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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.

#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.

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Alex
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4 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Best gas station coffee in America! I always stop there on road trips

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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.

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Jeremy James
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4 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

They are supposed to be serviced regularly, but seldom are. At the last place I worked, I removed the front panel and it was choked with mold. Inside, there was a service log. It had been 3 years. By the time I finished cleaning and flushing it, my throat was sore. I've worked in many places where people just don't know and don't care.

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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.

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Pickle (any pronouns)
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4 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I had no idea that you couldn't bring your own food into movie theatres. Maybe it's a regional issue, but my family and I have had no problem bringing food from home or other stores into theatres.

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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 $$$.

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Jeremy James
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4 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

My crew used to live on the mark-out (expired) sandwiches. Because they didn't pay us enough to afford groceries.

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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.

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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.

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Sharkie
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4 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I worked at McDonald's in 2006. We were open 24/7, very busy place and at that time they did try to clean everything. Well... I know they cleaned the french fry machine and changed the oil, which was quite uncommon in other restaurants. But I don't remember cleaning the milkshake machine, coffee machine and soda fountain ever. I don't think anybody knew how to do that and they were used almost non-stop. I think they got some maintenance only when they broke. I hope they made some changes since.

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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.

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JayWantsACat
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4 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

If you had any sort of serious allergy why would trust any third party with mitigating cross contamination of food? You seriously expect some 16 year old to adhere to strict food safety standards at some fast food joint?

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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.

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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.

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Brittania Kelli
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4 months ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I got in super trouble from my Oncologist when my friends took a 20 year old me to Chuck E to distract me from having started chemo. He was shouting, 'do you know what kids do in ball pits? The germs, the bacteria!' Never been in a ball pit since.

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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.

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ENSJ
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4 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Damn, where I work we have to throw out and get new batch of food when the temperature is not right. (Threshold is 73°C straight out of the oven and 63°C when it's been in the bain marie for a while, anything lower than that has to be tossed). Depending on the person working the ovens and their skill in estimating how much is needed, we have a lot of waste during the day;

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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.

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LokisLilButterknife
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4 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I honestly don’t understand Chipotle’s and Taco Bell’s appeal in the U.S., especially when you have so much amazing, authentic Mexican food.

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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.

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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.

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Eroe Infinito
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4 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Most people hate Little Caesars and call it "cardboard' pizza. But I personally love it. It's definitely in my top 5 for sure.

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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 !

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Panda
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4 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

How about washing then before cutting them? Don't people wash vegetables and fruits at home before eating them ?

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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.

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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.

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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!".

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Colleen Glim
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4 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

If we’re talking bbq sauce, it has a fairly long shelf life. The same bottle for three months, no worries. The same bottle for six months, might be an issue

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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.

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respulero
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4 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

It makes sense at a degree. But if "a triple pepperoni pizza has less pepperoni on it than a double" then the problem were you (or the manager) not understanding the rule and being terrible at maths

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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.

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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).

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Jeremy James
Community Member
4 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

This is what happens when you tie a manager's bonus to their operations budget. Or when you're run by a franchisee who doesn't care about anything but passive income.

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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.

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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.

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Eroe Infinito
Community Member
4 months ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I worked at Taco Bell a little over a year and I have nothing negative to say about it. I personally mopped the floors and cleaned all the containers everyday. I still eat there all the time. It 100% depends on the manager and the location.

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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.

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Jeremy James
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4 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Why wouldn't you put Fruity Pebbles (and raspberries and blackberries) on your frozen yogurt? That can't be too uncommon, right? It's the first thing I would think of.

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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.

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devotedtodreams
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4 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Seems to me that every time Taco Bell comes up, I interpret it as: "Don't eat at Taco Bell." (Luckily, we don't have those where I live.)

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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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Jason
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4 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

When I was homeless my friend worked at Krispy Kreme and would let me know when the donuts would be thrown out every night and I would sneak a bag to take. I ate so much donuts I wouldn't eat them for like 15 years

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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.

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LokisLilButterknife
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4 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

They also really hate LGBTQIA+ people- yes its’s true and there are numerous articles on it.

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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.

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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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Monster
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4 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Agree. Worked in a pizza shop, they don't even wash the mushrooms, they just get cut and straight on the pizza

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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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BarfyCat
Community Member
4 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

This is scary. I had a cat that died from inhaling bits of fiberglass when my husband accidentally put his foot through the drywall when he was up in the attic. It rained down fiberglass insulation and kitty immediately ran over to sniff it. RIP Bitsy.

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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.

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Sue Denham
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4 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Is this in certain countries perhaps? In NZ KFC burgers (the ones that I've had) are fresh, hot and tasty.

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#31

Having worked in a theatre, never order popcorn if you're going to the first showing of the day. The theatres will make popcorn the previous night, bag it, and put it into the popcorn machine the next day. The popcorn will usually be fresh by the later showings, but early morning it's going to be old and reheated.

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#32

30 Dishes People Shouldn’t Buy From Fast Food Places, According To The Employees Worked at a "fancy" sandwich spot in a really expensive area called Ike's Love & Sandwiches, our manager chose not to restock the premium pastrami that was twice as much and made us sell the normal one at the premium price. Also made us use extremely freezerburned s**t that had been lost to time in the back of the freezer, the vegan fried chicken was especially bad with this. Also some of our ingredients in general weren't much better than an average sandwich spot (big exception of our spiced mayo we mixed ourselves that honestly slapped). There were so many more issues I ended up walking out without notice after a particularly bad week from the manager (the breaking point was him playing favorites with tip payouts), basically avoid places that claim to be nice but don't seem to back it up.

Also even though I namedropped them I will rep the chain regardless by saying the location I trained in at first seemed much better than the one I was hired to, it seemed like it was a manager issue as well as a failure from corporate to properly evaluate individual locations.

Edit: Got a lot of comments asking about the mayo so here's a post from a disgruntled manager lol.

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#33

Pizza joint cook here. Mellow Mushroom (at least the one I worked at) has some of the best food safety standards in any restaurant I worked at. Fresh ingredients and overall good food safety routine. That being said, anything with the chicken you can probably pass on. It's not unsafe, but it comes in pre cooked and is just, kinda... weird. Not great texture and has a very processed taste for how fresh the rest of out ingredients are.

If you are set on chicken I suggest getting teriyaki or herb vinegarette chicken. It tastes great that way.

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#34

Ex GM at Chipotle. I eat literally anything but the barbacoa and carnitas are made off site and come in a bag. Depending on your local Chipotle this could be good or bad. Once had a snake in our lettuce. Guess it was fresh. However, I haven't been there since they added all the new fangled proteins. Quality has been inversely correlated to the number of stores.

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Robert Skinner
Community Member
4 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I can agree my particular Chipotle we take care of our customers and food and we don't serve c**p but we as employees Snicker and joke about the local Chipotles that are around us that are willfully understaffed and have to always borrow food from us because they can't use their food or can't place a truck correctly the food in general isn't bad and everybody is trained at the same way to know what to do but some of the training that they give us and the books make absolutely no sense and we use shortcuts that even if they're not written out we use the training manuals from California

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#35

30 Dishes People Shouldn’t Buy From Fast Food Places, According To The Employees Anything with strawberry caramel or chocolate (drizzle?) at Culver’s

I worked with a girl at a movie theater who was talking about how they used the same dispensers for their drizzles that we used for our butter.

At the end of every day we deconstructed the entire machine and cleaned it with a degreaser cause hot butter tends to get places. She said that she didn’t know you had to clean them because at Culver’s those machines were never cleaned and not even the manager was trained on how to do it.

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#36

Idk about other Panera's, but the one i worked at ALWAYS had unripe avocados. Unless it was the heat of summer, in which they were heat damaged because they don't let the ac be more than 20⁰ below the outside temp (it's been 90's around me for the last week!!).

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Jason
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4 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Actual avocados are good eating range for about 3 days. Many commercial produce items are picked early and ripemed en route. Sometimes later ripened with chemicals

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#37

I went to Church’s Chicken In NYC and when I asked for a cup of water with my meal (didn’t want to pay $3 for a small bottle) the cashier gave me this look like “*you do NOT want to drink our fountain water*” - so there’s that.

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R.A. Haley
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4 months ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Had a server in a better sit-down rrstaurant tell me their water had chemicals in it. That's a thing in the South, they do it to control algae, etc, but it did make me wonder what water they were using for the soda.

#38

Don't eat in any restaurant where all the ketchup bottles are always full.

They are just topping them off every shift, and the ketchup on the bottom had been there for a hundred years.

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René Sauer
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4 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

you must be a pretty loyal regular to notice if the ketchup bottles are always full...

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#39

Worked at Baskin-Robbins for a while. The hot fudge and caramel had mold growing on the outside, where the hot water sits. Never got cleaned by anyone but me.

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#40

McDonalds decaf coffee, we don’t change it regularly like all the other coffees and the lemonade.

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#41

Smoothie king- anything with bananas tbh. They use very overripe bananas, like straight liquid out of the peel sometimes, definitely saw some with maggots (I'd throw those out, but don't let the penny pinching franchise owner see ya do it)

They use overripe bananas because the sugar fermentation enhances the natural sweetness and flavor. But there would always be some that were WAY over.

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KimB
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4 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I guess it makes sense that overripe bananas would taste better. They definitely make a delicious banana bread!

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#42

As a former worker at a popular fast food chain, I would always tell my friends to avoid salads. Yes, it sounds contradictory because you would think it is the healthiest option, but in reality, salads are usually the least fresh on the menu. Vegetables are often prepared in large batches and can be stored for days before being served.

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Pittsburgh rare
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4 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

My rule of thumb is that cooked food is safer than raw when in doubt

#43

30 Dishes People Shouldn’t Buy From Fast Food Places, According To The Employees Tim Hortons— anything with whipped topping. It’s just this nasty oily stuff from a bag.

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#44

It's been a minute since I worked at one but never get the Domino's ExtravaganZZa - we used to just take the toppings that fell into the catchpans (we called it the pit) below the makeline and use that first; while it's clean it's usually pretty slimy because the catchpans aren't refrigerated like the food storage. One pit pie, comin up!

Edit: I worked at a franchise doing this in the late 90s - we would police the pit for bigger toppings to put back in their bins but we would most definitely scrape up the small "leavings" with the cheese and use that as an underlayer for those pies. We never had to scrape ice out of the pit - just the bins where toppings were stored up top. "Pit pies" were taught to me by the franchisee (who is one of the brand's largest now) when they were a regular fixture working in the store. Their stores would routinely pass inspection with flying colors and they were absolute sticklers about everything else (open drinks, mischief in the walk in, scrub everything at close) - I attribute the pit pies to food cost (something I learned they were harsh on when I was a key for them and did ordering).

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Mike F
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4 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Bad pizza, bad pizza! We used to joke that the grease was actually an added topping.

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#45

I haven’t worked there in awhile but don’t eat pastries from a Starbucks case when the weather is warm. If they have display pastries and pull yours from the fridge you’re good but don’t eat the ones in the case. Guarantee a fruit fly has been on it.

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#46

Not sure if it counts, but my partner worked at Sam's Club for less than a week. And in that time they came to the horrifying realization of how bad their sanitation practices are especially when it comes to the rotisserie chickens. People not washing hands, handling the chicken while sick, etc.

We have never purchased a rotisserie chicken since.

Also they left that job after a week because Sam's were using *floor cleaner* to clean their coats and aprons, which made my partner break out in a horrible rash.

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#47

Dairy Queen Oh dear lord-DO NOT EAT

THE “DAIRY” off-white stuff. My manager had a bucket under the place we drew the “ice cream” from the frozen mixer for any extra that fell off.

He would then take the bucket and pour it back into the mixer so often (once being too often) that the “dairy” turned yellow.

PLEASE, for your own safety, stay away from DQ.

Ever wonder why it’s not called Dairy Queen but DQ now? NO DAIRY involved.

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#48

Panera Bread. Their soups, and their mac and cheese- AVOID. It's frozen in sealed plastic bags and then placed in a vat of hot water to keep it warm. Talk about leaching PFAS and BPAs- if you're in California there's Prop 65 (reproductive health, cancer, birth defect warnings) posted about their food in the building. If you want to lower your sperm count, go for it.

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Freya the Wanderer
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4 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Panera Bread used to have good stuff. The last time I ate there, I asked for a yogurt parfait. I got a plastic cup with yogurt and berries, and granola on the side. I ain't going back.

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#49

Einstein. Anything that goes inside a bagel. The dishes aren’t washed good with leftover food on them (id try to wash them better when I was working). Just buy the tub of cream cheese they sell and toast your bagel at home or get them to toast it and put cream cheese yourself.
Also the coffee is very weak.

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#50

I worked at Wawa for 6 yrs.

Everyone raves it's the best, I am here to burst that pulsating bubble for yall-
Few things:

1. The freestyle/ self-serve fountain soda machines do not get cleaned ever. I cleaned them out o e night, and it was vile, to say the least. Slimy looked like a hairball, and the smell I about fkn puked. I never drank out of them again.

2. All food you order in the deli? Every other night is delivery. Every time I opened a package of Turkey/Ham etc. the smell of mass processing smells like farts from a rotting corpse. Toaster ovens don't get cleaned, so there's "FŁaVọŘ" added to anything you want toasted. Knives to cut the not so great sandwiches are dropped on the floor. They simply dunk those in sanitizer water and dry it off.
Those so-called "Paninis" aren't pressed at all. They literally come frozen with the grill lines on them.

Those sizzlis in the warmer by the register usually? Yeah, people open the boxes and touch the food. Then, put it right back. Always request it fresh if you must go.

I was fired after going through Cancer treatments because my body just couldn't do it anymore.

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sweetrottenpeaches
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4 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

"smells like farts from rotting corpse" it is not because of rotting meat. It is a preservation method and it uses that gas and yeah the smell is not the most inviting. Also it might smell offending but it is safe and good to eat. That smell evaporates in a minute or so. I know this because my father has a diploma in food engineering and worked for P&G and companies like that.

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#51

It's been a really long time since I worked there, but the Taco Bell green sauce was pretty disgusting and usually pretty old. Also, don't look too closely at the beef. It has tubes in it (who knows what parts ground up in there).

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Dainty72
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4 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

They're veins and are present and can be seen sometimes. You can see them the most in liver.

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#52

Costco samples. I used to work there. The dishes are hand washed and never clean. The people that hand out the food do not abide by health rules. Food is touched by dirty hands before it gets to the trays. You do not want to eat these samples.

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Jason
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4 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Weird. The one here I watch the people open the sample bags and put things out while wearing gloves.

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#53

Extra fruit topping or chocolate sauce in a DQ Blizzard. It's going to be runny and overpower the ice cream.

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#54

I used to work in the kitchen at a BSA Summer camp, and I learned something that might apply to other food establishments. If you see a food truck restocking the inventory, you may think that the food you're eating is completely fresh. Wrong, you're eating what stayed in the food lockers the longest, to make room for the new stock.

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Trisec Tebeakesse
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4 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I worked at a BSA camp, too. The food turns over so rapidly, that's not an issue. Ever hear of "First in, First out?" Presuming the cookstaff follows that rule, of course.

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