Alright, fast food fanatics, buckle up and prepare for the inside scoop! We’ve gathered some brave souls from your beloved fast-food joints to spill the spicy secrets they’ve been holding back. From frightening food to safety-neglecting supervisors, these fast food employees are about to dish out the sauciest details on what really goes down behind those golden arches and iconic drive-thrus. Get ready to have your curiosity satisfied as we dive into the juicy world of disgusting fast food revelations! All content has been edited for clarity purposes.
“The Food Was Usually Pretty Old”
“I used to work at Fazoli’s. Let me be the first to tell you, there was nothing fresh about the food.
The pizza was run through a slow-cooking oven to warm it up, and a second time after someone ordered a slice. This meant whole pizzas sat around all day until they were ordered and reheated. After coming out of the oven the second time, we spread garlic butter on the crust and called it ‘fresh.’
The ‘twice baked lasagna,’ was never fresh. The pan of lasagna was removed from the freezer, and thawed out, then the cheese and toppings were added and put in the oven. If people weren’t ordering the lasagna, it usually sat on a steam table for several hours. By several hours, I mean I’ve seen lasagna sit for as long as entire shifts without being replaced.
I urged customers to never order the baked spaghetti sitting under the heat lamp. Chances are, it had been sitting there for quite some time. My manager used to tell me to bake 10 or 15 trays of spaghetti at once and put them aside for when people order one.
The breadsticks were delicious, but they usually weren’t fresh. We spread the frozen breadsticks onto pans, drowned them in garlic butter, then put them in the freezer on racks. When we needed breadsticks, we popped them into the oven and they came out piping hot. 90% of the time, the employees will eat the good breadsticks and give the bad ones to customers
The line cooks were usually eating breadsticks when they weren’t doing anything else. The cooks often double-dipped into the sauces used in the other foods. Marinara, meat sauce, Alfredo, you name it. Plus, if the store was busy, there was a good chance the cooks weren’t wearing gloves.
If you came in around an hour before closing time, the sauces were placed under heating lamps so the steam table could be cleaned. As a result, the sauces got extremely dried out and crusty looking. If you were rude and the employees were in a bad mood, you would more than likely get the crusty, overheated, unstirred sauce on your dish.
The salads in the cold case usually sat there since the store opening, unless customers were ordering them throughout the day. The unsold salads went back into the freezer at the end of the night.
Since I worked at Fazoli’s years ago, things might have changed since then. Even though the food was usually pretty old and gross, I still miss those dang breadsticks. Good times.”
“I Vowed To Never Eat There Again”
“My friend, a former manager of a ‘McBurger’ franchise, told me this.
The owners of the franchise would not let them throw away meat. There were boxes of meat past their expiration date being served at the restaurant regularly. Some of the burgers were SO old, they started to turn green. Plus, the chicken never showed any signs of aging, despite how old it was. Disgusting.
This same friend is now part of a Church’s Chicken franchise. After my friend threw away a couple of spoiled and smelly boxes of chicken, the owner was livid.
The owner yelled, ‘Go get those boxes out of the trash! At least let me inspect the food to see if we can use it!’
The owner didn’t believe the food was spoiled and still wanted to use it. The boxes had been sitting in the dumpster in 95-degree heat for hours. My friend refused to get the boxes out of the dumpster.
The same franchise was quite old, and the freezers had trouble during sustained hot days. We lived in a place that approached 100-degree heat almost every day during the summer. My friend told me how the coolers never reached a food-safe temperature any time it was super hot, and how condensation dripped down into the kitchen all day.
Needless to say, I vowed to never eat there again. However, I had another friend who worked at Five Guys and said it was very clean. Both my friends took great pride in the quality of their work and took food safety seriously. Some restaurants are just plain nasty.”
“I Was Disgusted”
“It has been about 3 years since I’ve worked in food service. However, the Short Stop I worked at convinced me to never eat at a Short Stop again.
The oil in the fryers was supposed to be changed twice each week. Before the oil was changed, employees needed to scrub the inside of the fryer before the new oil went in. I think I saw someone clean the fryer once before adding new oil.
Most of the employees dropped food often. If the food was dropped out of the customer’s line of sight, the official response was, ‘Put it in the bag.’
Our ‘cleaning,’ regimen included spraying bleach water on surfaces and then wiping them down. There was a health and safety poster in the kitchen, but it was covered in black mold because nobody ever moved it while cleaning the walls.
Similarly, the cleaning procedure for the ice cream machine was to run hot bleach water through it one time each week. The one time I saw someone clean it, large chunks of green mold plopped out of the nozzle. I was disgusted because I ate an ice cream cone at the beginning of my shift.
To blend the shakes, we had small plastic shields to stop the blender from destroying the styrofoam cup. In theory, these shields were cleaned every night with everything else. Somehow, they were always moldy as if they’d never been cleaned, though.
Worst of all, our regional manager was notorious for bribing the health inspectors. Of course, I found any real evidence of this, except for the fact the restaurant is somehow still open.”
“I Would Avoid It Like The Plague”
“I was a former Taco Bell employee.
For starters, I would avoid the nacho cheese like the plague. I mean really, it was disgusting. It came unrefrigerated in giant bags. Employees put the bags into a hot water bath until we used all of the cheese. Eating the cheese didn’t seem worth it to me.
The beef was gross, but since it was a staple product in almost every food item, it was usually never old. I thought the steak resembled cat food. However, the chicken, especially when fresh, tasted better than everything else.
The beans were just dehydrated and rehydrated. We usually just made them in big batches, so customers would either get fresh beans or beans that were old and crusty. The fiesta salsa was assembled fresh and fresco style, so I thought it made the sub-par food taste better.
I thought the caramel apple empanadas were so tasty, I would ‘accidentally,’ split one open in the fryer so it couldn’t be sold. Also, the cinnamon twists were just spiral pasta deep-fried and dusted with cinnamon sugar.
After working at Taco Bell, I REALLY didn’t get the hype around the food. I can’t say I’ve eaten there much since.”