Working in fast food can be a bit of a drag given the hours and the fast-paced environment with various twists and turns. Not only that, but there's bound to be fast food workers who dread making a certain item in the middle of a rush. Here are some examples that may or may not make you hungry.
Spicy Chicken Sandwiches (Steak ‘n Shake)
“Steak ‘n Shake. Spicy chicken sandwiches they take damn forever in the fryer and they want our drive time as low as possible.
Also pancakes/skillets in the morning. They aren’t on the drive thru menu!! Dine in or carryout only, but my managers will usually just give it to them if they complain enough.”
Smoothies (Unnamed Local Cafe)
“Barista in a cafe. Preparing myself for smoothie season, as it is nearly upon us. Only have one blender. Fellow baristas and I joke about moving to Smoothie City, basically getting stuck working the blender when it’s busy and there’s constantly a smoothie/blended coffee to make. F–kin sucks man.”
Stuffed Crust (Pizza Hut)
“I used to work at Pizza Hut. I hated making the stuffed crust, because you had to go get the string cheese from the walk in. Then roll it into the dough. Then fix the pizza. When it was slow it’s not too bad, but in a busy it’s torture. My store didn’t sell a lot so that’s why we didn’t prep them.”
Grilled Cheese (Chick-fil-A)
“Grilled cheese. When I was working at Chick-fil-A people would order these because their kid wouldn’t eat anything else. The problem is we were not set up to make these so we would have to put the hamburger buns with cheese in the press that we used for chicken salad sandwiches they would always end up flat as a pancake and burnt and the press would get covered in melted cheese.”
Buffalo Chicken Totchos (Unnamed Restaurant)
“Buffalo Chicken Totchos. Drop boneless wings, onion strings and tots down in fryer. Plate nacho chips on an oven tray. Top the chips with queso cheese sauce, tots, and shredded cheese and melt cheese in oven. Toss wings in buffalo sauce. Pull out nachos from the oven. Top them with bacon bits, boneless wings. Drizzle ranch dressing and buffalo sauce on top. Garnish with fresh onion strings and chopped green onions.”
Customized Orders
“Overly customized food items that no longer resembled the original thing ordered by customers.
Yes, we know, they’re delicious, but your 89 cent grilled cheese minus the cheese with wheat buns and bacon added with a splash of 500 sauces and ketchup and grilled onions is technically no longer a cheese sandwich but a completely different franchise’s chain item, bound to send our cooks into a yelling rage at the cashiers or to completely forget to remake the item and then we get corporate called on us and grilled by our managers for hours behind the scenes for ‘food waste’ and being told we cannot directly refuse a request but must minimize ‘freebies’ on food items.”
Fried Cheese On A Stick (Local Carnival)
“I used to work at a carnival, and one of our items was fried Cheese on a Stick. Don’t get me wrong, its f–king delicious. The problem was the deep fryer had a strange hydraulic profile within its bulk hot oil. So you would have to kind of lob it into the deep fryer, sort of like skipping a stone or the cheese would sink to the bottom, then explode and float to the top. Good times.”
Secret Menu Items (Starkbucks)
“Dumb ‘secret menu’ Starbucks drinks. Customers really do believe we have a super secret menu, and can make anything comprising a dozen ingredients off the top of our heads during a rush. And worse is when they complain about the taste like I’m suppose to know the flavor profile of a PokeBall Frappuccino.”
Chicken Fingers (Raising Cane’s)
“I work at Raising Cane’s Chicken Fingers and by far the worst thing to make on the menu is the 100 finger tailgate. There are worse, but not actually on the menu. And of course adding multiple tailgate orders and/or jugs makes it even worse, but the 100 finger is the worst single item. Dropping 100 fingers in all of three fryers and trying to put it together while maintaining a 2:30 drive thru average kills me every time.”
Garlic Knot Pizza (Pizza Hut)
“The Pizza Hut I work at used to make a Garlic knot pizza. Instead of a crust, about 16 little balls of dough and cheese were placed on the crust. Even the slightest breeze would knock the knots off the dough in the oven, either ballooning and covering the other pizzas with burnt dough, or get stuck in the conveyer belt.
Thankfully that didn’t last long.”
McNuggets (McDonald’s)
“At McDonald’s we have a 50 piece nugget deal for $10. One order of this will clean out a whole tray. There’s only four trays. Today we got an order for FIVE of them. During the lunch rush. Nuggets take three minutes to cook. I’ve never been so close to murder in my life. Seriously who the f–k spends 50 bucks at McDonald’s?”
Biscuits (Hardees/Carl’s Jr)
“I worked at Hardee’s and was a biscuit maker. I made biscuits, washed all the morning shift dishes, and helped everyone else in the kitchen. I have multiple scars on my arms from the pans and I would wake up from dreams at night and flinch because I burned myself on a pan or yelled ‘hot biscuits.'”
The Cod And Walleye (Culver’s)
“I work at Culver’s. The Cod and Walleye filets are a pain in the a– because we have to coat them each in flour then cover them in batter for every order and they take four minutes to cook.”
Subs With Cheddar Cheese Slices (Subway)
“So I work at Subway and, while nothing is absolutely horrendous, I hate when people choose the cheddar cheese slices. They are so stuck together that it takes me way too long to pull apart and I can feel the customer silently judging me for taking a good 30 seconds for F–KING CHEESE SLICES!
Also, meatball sub on flatbread with all dressed veggies is the one I have nightmares about. Don’t do it. Please. What you might not know when you’re ordering a sandwich is that there is a very short moment that occurs while you’re saying ‘uhhh I want’ where I pray to the sandwich gods that you don’t want double all dressed veggies.”
Quesaritos (Chipotle)
“I work at Chipotle. Quesaritos (Note: A quesaritos is a burrito with a quesadilla wrapped around the outside. It’s the cost of a burrito plus a quesadilla) are the absolute worst to make. Sure, they taste good, and we are usually happy to make one for you if there is no line. But when there is a line to the door, and you want a quesaritos, me and the other customers will be furious because it holds up the line so much. And god forbid you want more than one, or the person behind you sees it and say ‘Oh that looks good, I’ll get one of those too!’ I might not even to be able to give a fake smile at that point.”
Grillmaster Angus (Hungry Jacks)
“Hungry Jacks (Burger King in Australia) employee. Our ‘Grillmaster Angus’ range. Now don’t get us wrong, they rake in LOTS of money.
However these burgers must be perfect or we get in trouble. There’s often higher-ups posing as customers that check.
The meat has to be cooked to order, rather on hold in heating units like the other meat, wasting six minutes on a 2:30 time limit.
The burger has to be made perfectly, those untrained seriously have to weigh the burger on scales to make sure they add EXACTLY the correct amount of product.
Almost nine minutes into the 2:30 time limit it’s finally done. And then the next customer drones over the speaker box ‘Can I geeet a Unngus beeeef bacon n cheee-sh-tty feedback screech-se.’
Well, time to cook another.”
Hard Fried Crab (Unnamed Seafood Restaurant)
“Hard Fried Crab. No question. If you don’t know what it is let me explain to using this step by step guide! 1.) First you have to Grab a crab from the freezer, crack the crab open, and take the insides out of it. 2.) Next, you have to grab a crab cake and put it on top of the crab you just broke up in step one 3.) Put all of that in batter without the crab cake falling off or breaking up (Otherwise, you have to start over and throw away crab cake)! 4.) Next, put it in the fryer (Also big enough to take up half of one fryer… very inconvenient for other orders) and wait for 10-12 minutes. 5.) While the hard crab is cooking you need to grab two big paper bags and stuff one in the other. Afterwards you have to stuff the second bag with lots of wax paper to prevent the crab from burning through the bag. 6.) Ding Ding! Congratulations! Your hard crab is officially done. Now you’ve got to take the hard crab out and let the crabby sit for two minutes outside of the fryer. 7.) Last but not least, you have to put the hard crab in the bag without the claws ripping the bag, or the crab cake shell breaking. That’s all there is to it!
Now, try to imagine having seven of those in one order.”
Double Cheeseburgers (Wendy’s)
“My dad used to work at a Wendy’s when he was in high school. Even after having seen action in Operation Desert Storm and the Gulf War the only time he had ever woken up in cold sweats was after having nightmares of him having to make never ending triple and double cheese burgers. I guess that’s some traumatizing sh-t.”
Cheesy Roll-Ups (Taco Bell)
“Taco Bell employee here. Cheesy F–kin Roll-Ups. It’s just melted cheese on a tortilla. You can make 30 at home for less than $3. Why order 10 of them (and the ALWAYS order 10 of them) at $1 each? If I’ve learned anything from this job, its that Cheesy Roll-Ups are for garbage people.”
Iced Caps (Tim Hortons)
“When I was in high school (this was a long time ago; god I’m old.) I worked at Tim Hortons. Iced Caps were new and they generally take a lot longer to make than pour a cup of coffee. I would hate when people would come through the drive thru and order more than two of them. Some families would come through and order like six. Please come into the damn restaurant.”
Banana Split Blizzard (Dairy Queen)
“Dairy Queen. I had no problem with working in the kitchen, but some of the ice cream choices were annoying as hell. The banana split blizzard was practically always runny and it seemed that the people who ordered them would always ask for the upside test, which we couldn’t do. Some nights if the machines were used a lot, the ice cream would be slightly softer than normal making it IMPOSSIBLE to successfully make the banana spilt blizzard (or anything with runny ingredients) like that one had.”
No Salt Fries (Wendy’s)
“Wendy’s veteran. Probably the no salt fries. Our store’s policy was to fry up a new batch of fries, just enough for that order. While they were frying we lined the fry bin with our foil burger wrappers so that the fries wouldn’t touch any residual salt in the bin when we took them out of the frier.
It was a tremendous hassle and 90 percent of the time it was for some jerk who thought they had discovered the fast food cheat code for always fresh fries.To boot, corporate made a really big deal about drive-thru speed at the time. We were supposed to average below 90 seconds per customer or get an earful, and one single order of no salt fries would f–k the timer because they take three minutes to cook.
One evening I was working the register for the dining room and drive-thru gets a no salt fries order. Our grill guy takes some of the already fried & salted fries and puts them back in the fryer for a little bit then serves them as ‘no salt.’ Other employees at my store had been doing this for awhile to save the drive-thru timer because they had correctly figured most of the customers just wanted fries that were hot, and they didn’t really understand there were people out there who shouldn’t be eating salt.. or why those people would be ordering fast food, but I digress.
The customer sees the grill man doing this through the drive-thru window and immediately after getting his food comes in to the store and starts yelling at me while I have no idea what is going on. He then starts pointedly jabbing his finger at our grill guy behind the counter yelling ‘I saw you refry those!’ Our grill guy is pretty damn tall and doesn’t seem to be in the mood to take a customer complaint and for a few seconds it looked like these two guys were gonna come to blows across my counter. I think it ended with the guy storming out screaming he was gonna get our grill guy fired. He wasn’t.”
Seafood Feast (Captain D’s)
“I work at Captain D’s. I f–king hate the seafood feast. It’s the bane of my existence. For those of you who don’t know, it’s the family pack containing 12 fish, 12 shrimp, 12 hush puppies, three stuffed crab, and two family size sides. It sucks when it’s ordered out of no where, but that’s not the issue. The issue is that someone always seems to order it 10 minutes before we close!”
Family Buckets (KFC)
“I used to work at KFC when I was a pup. The absolute worst are those family buckets. Seriously. F–k those.
The KFC standard was to throw in a mix of everything, i.e., don’t fill it up with wings (Which everybody knows, is the crappy cut). The problem is, when people order individual pieces of chicken or in boxes, they pretty much always request breast or drumstick. They’re the better bits. So you’re pretty much always short on them.
So come time to throw together heart disease in a box, you either 1.) wait for more chicken to come off the fryer (and tick off the already hungry monster of a customer) or 2.) throw in mostly wings, and pray to God the customer doesn’t call and complain to your boss who already hates you because they hate themselves and the job.
Also, to throw another spanner in the works, after a while working at that greasy hell, all of the chicken pieces start to look alike anyway. So you don’t even know what’s going into the boxes half of the time.”
Shakes (Sonic)
“At Sonic, we really hate when people order blasts during half price shakes. They take a long time to make and we don’t have time to spare when Kelly and her seven kids each order a different kind a shake.”
Chicken Fajita Pita (Jack In The Box)
“I used to work at jack in the box. The absolute most hated thing to make by everyone was their Chicken Fajita Pita. The abomination of food when I worked there. The ingredients are, pita bread, lettuce, tomato, cheese, grilled onions (which you had to throw on the grill once it was ordered along with everything else you make on the grill) and chicken. Now the ingredients were separated into three different things. The lettuce and tomato were together, the chicken by itself and then the bread. The onions and cheese were added after the chicken had been warmed up in the microwave. Now the bread, the bread was hell, after it was warmed up you had to poke your fingers in the opening to spread it so you could fit all of the ingredients in it, and it burnt like hell along with the warmed up chicken. And that isn’t the worst part. Now I didn’t work with on person who didn’t rip that pita bread right down the middle every time. It was impossible to fit that much ingredients into a little pocket without tearing it. The thing took about 2 minutes to make, correctly.. which slowed down our times. If you order that, know that you put that grill person through hell.”