No. No-no. No, no, no, no, no. I asked the BuzzFeed community for the grossest things they've seen working at a restaurant, and are 16 anonymous confessions from food workers. Nothing has made me want to cook at home more.
1.
"I worked in the kitchen at an assisted living community. About a year ago, they were having issues with the bathrooms that were right across the hall from the kitchen. As it turned out, there was a blockage in the pipes that ran underneath the kitchen. The pipes were so full of shit that part of it had broken down and was leaking into the ground below. My boss (kitchen supervisor) wanted to cater out the meals since we couldn't make anything because of the literal crap in our kitchen. However, the president of the assisted living facility was against this, and was 100% convinced that we could do service just fine. We had to smell AND walk through literal shit while the plumbers were working on fixing the pipes. It should also be mentioned that the pipe ran through our dish area, so we had to hand-wash everything. This lasted a few days before someone (I wonder who...) called the health department on us. Needless to say, the president quit shortly after that."
2.
"I was working at a well-known pizza chain for my first job when I was 15. I wasn't allowed to cook at that age, but I could make the pizzas. One time I noticed some pink cheese toward the bottom of the bin. I tried to avoid it, but as we got busier and busier, I was forced to use it. Later, I saw the cheese slicer was broken, and they were using a wooden door stop to push the cheese through. Also, one of the employees who was working as a delivery driver for that shift returned and had a big, fresh bandage on his hand. You can put two and two together why that cheese was pink."
3.
"Worked for two major sugar companies. On long weekends, honeybees would get in the sugar warehouse and into the sugar system itself. On Monday morning, the bees went through the packaging machines and into the four-pound bags of sugar, and out the door. The boss said just keep running the machines, don’t stop."
4.
"When I was 17, the head chef got mad when a lady sent a steak back, so he wiped it across his butt."
5.
"I worked at a fancy restaurant years ago (still in business) that served frogs legs. They would arrive frozen in blocks of ice. To get them out, the chef would throw the ice hard on the kitchen floor and the legs would slide everywhere, even under appliances. He would gather them up and start to cook them as if nothing was amiss."
6.
"I worked in a deli that was short-handed. The employee who ran the cash register, but had no food safety training, would try to help maintain the salad bar. One day, I walked into the kitchen to see her refilling a bottle of dressing. She took her finger and ran it up the side of the bottle, then put her finger in her mouth to suck off the dressing. She did that two more times, then put the dressing bottle back on the salad bar. Yuck!"
7.
"In high school, I worked at a gas station that had a small deli kitchen inside the store area. The fryers were cleaned every night in the car wash. We never once used soap to clean them in the two years I worked there. All we did was spray out the fried residue so it looked clean and set the 'cleaned' baskets on the dirty concrete before reassembling everything and putting the oil back in. Looking back, I now wonder how much car wax and soap residue was left on those baskets."
8.
"I used to work at a semi-fine dining restaurant in a collage town in Illinois. It was a shit job, but that’s besides the point. Just like at any restaurant job, we would all cry in the walk-in at one time or another. Well, one day, I went in there to cry as one does, and all of the meat, cooked or otherwise, was sitting on the dirty floor that I know for a fact hadn’t been mopped in the eight months I had worked there. Also, that walk-in was always broken. It was at, like, 69 degrees at one point in the middle of summer. It was wild."
9.
"I worked at a sub shop, and the soda machines had mold growing inside where the liquid comes out. The manager wouldn’t even let me stop to clean it out when I noticed it one day. She said it was about to get busy, and we didn’t have the time. That’s so disgusting. I’m surprised nobody got sick."
10.
"My high-school boyfriend worked as a cook at a well-known steakhouse chain. One night there was a sewage backup in the kitchen. They didn’t close but continued as if there wasn’t an inch of poo water coating the kitchen floor. One cook accidentally dropped raw meat into the sewage, rinsed it off, and cooked it. I have never eaten there again…it’s been 25 years."
11.
"I was a bartender at a local bar on Long Island, and I was astonished to see that one of the owners routinely saved and washed sip straws from customers' drinks in order to save money. One day, I reached into a rocks glass for a sip straw for a customer's drink and was surprised when at least a dozen straws came out of the glass because they were stuck together by the sticky liquor from the previous drinks!"
12.
"I worked at a reputable, large chain Chinese restaurant in Louisville, Kentucky. A couple was sat at a table in another server’s section and had finished their meal and boxed up their leftovers. Suddenly, the woman’s hand shot up. She looked shocked and horrified, and when I made eye contact with her, she grimly motioned me over with her head. I arrived at the table to see what the issue was, and she pointed out that a cockroach had crawled onto the table and begun nibbling on a grain of rice. I went and got the manager, and the manager smashed the roach on the table in front of the customers, leaving a smear of guts."
13.
"I worked at a restaurant, and one time, I walked into the bar and saw our manager with several bottles of whiskey on the counter, straining them through a sieve. Turns out, fruit flies had gotten in through the pour tops, and he was straining them out and pouring the liquor back in."
14.
"I worked at boho-styled restaurant, and I was the pizza chef. My workplace was a little hut with open doors where birds could fly through. I was putting the sauce on pizza when a bird flew through the hut and shat in the sauce. I was told to scoop it out and continue making pizzas with the same sauce. I was 13, so I stayed there for the rest of the summer, but just now, I realize how bad it is there."
15.
"I worked at a very fancy hotel at the beach. Everything in the kitchen looked pristine and perfect. Delicious food served lovely. However, sweat from the cooks' brows constantly dripped into the steam table where the veggies and au jus were served. Part of the flavor, I guess."
16.
"I worked at a local chain diner for a little over a month. I once witnessed someone decide to actually clean the iced tea dispenser (never gets done), and when she removed the spigot, it looked like snot running out."
17.
Finally, "I worked in a 24-hour chain diner. We had drawers for the salad. When the salad got old and started to wilt, there was a powdered chemical they had us put on to 'refresh' the salad. It made it a bit slimy but worked for another shift. Gross!"
