when the manager and the morning crew showed up, they got a run down from us. The manager stared, then pointed at the back door and told us all to go take a long break before we had to do our end of shift duties. We all had that thousand yard stare, but damn it, we lived.

KaleidoKitten

Worked at Braum’s for a bit.
 
Went to hand an elderly lady her ice cream cone. She took it from me, pulled her arm into her car, took a lick, and then dropped the ice cream down her door. I genuinely felt bad for her and offered to give her another one and clean it up if she would pull around.
 
It’s 100+ degrees out and I’m in full uniform. I begin wiping the side of her door when she throws a plethora of insults my way.
 
“This is why your generation is so messed up. You saw I had braces on my wrist. You knew I had arthritis. You should never have handed me that cone. You should ask if I want a cup instead.”
 
“You’ll probably only ever be a fast food worker. It’s people like you that make everyone’s life hard.” She said a few more things.
 
The heat and moment got the best of me. I threw the dirty napkins in her lap, told her to shut the fuck up, reminded her I was doing her a favor (and it wasn’t my fault), advised her to order correctly, and told her to clean up her own goddamn mess.
 
I walked back inside, explained to my manager what I did, and in comes this lady playing “I’m a good, sweet Christian and would never disrespect someone” card. Manager told her to call corporate, but as he wasn’t outside, he couldn’t believe what she had to say.

Obscurity88

Not necessarily fast food, but I used to work in a bakery where our “Head Chef” had a reputation of being a grade a dick. Our nicknames were stupid fuck and dumb fuck. We had to work at an insane pace and he acted as if he was God’s gift to Earth.
 
The one that stuck with me was when I made a customer a sandwich and she requested a side of avocado. Our avocados were not ripe at all. I mean it was like plastic! I mentioned this to her and she said it was fine. So I sliced it for her and gave it to her. She calls up like an hour later complaining that her avocado was not ripe and she was unhappy. People are stupid.

TheElusiveGoose10

Worked on a pancake stand at a concert. We had two kinds of fillings and sometimes people would ask for both at the same time. I usually just spread one on one half and the other on the other half and rolled it up so that they’d get same amount of each with each bite.
 
Two days in my boss sees this and absolutely flips his shit in front of some guy who at that point has been my regular customer. Apparently i was supposed to spread one kind on whole pancake and then just do little dabs with the other one. The customer said he liked pancakes the way i made them but from that point forward i was not allowed to make them the same way.

System__Shutdown

I worked in a small Maccas during the Sydney Olympics, I was about 15 at the time. There was a series of big screens at Circular Quay showing live Olympic events. There was always large crowds down there.
 
This store was around 500m or so away from my store and because of the demand we occasionally had to take things down there. Our store was closing and they were running out of buns at the busy store so they sent me down with a big trolley of buns(those pre split ones). Easy right?
 
I get about 20m from the store and there’s a giant crowd between me and the store. So I start asking people to move and most people are nice until one guy rips open the bag of bags and starts throwing them up in the air screaming out “Free burgers, free burgers!”
 
The crowd moves towards me and some police/crowd control notice this and come over and tell everyone to back off and have a few heated words with the free burger guy. They guide me through the crowd and to the store awaiting the buns.
 
I get grilled about arriving with one less tray of buns but once I tell them the story it’s all good.
 
Bonus story: because that store was so busy I picked up a shift after my normal shift that totaled 20 hours. I was the richest 15 year old I knew at that time.

fly_guy22

I had a rough looking guy in a beat-up truck try to use 1 year old coupons. I refused to take them. That was a mistake. He held up the drive thru and screamed and screamed at me. Including “smarten up son, or you’re going nowhere in life”. Made me feel like shit until I realized that someone like that who is screaming those things at a 15 year running the drive thru, did not go anywhere in life.

inosilic

I was working at a pub shortly after college. During the evenings, things would always get pretty stressful and hectic. People would be snapping at each other, or saying mean things, or arguing, or whatever. Pretty standard stuff in a high stress situation like that.
 
One day, though, in the middle of dinner, the other cook (my immediate manager, but not the restaurant manager) apparently just had a bad night. He’d been getting progressively more agitated all night (not with me, luckily). Suddenly, a waitress came back and complained that one of her tables was complaining because the food was cold. First, the manager responded by telling her that if she’d come get her orders when they were done, they wouldn’t be cold, but when she made some comment back, he snapped.

He picked up a hot pan from the stove, and I was terrified for a second that he was going to throw it at her. Instead, he swung it at hard as he could at the entire stack of clean plates and knocked almost all of them off the table, shattering them on the floor. Then he literally tore off his apron and stormed out, but not before knocking a tray of full out of another watiress’s hands.
 
Weirdly enough, the store manager was going to let him keep his job if he’d admit being out of line. She brought him in during lunch the next day to talk to him, and instead of apologizing, he smashed a coffee cup against the wall and left.
 
All told, it was probably for the best.

Lindvaettr

Literally had a 17 year old kid die in my arms.
 
I was 19 and working at KFC in a bit of a a rough area. It was a quiet day shift so there were only 3 staff and no customers in the store at the time. A young couple, who looked pretty fucked up, walked in and went straight to the bathrooms.
 
After some time, the girl came out screaming for help. She said her boyfriend had gone into the bathroom to the use heroin and he was not responding and was inside the locked men’s room.
 
My manager called an ambulance while I tried to get the door open. Couldn’t kick it down like Chuck Norris, so I went and grabbed some tools and finally got it open.
 
Found the kid, blue and cold on the floor. His pulse was faint. There was a syringe next to him. He had blood in his mouth so I couldn’t make mouth to mouth contact and started administering chest compressions. The whole time his girlfriend was screaming at me to save him.
 
I feel like I could sense the moment he had passed. The ambulance came within a few minutes but there was nothing they could do.
 
His mother came a few days later to apologise and thank us for trying to save him. There was some police questioning and plenty of nightmares. It was been about 17 years and I still think about it often.

Ocarina-Of-The-Wild

At McDonald’s of course. I was a first assistant manager. We had a kid who was just promoted to shift manager. He was a very good employee and he knew his stuff. We had high hopes for him.
 
His very first shift, 5 minutes into the shift, he does a walk through of the dining room. He asks a girl who was 7 months pregnant to change a trash bag and she tells him no, that she can’t do it. He walks to the back of the store, gets the trash masher (basically a mop handle with steel plates on the end to compact the trash) walks to the garbage bag and mashes the trash. He then takes the trash masher and knocks the girl out with it screaming “I’m the fucking boss and everyone better do whatever I tell them” and continued to yell at everyone about how she needs to be fired for insubordination and no one else better ever test him. He was arrested in the store and was trying to argue with the police officers that he was in the right.
 
The girl had a major concussion but she and the baby were OK.

Mynameisinuse

I worked at my local McDonald’s for 4 weeks last year. I broke my foot and sprained my ankle right before Thanksgiving. I told the store manager right after I left the ER, and she told me to come back after I saw my orthopedist. I did, but she was gone and a different manager told me to get a not from my doctor so I can come back to work because they needed people desperately. I got one, and a different manager took it from me, said she wasn’t sure on what to do because she wasn’t sure if I could work, and said she’d call me the next day. I haven’t heard anything since, and it’s been about a month and a half since I talked to anyone and no one has called me back. I’m sure that with all of the miscommunication, they just assumed I walked out and quit. I have a better job now.

Nerdy_Momma4827

McD’s was my first job at 16yo, and I was hired just prior to the Beanie Baby Happy Meal toys.
Lines out the door, crazy women demanding we get them a certain toy, impatient and shitty people. People would say degrading shit like mentioning I was working for min wage if they felt I wasn’t working fast enough. People suck.
 
On a related note, my mom used to collect them: there was a line for a store that sold the Beanie Babys like it was Black Friday or some shit..a guy got pissed at my mom because she saw him cut in line and she wasn’t having it — other people there supported my mom in what became an argument. The guy threatened my mom, alluding to him killing her. Dude leaves and my mom returns to a car that’s been keyed to shit..it’s a smaller town but I was surprised to see the incident in the local paper.

loztriforce

Worked a Burger King a while back that stayed open til 2 am. One manager was actually a reasonable person, and was an older lady that clearly paid her dues to the company. At my store we only had 2 closers, so from about 10:00 to 3 am it was just me and a manager.
 
The night I put my two weeks in she is just grumpy and teary eyed looking at her phone, and she’s not usually the manager who does that. Her oldest was going into a complicated pre-mature labor and nobody could help her.
 
No area manager wanted to come out that late. Corporate didn’t care because that was “part of the job”. She was crying all night until we closed. Busted out of there 10 minutes after closing time we broke so many rules.
 
Fuck corporate people who think you have to take your time away from your children for shitty burgers.

OblongSphere

I was a waitress at a pizza place and an older man and woman flagged me over and they just start yelling at me going on and on that they found metal in their food. And she’s showing me and yelling and I am trying to apologize and saying we can make you a new pizza, I am sorry, I have no idea where it came from. After several minutes of yelling the man gets quiet and he goes “oh, I lost a filling”. Then they tried to be all nice and laugh it off. I just wanted to say screw you for treating me like crap.

semichaels

I worked at a Canes Chicken around graduation season. He had massive catering orders, like 600 chicken fingers, 500 pieces of toast, 250 coleslaws… Multiple orders like this on the same day while also being our busiest day of the week. We were going nuts, even the owner was there to help. Of course, this is the day corporate decides to make a surprise visit. The owner got reamed (even though we were consistently scoring as one of the top locations on a regular day), so he reamed the manager, who then reamed us. So we’re already stressed out and tired and now we’re being shouted at by irate customers, the owner, and our manager. I’m surprised we didn’t all quit that day.

Judge_Bredd2

I worked for McDonald’s in a mall while I was in high school, and the worst was Black Friday 1987.
 
The night before, I had slipped and fallen in my bathroom, and cut open my eyebrow. It needed an ER trip and 7 stitches, and left me looking like Frankenstein’s monster.
 
I tried to call in, and was informed that I hadn’t called early enough. They didn’t have time to call someone to fill in on my scheduled shift.
 
And so, I showed up for work with an oozing eyebrow, a splitting headache, and on about 4 hours sleep. It was also insanely busy, so I barely got to grab lunch (20 minutes in line to order my food, cut from a 30 minute lunch break).
 
Basic training for the Navy was less stressful.

EDIT:

1. I don’t remember if it was called Black Friday back in the 80s. It was the day after Thanksgiving, however, and that has always been a very busy shopping day.
2. 
   
3. I didn’t get a note, mainly because I was still a bit dazed. My mother had to drive me to the ER, as I still didn’t have my license, and drive me to work later on, and she didn’t think that I needed a note because of the “giant gash” (her words) over my eyebrow. My oversight.
4. 
   
5. No drugs were prescribed (after a couple of days, the headache went away). I have a pretty damned high pain threshold, so I would not have thought to take them anyway. Therefore, announcing how “high” I was never would have crossed my mind. Maybe I’m too honest.

molotok_c_518