People Share The Most Disturbing Stories Of Working At Fast Food Restaurants

My best friend worked at a McDonalds for several years in highschool, and there were two stories she told that stuck with me.

One day her McDonalds experienced some sort of malfunction with the machine that produced milkshakes. Apparently they were coming out pretty much melted. A customer demanded a chocolate milkshake, and said he didn't care if it was melted. She did one up for him, and handed it to him so he could get a look at how melted it was. He freaked out on her for "ruining his milkshake", and threw it at her. She was completely covered in chocolate, and yet was expected to stand there and finish the rest of his order.

The second story is an experience she had as a manager. One cold winter day a hobo walked into her store and went to use the washroom. He came out about ten minutes later, and politely provided the dollar whatever needed for a cup of coffee. She gave it to him at no charge, and told him to enjoy the rest of his day. That pleasant phrase threw him into a rage, and he ended up throwing the hot coffee at her. She ended up calling the cops on him, as he refused to leave the restaurant after doing this.

Source: girlietrex

I worked at McDonald's at 17 and frequently worked front counter. A lady comes in one day and ordered two hamburger happy meals-one without pickles and one without onions. She was slurring her words and wobbling a bit so we assumed she was drunk. She gets her shit and walks away. Two minutes later she is back up there saying she had wanted the no pickles on the one with no onions and the other way around on the second. The manager tells her that its the same thing and she starts getting irate and saying her son said he wont eat it like that and starts swatting the air in front of her. Side note-she didn't have a child with her, but she kept pointing beside referencing her son.

So the manager just basically said fuck it and tells her they'll make her new ones just to get her out of the way. So she keeps swatting at the air asking why we don't do anything about the bugs. There were no bugs. She just kept mumbling nonsense. I was trying to keep one eye on her and refill the ice cream cones because she was scaring the crap out of me and I dropped them everywhere. So looked at me was like come on baby there ain't nothin to be nerrrvous about come to mama. That's about the time my manager came over and gave her the "correct" hamburgers and the chick took them and peaced out before I had a breakdown.

Source: j55wn

I used to work for a pretty big pizzeria based in chicago called lou malnati's. they're famous for their pan pizza, and it's damn good stuff. before putting the dough into the pan, adding toppings, and baking the pizzas, the cooks always liberally line the pan itself with oil or butter to prevent the pizza from sticking inside the pan once it's baked. they're really good at flinging the pizza out of those pans and right on a tin foil covered card board circle before putting it all into a box. if the pizza doesn't come freely out of the pan when the cook flings or flips it out, you've got a problem. and sometimes those pizzas stick to the pan.

so they would have to use a metal spatula type thing to kind of scrape the pizza off the pan without tearing through the dough, just to free it up. then the pizza could be tossed out of the pan without a hitch. the gross part about it is that metal spatula was always sitting in a little murky bucket of "clean water" which i'm pretty sure had soap or some other detergent shit in there. so any time you had to get in there and pry a pizza out with that thing you were using a spatula covered in this shitty gray water to do it.

I am a sucker for their pizza and still eat it, but i always thought that was super gross.

Source: supercatpuke

My best would be working at a small Mexican restaurant. I was the goto guy for any kind of job the others didnt want. I was in high school at the time and usually worked around 45 hours a week. I cooked, bused, dish washed, and served from time to time. I was essentially a magnet for odd things. In the two years they were open prior to me starting they didnt have drainage issues, fecal issues, vomiting or anything else like that. After I started my first day consisted of cleaning projectiled vomit from the kitchen. One of the cooks took ill during his shift and barfed everywhere. we remained open and kept all our tickets under our 15 min max. Fast forward a few weeks and our soda/ice storage drain under the fridge stopped working. We had to move the fridge and clean out the drain. The drain was full of gelatinous brown stuff that smelt like raw sewage.

A few nights later some kid had explosive diarrhea all over our dining area. He somehow managed to hit three tables, around a dozen chairs, and about 80 square feet of wood flooring. Shockingly we stayed open and I was forced to clean in between expoing food. Another good one was when our head chef found we had a rat problem in a freezer. The restaurant was closing for a few weeks due to it being our slow season. Our brilliant chef decided to just close the door with the rats inside. I came back to open the kitchen to find about 30 dead babies and a mother rat. The mother was still alive but comatose so when I picked it up it attacked me. I had to have 19 stitches in my hand and arm along with a tetanus shot. I was stuck in a hospital for 72 hours due to waiting out my shift before going in. I could keep going if anyone cares for me too.

Source: Pot_Bot

Seriously? Nothing on Taco Bell yet? I was only there for a month but I've got stories for you.

We had a bunch of the mild stuff that seems to occur everywhere. Piss us off in the drive-thru? Burrito gets a triple dose of onions, etc. Supposedly we were the better of the two in town, rumor was the other site had problems with hand washing being optional. With our site it was the bugs that were a problem.

You know the soda machine that's always stationed by the drive through window? The one with that nice big stack of paper cups that are kept next to an almost constantly open window? Well ours always attracted gnats. I'm not sure if it was the paper, or the moist humidity, but those fuckers loved climbing inside of the paper cups and waiting to be covered in shining dark soda. "Straw always picks up the bottom of the cup first right?" My manager would say.

Our other big problem was the ants. Now this town has a fairly significant problem the Argentine ant and we could never keep the food line clear and clean long enough to not attract a line. We'd find them almost daily crawling though one of the open containers, swarming at whatever piece of old chicken that wasn't pushed into the trash bin below. I'd chuck the whole bin if I was the one to discover it, and only if the manager wasn't around to notice. Oh how she hated "wasted" food, so more often than not, the ant bins were kept in service.

The worst incident however, was the beetle burrito. Ever see a beetle crawl out of a burrito you just took a bite out of? Nice writhing legs, shiny wings, & a crunchy taco-like shell, luckily neither did this poor bastard who ordered it because the beetle crawled right out of the burrito right as one of my co-workers was wrapping it up (honestly much to both of our surprise). He was about to toss it when the manager asked him what he thought he was doing. Needless to say, "there was no wasted food in her restaurant", and because "the beetle crawled out and not in, the burrito was fit to serve".

I put in my two weeks notice that night.

Source: Towelenthusiast

I had a customer that must have been schizophrenic or bipolar have a mental breakdown while I was the only person there at night.

It was a sandwich/pita restaurant subway-style except that we prepared all the veggies and bread fresh (no bagged lettuce, we cut it ourselves, same with everything).

A customer came in at a very slow time and ordered a pita with extra peppers. He asked more more, and his hands were trembling.

He paid for it, sat down, took a bite, then went insane. He started screaming obscenities and how much he hated peppers.

He threw the pita at the wall and started rubbing the peppers all over and took off his shirt to rub them on his chest - must have burned like hell.

So I called the police as he trashed the cooler full of drinks, they came and restrained him and took him away.

Damage to the business was only about 200 dollars worth of broken bottles and a screen in the cooler. Never heard from him again.

Source: j55wn

This is maybe not the "disturbing" you are looking for, but I worked at a Subway in high school and a few weeks before I started the place was robbed. The robber forced the only employee who was working (a pregnant woman in her early 20s) into the walk-in freezer and moved a huge metal prep table in front of it so she couldn't get out. Eventually another customer came into the store and figured something was up, he was able to get her out of the freezer and she was totally fine.

Maybe 2 months later we were robbed again, after the store was closed. The only thing they took was a jar of money we had pooled to buy gifts for the same employee's baby shower. Poor girl.

Source: herestoshuttingup

I worked at a McDonalds in Iowa for around 3 years. One Sunday I got called to come in and help with the lunch rush as they were "having troubles". Figuring I would only be assisting them through rush I would come in for a couple hours.... Dear lord I had no idea what I was in for.

The second I walk into the place I get the utter most disgusting and gut wrenching smell I've ever faced. The sewer had backed up and was coming up through drainage grates in the floor all through out the back of the store. There were literal turds floating in shit water, about 1 inch high, from behind the counter all the way to the back by the storage.

I told the managers that were working we had to close down immediately, because this violates countless health codes. I was told to call the owner and tell him this (everyone else was afraid of the old money hungry hag). After explaining the situation to him he basically told me to nutt up and squeegee the shit out the back door. So thats what we did. There were countless comments from customers about what the smell was, so i blatantly told them exactly what it was. Not a single one left. Not a single one gave a fuck. They all ordered their food even though they could see the feces. This is also the day I lost hope in people.

I got so many stories about this hell hole. If you live in Iowa take notice, same guy owns 3 different McDicks.

Source: tockcease

Worked in an Ingles Deli for a while. Not only was the food prep conditions disgusting(and it apparently is in most stores). We had a salad bar that we would reuse some products for weeks at a time. One day the bottom started leaking and a repair guy was called out. We ended up staying 3 hours later than normal taking it apart and cleaning. There was mold and fungus and shit piled up and it was causing coolant to leak onto the floor.

Just don't shop at ingles people. And because I am a great employee I took pictures that night to show the internet and friends.

Source: bobdisgea

I was visiting a Krystals one day with my friend. For some reason, we decided to go inside and eat rather than just eat in the car and listen to the radio. Anyway, there was an unusually long line today, it looked like six people. There were usually, at most, two. The lines move pretty fast.

At the head of the line was this hambeast of a woman with her two children, who I estimate to be around 8 or 9 years old. The woman was about 250lbs or so but very much with the demeanor of a beast. She kept asking for something and then saying it was wrong to hold up the line. That was obviously her goal. Anyway, the kitchen staff just handed her 20 burgers and told her to pick out the ones she wanted so that other people could order. The whole time, loudly, she is insulting the cashier and kitchen staff rather loudly while checking the burgers and sitting them aside.

They get through the other people relatively quickly. My turn comes up and hambeast stops counting, apparently she is done. Only two of them are to her satisfaction. She's about six inches away from me, with her arms crossed, staring at the cashier who is trying her best not to look at her. The cashier asks what I would like.

"First of all, I would like to apologize for the stupid bitch standing beside me. I'm sorry you all have to deal with this. Second of all, I'll have a #1 with no pickles, and a Coke to drink."

Her face is trying hard to fight back a smile. Trying hard. Think fighting back diarrhea while driving a Mercedes bad. Think trying to hold in a fart while you're getting the best oral sex of your life. It was that desperate of a fight, and she was losing. Thankfully, the woman cut me off by asking me,

"Were you talking about me?" "Yes ma'am, I was."

While my friend orders, she's staring me down telling me how she should kick my ass. Her kids are saying everything they know to degrade me: Faggot, homo, motherfucker, asshole, dickface, etc. I stand up straight and tell her that if she would like to take this to the parking lot, I can make her face and hopefully her attitude a little more personable.

The kitchen staff are literally rolling on the floor laughing. The other people in the store are laughing as well. I'd say a good ten or fifteen people are watching with grins on their faces.

The woman sizes me up and then throws her drink at the cashier, who is now covered. I tell the woman that she has ten seconds to leave the store before I break her face. On the way out the door, she fake calls her husband on her cell phone. As in, grabs the phone and starts talking into it immediately. She tells him to come and kick my ass, and to bring his gun. One of the kitchen workers calls the police and the woman gets arrested for assault and threatening people with firearms.

The next time I go into the store, the manager confronts me and I'm pretty sure I'm about to be kicked out. She said her employees aren't allowed to stand up for themselves, but that the surveillance tape made them all really happy with the outcome, so I got a free meal that day.

Source: Hristix

Embarrassing story here: I worked for an up and coming toasted sandwich chain in Chicago. We used to have these stupid in-store meetings for new product roll outs etc. We also had the biggest ass witch of a GM in history. If you came in late to these 7-8 AM meetings, she would make you get up in front of everyone and sing/dance to "I'm a little teapot". One time our prep guy, a 40ish year old Mexican man who spoke little English, had a family and worked three jobs to support them, came in late. He had to sing that stupid song to all of us. We were appalled, he was humiliated. She eventually got fired for being a jagoff. Everything went better than expected : )

Source: hoagiej

When I worked at Wendy's during high school, my manager was a cheap bastard who would regularly pull lettuce out of the garbage and rinse it off before sticking it into a salad. He would scream at whoever was chopping salad lettuce that they were wasteful, and then inspect the garbage to see if there were 'usable' scraps. He also found a disgusting package of sweet n' sour sauce under the fryers and served it in drive-thru.

Also, I once blacked out while using the grill and my face landed three inches away from the grill top. I had a nasty bruise, but I shudder to think what could have been.

Source: fiver00

I worked at a Popeyes for nearly three years. Surprisingly the only thing I would disturbing would be the time a prostitute came in to bitch at and try and fight a female employee. It was like watching a train wreck.

Some people might be disturbed to find out that the oil Popeyes fries things in is in fact lard. For those who haven't seen it, picture a solid white brick of fat with the consistency of hard ice cream.

Interestingly enough, there's nothing particularly horrible in any of the products. However, the beans for the red beans and rice are not vegetarian contrary to what Popeyes employees are supposed to say, so vegetarians/vegans take heed.

I also have lots of examples of horrible human behavior that aren't necessarily disturbing, but those are stories for another day.

Source: j55wn

 was working the nightshift at McDonald's on drive thru last year when a car comes through at around 3 am. When the car pulled up to my window I see two dudes that looked like they were straight out of Jersey shore. The driver had his shirt unbuttoned.

Now, I wouldn't have even noticed the shirt if he hadn't looked down at it, looked at his friend, and said to me "Oh... no. Don't get the wrong idea. We're not gay. We have sex with girls. We actually just had sex with girls like 20 minutes ago. Would it be weird if I told you that it was the same girl? Yea... we fucked this chick at the same time. Hey... you're hot.. wanna party?"

I just stood there, dumbfounded. I think I finally found words and said something along the lines of "uh... no thank you.... so... your order comes to $2.92..."

They didn't give up though. They just kept trying to get me to party with them and were trying to "entice" me by bragging about their dicks. I finally had a manager handle the situation and they left.... only to return 10 minutes later to try it all again. This time as they were leaving they said, "we'll come pick you up when you're off at 7. We'll show you a good time, babe".

So that's why I hate working drive thru at night.

Source: Gimpinald

I worked at McDonalds in high school and I have a few stories:

I had an old man pick up his biscuits and gravy, and seeing how it was 0600 with no one else and I was working the grill I was bored and watched him take it back to his seat. I watched him flip the carton over then open it, causing the entire inside to be coated in gravy. He looked at is for a while as if thinking about it, then brought it back for a new one. Wash, rinse, repeat. This guy came back no less than three times. No idea why he did that.

Second one was an old lady mumbled her order on the first and last day I was at the register. I repeated it back to make sure and she hurriedly said "yeah yeah yeah'" as I was rattling it off. I put in the order and waited for the grill guys to assemble it. When I handed her the order I didn't think much of it until she stormed back up, interrupting me and yelling something about too many pickles or not enough pickles or she wanted a pickle in her bum or something and then hurled the burger at me. I started to calmly explain I could get her a new one but my manager heard her say the word "refund" so she ran over and took over for me. I opted to stick to the grill after that.

Lastly I have a story about my co-workers. It was 115 outside and suddenly our AC for the kitchen broke. 1 hr into my 8.5 hour shift. as the heat rose the other two grill crewmembers re-assigned themselves to other jobs. I didn't have a problem with it until I saw all the orders I was sending forward to the counter were piling up and a panicked newbie who had just learned to be at the cash register was running around trying to assemble everything. I looked around and realized we were the only two working during lunch rush. I kept working through the orders when I ran out of paddies so I went into the freezer and found the entire crew. 2 managers and 5 crewmembers just chillin' in there because of our lack of A/C. I quit the next week and got a real job.

TL;DR:

1)Crazy old man can't figure out how to open his meal

2)Old lady threw a burger at me

3)Coworkers are assholes who can't handle the heat!

Source: saigus

A hooker went in to the bathroom, and locked herself in there. i pounded on the door, the manager pounded on the door, eventually she came out running and screaming and the walls were covered in strawberry shake.. and blood. i clocked out and just left, absolutely refusing to clean it up. fucking nastiest thing i've ever seen. and this was a LOT of blood. like if you loaded up a cat with firecrackers and blew it up kind of thing. crazy spatter too.

A hooker came in with no shirt and her belt undone wearing a leather jacket unzipped as a "top". she slurred, and tried like 5 times to order a club sandwich. then she fell over the counter and slammed into me, knocking me in to the counter and fridge opposite of the front counter.

The cook when i started working there made a TON of people sick. we only found out a couple months later. really old people from nursing homes, little kids. he never EVER washed his hands, and would apparently just scratch his bare ass crack and shit while he was cooking. never used gloves either. him and the other(massive shithead we all hated) cook would get in fights and throw burgers at eachother, and smear food all over the kitchen.... then just keep cooking. seriously, a LOT of people got sick.

The place caught on fire, grease fire on the metal splash shield. neither of us wanted to pull the fire extinguisher lever because the boss would probably just fire us because of the mess, or we'd have to clean it up. there were no customers in the store when it happened and we gave ZERO fucks about the place. he ran in and threw a TON of water on it. it was a grease fire, we almost became insanely disfigured from the splash/blowback/etc. the entire restaurant was THICKLY full of smoke and he acted like nothing had happened and the manager just kept cooking food and serving customers. we thought he was a fucking nutter.

Source: thinkythought

I worked at Subway for about two years when I was in high school. There was a lady I worked with who I will never forget. Picture this: A 72 year old woman who constantly coughs up chunks of m&m cookies onto every surface available - including subs.
Her and I were chatting in the back of the store once, and while she was talking to me a chunk of cookie flew out of her mouth and landed on my lip. I almost gagged. She also would wear the same pair of gloves for cleaning, prep and for serving customers. It was disgusting. For some reason my boss never said anything to her about it. I guess he felt bad that she was so old and still working.

Source: _dreamline

I worked at Dairy Queen for a while as a teen. While I was there, we had three separate soft-serve icecream machines, two were relatively new and one was older. The older one's handle stuck and it took longer to solidify the ice-cream (which comes into the machines from plastic bags through hoses, then it it spun and solidified in the machine). well nobody used the older machine because it was malfunctioning and somebody got the bright idea to leave it shut off with the soft-serve mix still hooked-up to, and in the machine. Fast forward a few weeks and we're all complaining to the managers about the awful smell coming from the machine. One of the managers decides to check it out and they drain it and pull the mixer-thing from the cylinder where the mix is kept and clinging to it are tons of maggots. I almost hurled on site because employees had been using the unfrozen maggot-mix from that machine instead of milk for the milkshakes for the past few weeks. I don't eat there anymore.

Source: travellinman

Worked at Wendy's when I was a teen. Had a guy with a grill spat with several pieces of grilled chicken stacked on it drop them all over the floor. He simply picked them up and put them in the holding bin to be served.

My then boyfriend - now husband was attempting to fix the frosty machine because it wasn't spinning properly. Dummy sticks his finger up in the dispenser and the thing started spinning again. Chopped of the tip of his finger.

We also used to have a gentleman come in that was mentally handicapped. He would order 1-2 extra meals for his "friends" and then proceed to sit down and put the meals in front of empty chairs. He would then carry on a conversation, often heated, with his imaginary friends.

Source: Justmyluck

I once worked for a very large burger joint. It was my junior to senior summer and was working the drive through. It was near the lunch rush and pretty busy. In between orders, I looked out the drive through and saw an elderly couple walking hand in hand. They had crossed the street on a side street and looked as though they were getting ready to cross the street on a main thorough fair. I kept watching them for some reason and was astonished when I saw the elderly lady step into the busy thorough fair. Her husband reached for her but not fast enough, for when she stepped into the busy street, an RV filled with a family vacationing rolled over the top of her. The elderly couple were on their 50th anniversary vacation. She did not make it.

I was not allowed to leave my shift. I still have very vivid memories of this incident and think in horror, at times, of her body tumbling out from under the back end of the RV and of the shocked reaction of her husband.

Source: j55wn