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“Makes Me Happy To Be A Vegetarian”: 63 Places That Failed Health Inspections In The Most Shocking Ways
Interview With Expert
Most of us rarely think about what goes on behind the scenes in the places we visit every day. Whether it's a restaurant, grocery store, apartment building, hotel, warehouse, or another public property, we generally assume everything is clean, safe, and up to standard. That's exactly why health inspectors exist—to spot the problems the rest of us would never notice. And sometimes, what they find is far more disturbing than anyone could imagine.
When people online started swapping health inspection horror stories, both health inspectors and others familiar with the job had plenty to say. From inspectors recounting the most shocking discoveries they've made to workers and bystanders sharing unforgettable encounters, the stories range from unbelievably unsanitary conditions to bizarre situations that left everyone involved speechless. Keep scrolling, Pandas... just maybe not while you're in the middle of a meal.
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#1
Not a health inspector, but we had a local Chinese restaurant get shut down for washing their dishes in the lake behind the restaurant.
RELATED:
#2
Had a Chinese were we lived that serves delicious all you can eat buffets. Health inspector turned up while we were there eating and closed the place down as they weren't using chicken it was seagull.
#3
Not a inspector but about a year and a half ago the local Chinese buffet restaurant was suddenly closed. All their food tasted the same, any ways there was a large notice on the front door and we drove by to see what it said. Basically Health dept. closed because of the numerous amount of feral cat cages(filled with feral cats) on the loading dock and in the cooking area. It reopened about a year later new owner and of course Chinese Buffett, right before the Covid thing got all restaurants shut down. I will never go to one again.
Health and safety officers are an important part of almost every workplace, even though many of us may not think about their role until something goes wrong. Their job is not just about checking boxes, enforcing rules, or pointing out mistakes—it is about making sure people can do their work safely and return home without unnecessary risks. These professionals are constantly looking for potential hazards, helping companies follow safety regulations, investigating incidents, and finding ways to prevent accidents before they happen. From making sure the right equipment is available to identifying unsafe practices, they play a behind-the-scenes role in protecting employees and creating a workplace where people feel supported.
Today, we were able to speak with a workplace safety inspector based in Germany who gave us a glimpse into what really happens during inspections. The inspector chose to remain anonymous but shared some honest insights about the situations they encounter, the safety mistakes people often make, and the misconceptions surrounding their job. We were curious to know what the most shocking thing they had ever discovered during an inspection was. While they explained that they had fortunately not come across too many extreme cases personally, one warehouse inspection was something they never forgot.
#4
Not a health inspector, but my sister works at a local chic fil a, and she always talks about how many mice are there. She tells me stories about how they FEED the mice French fries to keep them around because of how ‘cute’ they are. She says it so casually like it’s nothing, but that just makes me wonder why no one sees this as a problem.
#5
Not an inspector. But my friend's sister worked at a restaurant and he told me that they washed dishes with snow during the winter time to save money.
#6
I can tell you what they didn’t find. When I worked at Denny’s when the health inspector came the cooks took all the expired food out of the fridge and stored it in their cars and by the *dumpster* until after the health inspector left and then they put it all back. I ended up quitting that job after I got written up for refusing to change the dates on the labels of all the expired food, which was one of the primary jobs of the graveyard server.
The inspector shared, "I luckily didn't personally encounter many shocking or dangerous things during inspections, but one recent occurrence did leave an impression on me." They explained that they had visited a warehouse where storage units reached several meters high. The problem was that employees did not have the proper equipment or a ladder tall enough to safely reach items stored on the upper levels. Instead of finding a safer solution, workers had simply started climbing the storage units themselves.
What shocked the inspector was not only the dangerous behavior but how normal it had become. "The employees would regularly fall down from several meters up, and they just accepted it as their everyday routine," they explained. The situation was so concerning that even the warehouse manager admitted he had once fallen with such force that he broke through a side wall. Thankfully, nobody had suffered a serious injury at that point, but the inspector was surprised that a major accident had not already happened.
#7
I worked at a Chik Fil A where there was a hole in the wall right behind the breading table infested with roaches. The owner once made me pick the roaches out of chicken breasts they had gotten into. He got mad when he saw that I was wasting my time washing the chicken off, but I couldn't serve the chicken without at least doing that. That owner no longer owns the store, not sure why, hopefully the franchise found out about his behavior and fired him.
#8
Not an inspector, but went to food safety training. The inspector-insructor told us about going to inspect a Chi-Chi's. Their sewer had backed up into the kitchen. Instead of closing the restaurant, the manager made the kitchen staff tie garbage bags on their legs and keep working. Oops. The inspector shut it down immediately, of course. They got a HUGE fine. I don't remember if there were any other repercussions.
#9
Bit late to the party. I’m also not a safety inspector! I was working for a rubbish clearance company and was put on a job to remove an old kitchen in a chicken shop, when removing the old units we found deceased rats, mice and pigeons. Yes pigeons.
Once we had removed the old units we then had clear the disgusting mess. This mess was deceased animals, faeces and fat from the cooking units. We had this all bagged up and asked the owner what he wanted doing with it, he said he has some other waste out the back and to put it with that. We complied. When we were putting the waste outside we noticed feathers in one of the bags. My boss being the nosey person he was, inspected the bags, we found the insides and feathers of hundreds of pigeons. We put 2 and 2 together and found out he was cooking pigeons and selling them as chicken. The worst part it, it was my bosses go-to takeaway place, that’s how we got the job in the first place.
"I was surprised that no one had been seriously hurt yet," the inspector said. After the inspection, the use of the upper levels of the storage units was officially prohibited until proper safety measures could be introduced. The incident was a reminder that sometimes dangerous habits become so common in a workplace that people stop seeing them as dangerous at all.
We also asked what safety mistake people often underestimate. According to the inspector, one of the biggest problems is not always a lack of knowledge—but overconfidence. "People with a lot of experience get overly confident and don't follow the basic rules anymore because they think they can do something dangerous carefully," they explained.
#10
I got a complaint that someone saw a mouse run through the kitchen and dining room so I was like whatever, sure. I’ll check it out. I get there and there is sewage backing up from the drains and starting to smell. Okay, pretty gross. I accidentally kicked the prep table and heard a pitter patter, look in the aluminum foil, roaches. Look in some of the food containers, roaches. Look in back room.. there is a wall/flat large object resting against the wall and I move it and the entire wall was covered in roaches. Shut them down pretty quick and had them call Orkin in front of me and make an appointment to get it resolved. This was about 2 years ago. So that was pretty interesting.
#11
Obligatory not a health inspector but I once worked at a popular mexican chain here in Aus. We were in a shopping center and the flies were CRAZY, we literally could not keep them out of the store. (Edit: it was a crazy summer heatwave all above 35 celcius)
Anyway one day I was chasing a blowfly around and I saw it land on the chicken on the line and expel a bunch of tiny live maggots right into the food we were serving
Obviously I threw it out but the thing that messed me up was that nobody else in the store had ever seen that happen, and I'd only been there a couple of months.
People definitely ate maggots before and probably after I worked there.
#12
Did a brief stint as a public health inspector in 2007. Not a pleasant job, didn’t stick it out for long.
Couple highlights:
- Washing russets in the dish machine before baking. A low-temp chlorine system, no less.
- An inch think layer of dull pink scum found at the bottom of an ancient ice machine.
- Storage of frozen foods outdoors on a rooftop during the winter. No shelter, covered in snow, ravens picking at various boxes of raw meat and seafood.
- A dish pit with a foot deep sinkhole just in front of the machine, covered with a pair of 2x6 planks to allow access.
- A line cook working the salad station with no pants.
- Quat sanitizer bottles filled with oven degreaser.
- A line cook breaking a plate on the flattop grill and attempting to continue cooking without proper cleaning.
The inspector added that some of the most serious workplace accidents happen to experienced workers who have spent years doing the same job. "We see some of the worst accidents, including serious injuries and even deaths, with people who have been doing the job for 20 or 30 years and have done the same thing countless times before," they said. Familiarity can sometimes create a false sense of security, causing people to underestimate risks they have become used to.
#13
Not a health inspector, but watched a line cook leave a bathroom stall with her gloves on, not wash, then go back into the kitchen. I REALLY hope she changed gloves. Not saying anything about it is one of my biggest regrets.
#14
I used to work in a pizza place. One day, I grabbed a ketchup bottle off of one of the tables to fill it up. I opened it and it was full of maggots. People had been using it.
#15
Local Chinese place was closed because the inspector found seagulls in the feezer. They claimed that they never served them to customers, but we're eating them themselves. Saw another comment below where someone said a Chinese place was closed for the same thing. Doubt it's the same place, my local place wasn't a buffet. The thought of this happening at numerous Chinese places makes me happy to be a vegetarian.
Another thing the inspector wanted people to understand was that safety officers are not the "bad guys" many imagine them to be. There is often a misconception that inspectors show up only to find problems, issue penalties, or get people in trouble. But according to the inspector, that could not be further from the truth. "We're not against the people we're inspecting, and we're not there to catch them doing something bad. We're there to tell people how to make sure they stay safe and don't hurt themselves," they explained. "We're not strict people with sunglasses as you see in movies. We have no motivation to punish you or give you a fine."
#16
Not a health inspector but the restaurant i currently work in (and am currently leaving due to all [of this]) has been reusing flour for dredging fish. They use it all day, at the end of the night they wrap it up and leave it at room temp in the back. The next time they need it, they just sift out any visible lumps of flour caused by the fish juices that clumped it up previously (our kitchen manager/chef lies about it when ive brought it up 3 times previously with him and the owner) also there's changing labels constantly to keep from throwing product out after 7 days. Also they just recently reheated soup that was made on the 20th (with chicken from the 18th in it) to use as the "soup of the day" on the 29th
#17
A family member pulled up to inspect a Chinese restaurant and saw them dragging a carcass through the back doors. He demanded to enter the kitchen and saw them chopping up a deer that an employee had hit with their car.
#18
Not a Health inspector but my mom was. She went into this house of three people mom, dad, child we believe and they had a bad cockroach investation I mean a really bad one!! They legit had them in the stove refrigerator and everything the worst part was is that they were quite weathly and said to my mom "sorry about the roaches we consider them family by now" and continued to NAME the ones that they got "attached" to.
The inspector emphasized that most safety visits are about working together. "You don't have to be scared when you meet an inspector. Most inspectors are there to help you and work with you," they said. They also encouraged workers (especially those in industries like construction) to speak up when something does not feel safe. "Your life is the most valuable thing you have, and you have rights that deserve to be respected," they added.
However, the inspector admitted that not every workplace reacts positively to inspections. Sometimes people panic because they worry about what an inspector might discover. "Of course, sometimes people insist on us leaving because they're scared of us seeing something and they want to clean up first," they shared.
#19
They had a wasp infestation in the walls. It was terrifying. They were trying to crawl trough the electrical sockets and you could hear buzzing coming from all around. It was one of the most terrifying days of my life in that building.
#20
Not a health inspector but I talked to one.
A beloved local Mexican restaurant was known for having incredible salsa, people would stop in and buy jars to take home because it was so good. It was discovered upon inspection that every time the vat holding the salsa started running low they just kind of... topped it off... for *months*. It had literally never been emptied, let alone cleaned. A perpetual soup made of raw vegetables and juices.
#21
Not a health inspector, but my dad was. He witnessed an employee of a grocery chain spray Lysol around and over the meat section in attempt to get rid of flies and the smell of rotting meat.
My dad went up to the employee and identified himself as a health inspector and the employee nearly passed out. Place was closed shortly after.
They explained that this happens more often in industries where safety risks are higher, such as construction. The inspector recalled one particularly serious example involving a fatal workplace accident. An employee had fallen several meters and sadly lost their life because a required safety barrier had not been installed. Instead of immediately reporting the incident, the company waited for hours while trying to put safety measures in place to make the situation appear different from what had actually happened.
The inspector explained that the evidence eventually made the truth clear. The condition of the scene and the body showed the accident had occurred much earlier than the company claimed. It was a tragic example of why honesty and proper safety procedures matter—not just for following rules, but for protecting human lives.
#22
One of my friends is a health inspector and we usually let her pick the restaurants when we go out. She's not allowed to tell us specifics until they're public, but the worst things she's ever seen included:
- a local cake business operating from someone's home (which is fine, if it passes inspection and obeys regulations) where the owner let her six cats do whatever they wanted in the kitchen (which is not so fine.) Apparently they were just walking all over the ingredients and sniffing the cake batter and [going] in a litterbox beside the oven.
- an Indian restaurant whose butter for naan bread etc (to brush on top before baking) was just in an old plastic tub that had been sat out for six months and had mouse droppings in it.
#23
Actual inspector here. enter: newly permitted and built vietnamese seafood restaurant. i went in there and spent about 12 hours in there watching (and trying my hardest to correct) almost every violation known to man.
these guys were importing live fish from who knows where (customs was involved) and cooking it up like it’s no ones business. no coolers worked, no cooking was at the right temperature, everything was stored literally everywhere (food and live animals on floor, raw over ready to eat, etc). dish machine? sanitizing? what’s all that? the guy was tasting some soup and quite literally spitting it back into the pot. no one had on hairnets or gloves or shoes for that matter.
safe to say they got like a 20/100 the first time i was in there, we did 7 subsequent followups and their highest grade ended up being like a 40 something. they got their permit revoked (and we had to take them to court because they kept wanting to operate… and subsequently got some people sick).
#24
Not a health inspector but I used to work at a sandwich shop next to a Chinese restaurant. During their annual inspection, a cockroach fell onto the clipboard the inspector was writing on.
Ultimately, workplace inspections are not about creating fear or catching people doing something wrong. They are about identifying risks before they turn into serious accidents and reminding everyone that safety should never be treated as an afterthought. Behind many safety rules is a lesson learned from past mistakes, and sometimes a simple inspection can prevent a situation from becoming a tragedy.
#25
Was NOT doing a health inspection, but I was on a road trip and stopped at a Taco Bell.
One of the workers was wearing a glove on one hand. IT WAS FULL OF BLOOD. And he was still working. To his credit, it didn't look like he was getting blood everywhere, but there's only so much a glove can do.
I honestly felt bad for them. They were understaffed and couldn't really spare a worker, but this dude needed to get his hand checked out by a medical professional so I told the manager that I was going to call someone to come out RIGHT NOW if they didn't let him clock out and deal with his hand. And then I left because I did not want to eat there anymore.
#26
Not a health inspector, but its a well known fact here that a local buffet is super nasty. They've consistently been named #1 biggest health code violator for several years running. Someone actually said a roach crawled on their table while they were eating and a waitress said not to worry because the bugs would be deceased soon.
#27
Not a health inspector, but an Asian restaurant in my city closed down because they bred guinea pigs in the back chamber and sold the meat as turkey and chicken.
And today's posts are a perfect reminder of why these checks matter. While safety inspections cover many different workplaces, the discoveries people shared show just how important it is to have proper standards in place. Some of the situations found in restaurants, stores, and other establishments were enough to make anyone think twice before walking through the doors. Which one of these discoveries shocked you the most, Pandas?
#28
Sooooo many. Been doing this job 18 years now.
1. Woman hoarding feces of her two dogs and 3 cats.
2. Kimchee being made in a toilet.
3. Children living in homes that aren't fit for a cockroach.
4. Lead poisoned children with serious learning disabilities.
5. A homeless camp where they filled about 40 gallon water bottles with pee and maybe a dozen 5 gallon buckets of feces. They didn't want to make a mess but had no idea how to dispose of this.
6. Roaches crawling over the chicken in the hot holding unit at a national fried chicken restaurant.
7. Chicken soup in a pot big enough for you to fit in, left to "cool" on the floor of the kitchen for 3 days. Garnished with flies of course.
8. Guy working at movie theater scooping popcorn with weeping bleeding fresh tattoo.
9. Idiots not wearing a mask!!!!
10. Stupid people going to work when they are sick but 'its probably just allergies."
I could do this all day.
#29
Not a health inspector Buuuuuuttt, I worked at a Chinese food joint during high school, the owner was sick on the night they ‘pick up’ their import of duck, so I’m asked to accompany her husband in her place. Naive 15 year old me says sure, that means overtime! I hop in his truck at like 1-2am, we head over to the local duck pond where there are colonies of 200-400 birds at any one time from people constantly feeding them and sheltering them. They swarm as they are prone to do if you do not feed him, I was instructed to sit in the drivers seat with the truck on and keep watch for people, if there are people/cars coming by, I’m to press the brake pedal a couple times and then start driving back towards the restaurant. The husband then sat on the tailgate of the truck and grabbed the geese by their necks and wrung them then tossed them in the back, after we had about 30-50 geese, he hopped down and starting to do the same with the ducks. I was mortified when we got back to the restaurant and I ran home and never showed up again. Just avoided that side of town, never went back to the pond. Totally ghosted them. They ended up getting shut down a few years later because the H.I finally came and found a bunch of roach babies and maggots in the steamed rice (which was made in a huuuuuge rice cooker you could fit a small person or child in.) that was left in the cooker until they needed to make more.
#30
I work in restaurants and asked our inspector the worst thing he has ever seen.
He was at a Mexican restaurant and the prep cooks were fast thawing chicken in the only mop sink. They were doing this in front of him with no remorse, they were shocked when he made them bleach it, and took off several points from their score.
You can't always trust scores imo, a restaurant could be spotless but also have terrible food safety standards and still get a decent score(95+) if they hide it well enough.
On the other hand a restaurant could have incredibly high safety standards, but if the stars align, and an inspector shows up immediately after the first of the staff arrives, and a cooler randomly went out in middle of the night, you're in trouble.
In general if a restaurant has a score of 95 or less year-round I won't eat there. It is incredibly easy to maintain a 98-100 score at all times.
#31
There was a Mexican restaurant that got shut down locally about 7-8 years ago. I checked their health inspection. They scored a 14/100.
I am friends with one of the inspectors, so I asked about it. He didn’t do the inspection, but it became a well known incident in his department. Lots of stuff out of temp, lots of things out of date, dishwasher not working, no hats/hairnets, no gloves, etc. He said they had a chip warming bin that was a large plastic container stuck inside a standing hot box. The plastic was melted into the box and the base was covered in mold, some kind of liquid, salt, broken chips, mouse droppings, and roach eggs. The inspector asked them to wash their hands and use gloves. They all went and dunked their hands into a shared bucket of standing room temperature water and dried them on their aprons before putting gloves on. Everything on the line temped over 50 degrees and the chef/manager dipped a chip in the salsa to taste, said it tasted fine, and then double dipped into the same container to prove that it wasn’t dangerous.
They got some citations and were given one follow up inspection a few days later. Their water heater was out on that visit, so the closed the restaurant with dozens more citations. It never reopened.
The joke with the health department was that “the restrooms were spotless.”.
#32
Actual inspector here- I was still a student when we got a complaint about a place, and the woman sent us a picture of her food which had a cockroach IN their piece of sushi.
Went to the restaurant, and at first, didn't see anything for the first hour, but I ended up finding some deceased ones under a dishwasher and then all of a sudden, I saw them EVERYWHERE. I looked up to see 3 of them swimming in a clear bin of flour. Saw a ton of them scuttle out from the table fridge when I opened in. Walked around their dining area and saw so many scuttling around the floor, with people actively eating there.
Sure enough, made them close, and went in the next day with pest control. Pest control guy said it was the worst case he's seen, and actually climbed up on their counters to get away from the sheer number that came out of the woodwork when he sprayed the place.
Created a plan with the owner and actually fixed them up really well. And then the placed burned down the next month. I still can't forget the smell and just coming eye to eye with a cockroach roaming around in flour.....
Oh ya and the one 24 hour restaurant that had walk in fridges full of mold and piled high with home depot gallon buckets of food. They said they went through one bucket an hour. I was there for nearly 5 hours that day and they didn't go through one.....we ended up having to.throw all of it out anyways since the state of that fridge was unacceptable and the smell.....
Needless to say I'm happy to be on a completely different team working with diseases rather that kitchens now...
#33
Former health inspector. I’d have to list a top few contenders:
A restaurant which had old damp floors (because it was in an old apartment type building), where roaches crawled out from between the floorboards with each step. They voluntarily closed and had to put in new floors. They were also hoarding in the restaurant, which had hid copious mouse droppings from the owner.
A Vietnamese restaurant with roaches that was draining noodles in colanders on the floor. They also did not refrigerate meat during service.
A filthy food truck trying to open for lunch with no electricity, planning to sell meat and sides that were left unrefrigerated from the previous night.
Honestly there were lots of singular disgusting moments that became an issue where someone did not understand time and temperature rules, even if other things were ok.
#34
Am an insurance inspector, went down to inspect the basement of a Chinese takeout, restaurant , which seemed oddly small, couldnt find the boiler or fuse box. Told this to the owner who removed a Sheetrock wall. The grease trap had overflowed and there were at least 2 inches of grease on the floor, they had put down some wood planks to walk on, I was gagging, truly one of the most disgusting sights I ever had the misfortune to see.
#35
I’ve heard some horror stories from [medicine] manufacturer audits, my favorite is this one:
A company in China kept a door open in their manufacturing facility for ventilation (A HUGE NO NO). When asked about it they pointed to a 6 inch wall along the bottom of the door (a tripping hazard too) that they stated did a great job keeping out snakes and mice. Of course that little 6 in barrier must have been added for a REASON after the fact and certainly doesn’t stop bats or birds or larger creatures. IN A [Medicine] MANUFACTURING ENVIRONMENT.
#36
Not a health inspector, but back in 2008, a Chinese restaurant here in Hamburg got shut down for butchering a deer inside the restaurant. (No one knew if it was roadkill or not.) You're not allowed to butcher animals on the premises.
#37
There was a teriyaki restaurant called Ichiban in my town that got shut down for not having soap in the employee restroom and for keeping room temperature chicken in a 5 gallon bucket next to the grill. This happened more than once, the health inspectors all called it, Icky bon Terri-yuki.
#38
Not a health inspector, but I saw a bartender shatter a glass in the dish washer and just start putting the other glasses away as if they were fine, right in front of all the customers. Thankfully I hadn't ordered yet. I walked away. Apparently the other people didn't mind, idk.
#39
Obligatory not an inspector.
Both of my parents used to work for the local hospital, and it was a poorly kept secret that you should not order anything from the hospital cafeteria that had whipped cream on top because it was often used to hide mouse tracks.
#40
Not a health inspector, but my local A&W supposedly was shut down once for having a deceased rat behind the deep frier. I'm a regular customer and I've been going there for years. Worth it.
#41
I’m not a health inspector but as a former restaurant worker, I feel like I can speak to this.
1. This was a fried chicken restaurant and sometimes the chicken would get so old it would get green spots on it and smell so bad that you had to gag. Like it was a visceral reaction to gag, it wasn’t a choice. We were told to fry this chicken anyways as the frying would destroy any germs
2. Sanitizer wasn’t used. Workers had buckets of warm water and rags that they would use to wipe up raw chicken blood/juice and would use this to wipe down all other areas, including the prep areas for the cooked food.
3. Uncooked Breaded chicken only had a certain shelf life per company policy, so to bypass this, the owner would rinse of the chicken and re bread it the next day
Those were the two most egregious I can remember. I hope the people who own that place rot in hell.
#42
I worked at a "five star" resort buffet in a pristine national park on an Australian coastline for two years. We had nice looking glass bottles for the milk and juices. They got topped up during and after every service.
After my first few weeks I asked when I should be labelling them or emptying them completely so the bottles could be washed. Manager said the buffet goes through so much milk and juice that it's always used up in time. I said "but we are constantly topping them up, they are never emptied... So we never know how old the liquid is?" She brushed it off. No other manager above or below her seemed to notice or care. The whipped cream was the same (refillable metal bottles) and when I left dated labels on it, I would return on the next shift to see the labels removed.
Every now and then customers would complain that the milk/juice/cream was off and I had to act surprised...
On the flip side, I worked at a KFC that was immaculate.
#43
Not a health inspector, although I do very well on my food safety tests, but the last place I worked in, my chef smoked in the kitchen all the time. Bothered me so much.
#44
A now closed restaurant I used to work at had a closet that the manager would guard anytime a health inspector came. One look in there and that place would have been closed much sooner. It was also infested with roaches. So many roaches.
#45
I am a health inspector. I don't have a story to share (and I guess other inspectors don't either, hence, "I'm not an inspector) because what I see on a daily basis seems par for the course and doesn't gross me out any more. I am use to it. I can see it and write them up but I don't see it as "story" worthy. I take care of it and move on.
By the way, common sense is not common. People say "hand washing is common sense". People don't wash their hands in front of me while I am inspecting. They are so use to not washing their hands that even when they are being inspected they don't do it even to make things look good.
Probably not the grossest but I have seen goopy build up hanging out of soda machine nozzles. Probably hadn't been washed in weeks or months.
#46
Not a health inspector, but I just bought a restaurant and we are remodeling planned on being closed for 30 days to do some updates and open.
We took over and all of us were almost sick looking at the kitchen. Roaches everywhere, old food in the stoves and ranges. Grease caked on the equipment so thick and over so many years we power washed the equipment and had to use palm Sanders to try to get rid of it. After spending lots of money and time we had to get rid of everything in the kitchen and start over. They were serving food out of that kitchen two weeks prior and we could not use the same equipment after intense cleaning. This is all aside from the fact that they had steam warmers that had been under able to drain ad they had maggots in the water.
So we are still in the process of cleaning everything and getting new equipment.. but wow I feel bad for anyone who ate there.
#47
Not a health inspector but I once worked in a movie theater that served food. One day after rinsing some dishes and passing them through the washing machine I noticed a bunch of cheese still stuck to the bowl. I tried running it through the machine but I was told not to because it would be a waste of water/soap/time and that they would be putting more cheese on top so the customers would never know.
#48
Obligatory not a health inspector, but when I worked at a chain cafe we had a horrible cricket problem, especially during the wet season. That said, we also put our empty squirt bottles (used for sauces) on the bottom shelf in a tub to dry out, often without the lid on for proper drying. One day, my coworker was topping a sandwich with chipotle mayo and couldn't get any out, so she squeezed harder. Out popped a soggy chipotle flavoured cricket. Yum.
Also worth mentioning is the rotting mango goo that properly encased the entire metal storage unit we used for scooping fruit for smoothies. I can't eat mango flavored anything anymore.
#49
Never get ice from fast food restaurants. The bins are never cleaned and end up disgusting.
#50
Not a health inspector but I worked at a fast food restaurant that got an A score even though they found black mold on the soda dispenser.
#51
My father and brother were both gas fitters who worked in restaurant kitchens regularly, they said if you saw half the stuff they saw in some of these kitchens you would never trust dining out again. Grease 3 inches thick on walls, rats, mold you name it they have seen it.
Just look at Gordon Ramseys kitchen nightmares tv show, he shows how bad these restaurants can be, they should be shut down.
#52
Not a health inspector, and this wasn’t a place that I in particular, worked at. I work for a fast food chain that predominantly sells chicken, one that happens to be very popular. The store that I work at is almost immaculate, we have very high standards and take pride in our work place. Compared to other stores of the same franchise that I have witnessed, ours is extremely clean and we tend to deliver good quality food.
That being said, we have a number of stores owned by the same guy, and we are often in contact with these stores that are typically only a short while away. Managers from these stores will interchange periodically, and we are in constant access to knowledge about the going-ons of these other stores.
One of these stores had an inspection, not a food safety inspection, but rather an audit on the store as a whole to determine if the store was functioning at the set standard. To keep things brief, we were informed that this store had been selling OUT OF DATE chicken. For a franchise as popular as we are, this was extremely bad, and nothing like this had been seen from any stores in our area in years.
I came to learn that it was accidental, every single manager had somehow overlooked the expiration date of the chicken and not discarded it accordingly. Of course, this is still a major blunder so they were not in good books for a long while after. No, they were not shut down, although they would have been if the council had been the ones to discover it. Perhaps not overly disgusting, but I can’t imagine people would be thrilled to learn they had eaten expired chicken.
#53
Not a health inspector but there's a thai restaurant across the parking lot from our office that grossed me out:
It's one of the only places I can know of that isn't a food truck that has a 'C' health inspection rating thing. It's been closed down for health violations what seems like half a dozen times in the last 5 years. No one in our office has eaten there for 4 years cause we're all too creeped out by the place.
The very last time I was there I ordered pad thai and as I was paying for the order, I watched a dude behind the cashier reach under the sink and pull out a bucket. It's like a 5 gallon, white, industrial supply bucket like you'd find at a home improvement store. There's no lid on this thing, so my first thought is that the bucket was there because the sink might have been leaking. No, he goes in there with some tongs and just starts scooping up some noodles. When he's done, he just pushes the bucket back under the sink. Before this I had always thought the noodles tasted a little stale and chewy... Keep in mind this is in Vegas where it's like 100+ degrees out in the summer and this is a small restaurant that keeps their doors open to foot traffic...
They literally just changed their name and reopened a few weeks ago. Same dudes running the place as far as I can tell.
TL;DR: Thai restaurant precooks all their noodles for the day and keeps them in an open, plastic bucket under the sink.
#54
Worked in one I could never figure out how they were allowed to operate. Food was never stored, cooked, or thawed properly. Fish and chicken were just left out overnight in the counter to thaw. Hot sauces were poured in 20L Cambros and put in the fridge, no stirring or cooling or anything. No lids in the fridge, the shelves were coated in slime, except for the one shelf front-of-house was allowed to use when our two sauce and drink fridges died and I cleaned off our solitary shelf.
Owner thought pouring bleach everywhere cleaned things. The floor was grey-black and slimy. The leaking pipes behind the 50 year old dishwasher (with a broken heating element) made the wall soggy when you pushed on it.
When we found mold growing on food, the chefs just picked it off and handed it back. Cleaning the whole kitchen was the job of the solitary, untrained dishwasher. Chefs had a nap setup in the dry goods closet on top of the flour.
#55
My wife worked at a commercial kitchen repair company. The technicians took apart a steam table at a buffet and found mummified mouse corpses.
#56
We have an Indian place down the street that fails so bad every time they just keep changing the name and owners once a year. Real bad stuff is on the health inspection every time, too. None of the fridges kept to temp. Unlabeled, uncovered, undated, raw chicken kept on top of the fresh fruit. Roaches and mouse droippings on stacked plates, dry stock, shelving, cabinets. One time, one of the comments was that they didn't have any cleaning rags or sanitizer on site.
#57
I once serviced kitchen equipment. Three places stick in my mind.
1. The Chinese food place thawing chicken on the tile floor. Guy was just hosing it down and the melted stuff was going down a rusty drain.
2. The pizza place with the worst roast infestation I had ever seen. Every electrical device was covered in roach droppings. Every sticky trap was no longer sticky because it was old and basically littered with corpses of insects.
3. The Indian place where everything was covered in grease.
#58
3rd party inspector here. Generally the really bad restaurants know they’re in bad shape, know why it’s important, and just don’t care (or are corporate owned and have no agency at the store level except to tattle on themselves to the health departments, which I see a lot).
One of the things that sticks with me the most is when I inspected a chicken restaurant that was reusing the buckets from the concentrated dish soap to store raw chicken. They didn’t understand why it was an issue because 1, they were keeping the raw chicken at the proper temp (per them, it was actually 48°) & date labeling the buckets…2, they kept the buckets covered and off the floor of the (filthy) walk-in…3, they washed their still-gloved hands between unhooking the bucket/quickly rinsing it and handling the chicken and 4, if the soap is safe for dishes why isn’t it safe for the chicken? The location had a ton of other violations but they were all pretty “standard”. I will just never get over why they honestly thought reusing a concentrated chemical bucket was ok.
Also, they had tons of large clean Cambro’s in good condition they could have used instead.
#59
I used to work for a company that fixes kitchen equipment as a field service tech some time ago.
There were a bunch of disgusting restaurants that I had to service but the absolute worst was a Golden Corral with absolutely zero safety measures in place.
The floor was so greasy that you could slide from one end of the kitchen to the other, half of their fridges were broken, and cooked food was stored in the open on mobile metal tables.
But the worst was seeing a large stainless table next to the dishwasher with a large hole cut out in it where a trash can would normally be stored underneath. The problem was that somebody had taken the trash can out and left it by the dumpster, so the servers were still dumping food onto the floor and stacking dishes.
There was literally a pile of soggy food underneath leaking all over the floor and it was right in the main path that people took in and out of the kitchen, so they were tracking food and grease and god knows what all over the restaurant.
#60
Not an inspector, but I went to this little hole in the wall in Chinatown, San Francisco. The table was off to the side and from where I was sitting I had a clear view of the swinging doors that lead into the kitchen. I watched a waiter carrying a full tray of food sneeze directly into the tray, shrug, and then carry the food out to the table.
#61
I worked for a restaurant that I'm pretty sure was bribing the health inspectors.
There was an obvious slug infestation.
#62
My favorite story is when the cafe I worked at passed the health inspection with flying colors EXCEPT for the employee soda machine. And it was bad.
I guess the employees slacked off and never cleaned it because it was for us and not customers.
#63
Not inspector, but did restaurant consultation. I got sent to this restaurant and it just smelled funny. I pulled back the fridge, and there was literally piles of moldy food behind the fridge. I lifted up the cold line trays, and I could tell that no one had cleaned it in months. I forgot to mention that when I opened the ice machine, there was a THICK layer of mold. It was so thick that my brain stopped working when I looked at it; it activated my fight or flight.
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