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Many of us like to go for a cheeky meal at a fast food restaurant every now and then. It’s quick. It’s cheap—or it used to be anyway. Few of us probably have any illusions about the nutrition we’re (not) getting. But it’s not unfair to demand a certain level of quality on the plate and in the kitchen.

Recently, internet user u/n0tter sparked an interesting discussion on r/AskReddit. In the viral thread, real-life fast food workers spilled the beans about which menu items everyone should avoid ordering. Scroll down to read about their experiences and opinions. Just… make sure you’re not snacking while you read.

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#1

30 Dishes People Shouldn’t Buy From Fast Food Places, According To The Employees Worked CircleK for 3 years - coffee is surprisingly good and machines were well maintained, but the cappuccino/iced coffee machine was disgusting and impossible to clean despite best efforts (lots of tiny parts where powdered drink mix could sit and rot). My location was next to a university and we had a regular who was an engineering professor, once he came in and watched while I was trying to clean the cappuccino machine, and said he should use it in class as an example of poor design.

pugteeth , Jessie Pearl/Flickr (not the actual photo) Report

Final score:
59points
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#2

30 Dishes People Shouldn’t Buy From Fast Food Places, According To The Employees The ice machine. They don’t get cleaned as often as you’d hope.

ddrive1234567 , Nor-Cal Refrigeration & H.V.A.C/Youtube (not the actual photo) Report

Final score:
46points
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#3

30 Dishes People Shouldn’t Buy From Fast Food Places, According To The Employees Kids packs at movie theaters are a waste of money and the employee will hate you for making them put it together. Just get a regular popcorn, candy, and soda for your kids to share.

My second tip is: sneak food into movie theaters and don’t buy anything.

redheadedjapanese , Derral Chen/Flickr (not the actual photo) Report

Final score:
41points
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No matter what business in the food industry you own—whether a food truck, fast food joint, a family-friendly chain, or an upscale restaurant—the same basics apply. For starters, you want to make sure that your hygiene standards are high and consistently maintained.

The last thing you want is for your customers to fall ill because someone didn’t wash their hands, stored and labeled the ingredients improperly, or ignored other cleanliness protocols. It’s awful to do that to your customers, and it can ruin their health or even cost them their lives. It’s incredibly bad for business and reputation. And it might cost someone their job, too. Your customers deserve better than to eat bad food at a high price.
#4

30 Dishes People Shouldn’t Buy From Fast Food Places, According To The Employees Any “sandwich” from Starbucks. No, we don’t make anything in house. It’s shipped out to us frozen and we just reheat it in the oven for you $$$.

supreme_wavedash , Shoshanah/Flickr (not the actual photo) Report

Final score:
38points
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#5

30 Dishes People Shouldn’t Buy From Fast Food Places, According To The Employees My brother worked at Subway in the early 00s. He told me to never eat the tuna and to not ask him why. I'd never had one to that point, and still have not.

Colonel_Moopington , Mike Mozart/Flickr (not the actual photo) Report

Final score:
38points
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#6

30 Dishes People Shouldn’t Buy From Fast Food Places, According To The Employees If you go to a McDonald's that has a shake machine that is always working, don't get a shake there. If you go to one that is always "broken," it's perfectly safe to get a shake there. The reason the machine is down so often is because it has a really long cleaning cycle that needs to be done frequently.

Belteshazzar98 , slgckgc/Flickr (not the actual photo) Report

Final score:
37points
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Pathogens—from bacteria and viruses to fungi—can make us sick. They thrive on some food items more than others. For example, they quickly multiply in raw chicken, seafood, raw eggs, unpasteurized milk, and raw flour, among others. These need to be stored and labeled properly and precisely -- otherwise, you’re risking someone’s health. On the other hand, when working with ingredients like crackers, lemons, or pickles, you have far more flexibility because they spoil slower.

Proper restaurants have their own checklists when it comes to keeping the kitchen and front-of-house clean. It’s really important to follow those protocols to the letter because they set out what needs to be cleaned daily, weekly, and monthly. For instance, you should aim to clean the sinks, food preparation areas, storage areas, and walk-in fridges and mop the floors every day. On top of that, your daily tasks will probably include taking out the trash and cleaning the appliances.

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#7

30 Dishes People Shouldn’t Buy From Fast Food Places, According To The Employees If you have peanut allergies, don't get drinks from Sonic. They do not care about cross contamination AT ALL.

LunaMothThinking , Bob B. Brown/Flickr (not the actual photo) Report

Final score:
36points
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#8

30 Dishes People Shouldn’t Buy From Fast Food Places, According To The Employees I worked at Jimmy John’s for almost 7 years and they are obsessive about keeping things clean, to the point they go through a 8ish page packet of cleaning lists each day and all food items are super fresh and labeled to be used within 24-72 hours. The only thing I would not eat from there is the bacon because it comes cold and it’s just kind of unpleasant lol.

garbashians , Pat (Cletch) Williams/Flickr (not the actual photo) Report

Final score:
32points
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#9

30 Dishes People Shouldn’t Buy From Fast Food Places, According To The Employees I worked at Chuck E Cheese years ago and while the pizza was good & safe (its pretty tough to screw up pizza) but the salad bar would be a pass.

Adults and kids would just toss the tongs and spoons all over the salad bar, letting the handles fall into the food, getting all the different vegetables and dressings mixed together. All this at one of the grossest places on earth where they are putting their hands all over video games, the ball pit, pizza, and around again.

At the end of the night then we would flip all of the salad bar vegetables over into fresh containers and top them off for the next day. They did get thrown out every few days. If employees ever made ourselves a salad we would make it from the ingredients in the fridge that were not yet out on the Bacteria Bar.

Inevitable_Tone3021 , Mike Mozart/Flickr (not the actual photo) Report

Final score:
30points
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Thoroughly cleaning the entire restaurant might consume a lot of time, but without these standards, there won’t be any customers, no business, and no jobs. That being said, managers really need to make sure that their employees are motivated to keep the place clean. They ought to find ways to incentivize them and show that their actions really do matter.

Have you ever worked at a fast food chain before, dear Pandas? If so, what was your experience like? What menu items did you think it was best to avoid? On the flip side, what food items did you genuinely think were pretty good? Tell us all about it in the comments.
#10

30 Dishes People Shouldn’t Buy From Fast Food Places, According To The Employees Anything from Tim Hortons. Workers get in trouble for throwing out expired product. Workers are encouraged to lie when doing temperature checks. Workers are advised to do a 'sniff test' on expired product. Workers are discouraged from investigating where mould is coming from and told to just clean up the visual.

ETA: I realize this is not the case everywhere, and I'm glad. For me however, this was the case at several locations, throughout 2 different cities.

hipsterscallop , Calgary Reviews/Flickr (not the actual photo) Report

Final score:
26points
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#11

30 Dishes People Shouldn’t Buy From Fast Food Places, According To The Employees I worked at chipotle in 2019. At that time, everything was fresh and I always trusted it (right after opening, the meat is usually left over from the night before but it was still good and I personally didn’t think that was a bad policy as it reduced food waste). We would clean the restaurant top to bottom corner to corner every single night.

Post Covid, I wouldn’t eat anything from there. Nothing is ever clean anymore and I know from others who still work there that their standards have significantly declined. Absolutely disgusting for increased prices, decreased quality, and smaller portions.

grandma-core , Mike Mozart/Flickr (not the actual photo) Report

Final score:
25points
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#12

30 Dishes People Shouldn’t Buy From Fast Food Places, According To The Employees I don't work in fast food but I have a buddy who fixes and services fountain soda machines. Never ever drink fountain soda. The hoses that the syrup runs through are never cleaned and rarely changed. He says they are stained and/or have mold. My buddy says the insides of fountain soda machines are usually disgusting.

EffectiveDue7518 , Mike Mozart/Flickr (not the actual photo) Report

Final score:
23points
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#13

30 Dishes People Shouldn’t Buy From Fast Food Places, According To The Employees At little caesars, normal crust is made in store. Make our own dough and everything. But if you order a thin crust, you get a premade crust that may have been sitting in an open cardboard box for days to weeks.

stryst , kristy/Flickr (not the actual photo) Report

Final score:
21points
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#14

30 Dishes People Shouldn’t Buy From Fast Food Places, According To The Employees Stop ordering lemons in your water at s****y restaurants. I worked at one nice restaurant where this wasn’t the case… but I can’t recommend it at your average places.

The lemons that we cut come in large boxes with probably something like 100 lemons in it. Probably every other box had moldy lemons and entire corners of the boxes covered in mold. When cutting lemons we were told to just not use any ends with the molds directly on them.

There a good chance you’re putting lemons in your water that were in direct contact with mold or were partly covered in mold.
>! Of the places I worked, the biggest offender was BY FAR ihop !

PeterKB , Ana Ulin/Flickr (not the actual photo) Report

Final score:
21points
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#15

30 Dishes People Shouldn’t Buy From Fast Food Places, According To The Employees Sbux barista here, do not get any iced oleato drinks. It just doesn't work and olive oil in coffee was already a big stretch. The hot latte is actually not too bad and tastes a little bit like Cheerios but the oil almost instantly separates from the rest of the drink when it's iced, which is no bueno.

Starmilkman , Like_the_Grand_Canyon/Flickr (not the actual photo) Report

Final score:
20points
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#16

30 Dishes People Shouldn’t Buy From Fast Food Places, According To The Employees A buddy repaired commercial appliances, he had a special hatred of Jack in the Box for any grilled chicken option.

They microwave them to order and he said their cleaning standards are the most disgusting of and fast food chain. That wasn't based on one location either but dozens in the area.

Wloak , Roland Tanglao/Flickr (not the actual photo) Report

Final score:
20points
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#17

30 Dishes People Shouldn’t Buy From Fast Food Places, According To The Employees They don't have them anymore but when I worked at Arbys the Arby-Q was the one thing I would never eat. that sauce would sometimes be 2 months old I'm not kidding. Whenever I handed an order to a customer who ordered one I would say "here you go!" not "enjoy your food!".

too_many_shoes14 , Mike Mozar/Flickr (not the actual photo) Report

Final score:
18points
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#18

30 Dishes People Shouldn’t Buy From Fast Food Places, According To The Employees I used to work at a Papa John's, and it's not a health reason to avoid things, but generally: avoid going overboard on toppings.

There's a chart for how much of each topping gets used based on how many toppings are on the pizza, and it gets smaller as the number of toppings go up. Once you hit 3 toppings, you're basically paying $1 more to get half of each topping just to get the extra topping. IIRC a triple pepperoni pizza has less pepperoni on it than a double, for instance.

subnautus , The Pizza Review/Flickr (not the actual photo) Report

Final score:
18points
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#19

30 Dishes People Shouldn’t Buy From Fast Food Places, According To The Employees At dunkin, I’d say everything is fine except frozen drinks made with the old island oasis machine. My store now has a vitamix blender, but the old machine was never cleaned well enough.

survivorgreys , Bob B. Brown/Flickr (not the actual photo) Report

Final score:
17points
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#20

30 Dishes People Shouldn’t Buy From Fast Food Places, According To The Employees Worked at a Bojangles. I didn’t notice much issues with the ice, but I know in general that ice machines are an issue.

Chicken. For being a fried chicken place, the fresh fried chicken, I’d avoid that. The tenders, supremes, and Cajun filet are all fine, those are frozen and just fried. But the legs, wings, breasts, thighs, those come fresh raw, and get marinated. The issue is, sometimes the store orders too much. Maybe you plan for that Friday night football game that got rained out and now you didn’t have that influx of people. Or, you didn’t plan enough for Sunday, because it’s the summer and families are spending their time at the beach, but it rained and their plans got rained out and they all came to Bojangles for a tailgate special. So you ran out, panicked, over-ordered the next week and it’s sitting in the cooler.

I’ve seen green chicken. We’ve fried up green chicken. We’ve feared getting written up if we refused to serve it and if we did something that would cause it to get thrown out. The above issues, those happen. You order enough to prepare, but you can’t prepare for every issue. That’s why you’re allowed to waste food. Throw it away, it went bad. Heck, you might even be able to argue that it went bad from the vendor and you didn’t realize it until you opened the box. But instead everybody is afraid of losing their job, from the crew member to the manager, that it’s easier to just cook and serve it (and maybe serve it at a discount as a manager’s special).

Throwaway_inSC_79 , Evan Didier/Flickr (not the actual photo) Report

Final score:
16points
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#21

30 Dishes People Shouldn’t Buy From Fast Food Places, According To The Employees I worked at Steak 'n' Shake and Burger King 10 years ago. Everything was on the level over there.

My brother, however, around that same time, worked at Arby's and told me that other workers would regularly drop roast beef on the ground, pick it up, and still put it on the sandwich to serve.

Given that that's their signature item, I say just avoid the entire restaurant lol.

protomanEXE1995 , Mike Mozart/Flickr (not the actual photo) Report

Final score:
15points
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#22

30 Dishes People Shouldn’t Buy From Fast Food Places, According To The Employees Taco bell worker here, I would not go here if u are strictly vegetarian/vegan- there are plenty of non meat options but the cross contamination is everywhere.

teeth_wreath , Mike Mozart/Flickr (not the actual photo) Report

Final score:
15points
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#23

30 Dishes People Shouldn’t Buy From Fast Food Places, According To The Employees I used to work at a froyo shop. If you see a topping and think “I’ve never thought of that being a topping for froyo,” you probably aren’t alone. Things like fruity pebbles were just put back out every morning getting older and older because no one ate them.

Minaowl , Shannon Little/Flickr (not the actual photo) Report

Final score:
14points
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#24

30 Dishes People Shouldn’t Buy From Fast Food Places, According To The Employees Don’t get iced tea from Taco Bell. The inside of the canister at my Taco Bell would always have a thick, tissue-y brown film all around it. My Taco Bell was actually cleaner than your average Taco Bell, but it was really easy to get away with not cleaning that thing, or otherwise just forget to.

iMakeTacos , Mike Mozart/Flickr (not the actual photo) Report

Final score:
14points
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#25

Worked at Krispy Kreme for 2 years.

Just so you know, the doughnuts are absolutely fresh- brought in twice a day.

Don't order any of the Coffee Bean drinks, though- they never *ever* change the ice chest.

Edit: Doughnuts are most fresh at 6 am and 3 pm; least fresh at 2pm & 10pm.

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Final score:
13points
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#26

30 Dishes People Shouldn’t Buy From Fast Food Places, According To The Employees Chick fil a worker - I would honestly say the food is pretty safe, it’s all made back there minus the soups.

However the drinks on the other hand, it’s financially smarter to just go to the gas station and get yourself a fountain drink than pay $2 for a large coke that is half the size of a large at McDonald’s.

PocketGoblix , Jennifer Kramer/Flickr (not the actual photo) Report

Final score:
12points
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#27

30 Dishes People Shouldn’t Buy From Fast Food Places, According To The Employees Worked at a chain coffee shop with a type of Reindeer as its mascot.

Bakery items are designed to be dry in order to get you to buy coffee and the coolers are overly sugary.

However, the coffee is legit. If there is anything else on the drip menu besides regular Caribou Blend, get that one instead as it has less acid and is better roasted than most other coffee shops.

Also the mochas use regular Caribou Blend Coffee as the espresso. It’s not a trade secret, but the acidity is what blends the chocolate to create that unique mocha taste.

JMoc1 , Alpha/Flickr (not the actual photo) Report

Final score:
12points
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#28

Mushrooms on pizza. They often times would still have the "fertilizer" attached to them. Not everyone is willing to cut that off.

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Final score:
12points
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#29

I'm not a fast food worker, but between 2006-2012 I worked on site doing some IT and cable management and some tasks required me to get on top of the kitchen thingy you know, the styrofoam interlining (pardon my ESL) the thing is, while i was working there between the roof and the boards, on every site, most of the time a lot of microscopical very toxic fiberglass fibers were floating and raining on top of the salads, and nobody said nothing, very toxic, indeed, and never ever they paid attention to me even after I reported the issue to the managers, everytime I was dismissed, they said "oh, we cannot stop serving salads just because you're up there" so there you go, incredible. now go and check what does fiberglass ingestion does to your body, at least it wasn't breathing it haha.

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Final score:
11points
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#30

30 Dishes People Shouldn’t Buy From Fast Food Places, According To The Employees KFC

burgers are bad

only get buckets from KFC, nothing else.

rawrasaurgr , Chris Bloom/Flickr (not the actual photo) Report

Final score:
10points
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Note: this post originally had 54 images. It’s been shortened to the top 30 images based on user votes.

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