“Everyone Will Hate You”: 35 Restaurant Workers Reveal Dirty Secrets You Might Not Want To Know
Interview
Anyone with restaurant experience can attest how tiresome, fun, frustrating, entertaining, and intense it can get. That’s because while working there, they get to experience everything—the good, the bad, and the ugly.
That typically entails familiarizing oneself with all the ins and outs of the industry, including its darkest secrets. Redditor u/PocketGoblix has recently addressed the restaurant workers of the ‘Ask Reddit’ community asking about said secrets; they wanted to know what people who frequent such places should know. Scroll down to find the redditors’ answers on the list below and see what dirty secrets are hidden behind restaurant walls.
Bored Panda has reached out to the OP and they were kind enough to answer a few of our questions. You will find their thoughts in the text below.
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I'm guessing my comment will get lost in all of this, but here goes. Managed restaurants for over 25 years and my #1 piece of advice is to stop going to any restaurant that is always hiring. No one is more likely to give you food poisoning than understaffed, undertrained, overworked brand new employees.
Any kitchen I've worked in (been many years) you did NOT f**k with people's food. You didn't joke about it, you didn't threaten to do it, it was not amusing. Not like sending out a wrong temp steak or slow working a ticket if a table sucked, that kind of thing was fine, you can f**k with people. But you didn't adulter the food. No bodily fluids, no foreign substances, you send out clean food and you don't f**k with that.
That the staff hates when religious groups come in. Like a lot. Christians were always the WORST! Church group comes in and you know they're gonna be high maintenance and loud af, Karen WILL complain and you're lucky if they tip you. Always hated the Sunday crowd.
I worked a brunch place that was popular with the after church crowd and I can confirm. The waitress can't feed her kids with bible quotes and good intentions. She needs MONEY so she can buy FOOD.
In a recent interview, the OP told Bored Panda that they used to work in a restaurant themselves, which is why they became curious about the experiences of others in the food service industry.
They revealed that they were a part of it back in their teenage years and shared that, compared to the answers from fellow redditors, their former place of employment didn’t have very many dirty secrets.
If you order from pizza delivery places regularly, you will be treated different depending on how you treat the staff. A lot of systems have sections to leave notes on customers.
Personally, if I knew the person was cool I would hook them up with discounts, or as much cheese and peppers and napkins as I could stuff in their bags.
If they were jerks, it was always "Whoops, sorry buddy, just ran out!".
The cleanest food you can get grilled is waffle house. Everyone can see the grill. It's cleaned with a grill brick every day. Police come and eat there all day. If you want to bag on the House, go ahead, but I worked that grill, and I can tell you, it's clean.
The OP said they were very surprised about the amount of similar answers they saw in the thread. “Many of the comments repeated the same ‘secrets’, confirming the fact that it must be a very common thing; for example, not washing silverware properly.”
Unfortunately, said secrets are rarely ever positive and likely more common than customers would like them to be. A 2014 investigation of public health inspection reports from national chain restaurants in Canada has found that nearly one fourth of them reported at least one major violation.
Don't come in 10 minutes to close. Everyone will hate you.
Most restaurants are lawless, godless s**t shows staffed and run by alcoholics, addicts, and idiots. You'll never have more fun at work or meet more awesome people though. I miss it terribly.
Contrary to popular belief, in my city at least, food trucks are inspected much more frequently and thoroughly than brick and mortars. The health inspector tends to show up at every single event/festival and inspects all food service. For some trucks, this can mean multiple inspections PER WEEK.
So, in general in my city, food trucks are far more sanitary than most restaurants.
Presumably, the health inspector enjoys food-truck fare more than he/she does sit-down restaurant food.
Just a couple of years ago, in 2022, there were roughly 12.5 million people working in the food service industry in the US, marking a slight increase from the 11.2 million a year before, Statista reports. It is unclear how many of them bear witness to secrets that stay behind the closed doors of restaurants, but the members of the ‘Ask Reddit’ community who did didn’t seem to shy away from sharing their experiences with fellow food service workers.
There are exceptions but most people who own restaurants are horrible people. The business attracts the worst kind of people to work for because it's easy to take advantage of people who need money, are easily replaceable and often undocumented immigrants. Sexual harassment is very common with usually no consequences. If you work for a big company that has HR then maybe you can report your handsy manager but when it's a mom and pop type place and pop is the boss then you can either quit or deal with it. I have been lucky enough to work for a couple of really great bar owners but in my experience most of them are smarmy, greedy little shits with God complexes and bad breath that put their grubby little hands all over their staff if they can get away with it and try to squeeze as much labor out of people for the smallest amount of money and have zero appreciation for anyone.
Very true. Very sad, but unfortunately small time restaurantt owners get away with a lot of “hands on” tricks bc they know the wait staff will put up with it and still work for literal pennies! Been there, done thank.
Pasta is one of the highest-mark-up items on the menu (with soft drinks being #1 by a country mile). A plate of pasta that costs $15 to order probably cost $1 to make.
Actually the highest isn't even in a restaurant, it's in a movie theatre. You can get away with over 5000% markup on popcorn at a theatre. It's so cheap it's almost free.
The special is just some meat or fish that is a day away from going bad.
The amount of food that comes frozen, from a plastic bag and straight into the microwave is shocking.
When I worked at Pizza Hut in the '90s, ALL the deep dish/pan pizza dough was frozen. Oil the pan, put the frozen dough disk in the pan and put the pan in the proofer. Three hours later, dough ready to go.
They work sick. All the time. While handling your food. Especially while handling your food.
If they don't have paid sick leaves that's what ends up happening
Our ranch was just the Hidden Valley seasoning packets, following the recipe on the back. The only difference, our ‘secret’ ingredient if you will, was just using buttermilk instead of regular milk. People would come in regularly just to buy our ranch, still blows my mind.
I really don't understand the obsession with ranch dressing. How can you dip your toast in ranch and then eat it? 🤢🤮
The delicious brownies sold for 10$ a slice? Yeah, that's Duncan Hines.
If you wait tables, find something in common with your guest. Even if it’s a lie. I used to tell people I had family where the were from, tell people I used to live where they are from, tell them I graduated from their university. Really whatever it took to create a larger tip. People are more willing to give to someone they share things in common with. Never be overly nice either. People don’t like you to sound fake. So that’s my secret, oops.
A good portion of the entire restaurant industry, especially fine dining, relies on undocumented workers for menial labor like cooking/prep cooking, washing dishes, and cleaning. They intentionally hire these people to exploit them and pay them far less than the minimum legal rate.
The US economy would probably collapse without a massive army of undocumented workers who can be underpaid, exploited and terrorised into compliance.
You should not drink fountain drinks. If you knew what the hoses inside looked like and how rarely they were cleaned you’d never touch one again.
Where I worked, we knew most of the time when the health inspector was turning up. We also tried to delay letting them into the kitchen. Also, some health inspectors don't really give a s**t.
The rags used to wipe your table were used to wipe several dozen other tables before yours in addition to any other surfaces that needed wiping before you showed up. They are disgusting.
Unless you're licking the table you should be fine. Also, hardly a secret. Did they think they get a new rag for every table?
I once worked at an upscale, no children allowed on the property bed and breakfast ... and the staff was instructed to save everything. Someone didn't finish their milk? Pour it back into the container for the next meal. Only ate part of their steak? Cut off the rest, slice it thin, and now we have steak for breakfast. And it was everything served. Butter, vegetables, desserts ... just everything. So f*****g disgusting. But I was young and didn't know you could report them. Luckily, I was just a maid but I still feel bad that I didn't do anything to stop it.
Truffle oil is fake in most restaurants, do your own research on what it’s actually made with.
When I worked in a restaurant (Cajun/Creole bar and grill, the owner was from Baton Rouge) we kept it clean and followed code even if the inspector wasn’t coming, so nothing “dirty” really, but…
We cold-brewed our iced tea by filling huge Rubbermaid trash cans (they were dedicated for this, had never been used for their manufactured purpose) with cold water and throwing a few kitchen-sized tea bags in them before leaving them in the walk-in overnight. We filled them with a hose attached to the sink while they were in the walk-in otherwise they’d be too heavy to move. We’d fill the tea dispensers by drawing it from the trash cans with small buckets. We would go through two of those f*****s a day, and the little bit remaining at night would be emptied, and the cans would be cleaned with bleach water and hosed out thoroughly before being refilled again.
The staff is sleeping with each other.
esoteric_enigma:
As someone who managed restaurants for years I can confirm this. Half of my problems stemmed from drama that led back to someone on staff fucking or not fucking anymore. But to be fair it's not just food service. I have friends who worked in retail and basically everyone there is fucking too. If it's a mall, it's damn near an orgy.
Can confirm as well, though I'm kinda the dad who watches over all the children and talk to them about all of their relationship problems. I try to have the backs of the ladies who get hit on waaaay too much by cooks who have no boundaries or social cues. I tell them "I'm not your wingman. I'm the father of a teenage girl. I will cut your d**k off and throw it in the dumpster out back."
Sexual assault and harassment is still very common in the industry. Anthony Bourdain was nice enough to discuss this topic.
Corporate run restaurants have procedures to deal with this issue, but non-corporate restaurants turn a total blind eye.
If you work at a place where you feel unsafe, be careful about your personal safety.
18 years ago I was part of the opening staff of a new brewpub. We were open for less than six months before the first manager got fired for sexual harassment. The closing waitresses always asked me to walk them to their cars. I figured it was because they were afraid of getting mugged. No they were afraid of our bar manager.
You would be REALLY surprised with what restaurants can legally get away with as it pertains to cleanliness. Stuff that you think would absolutely get a restaurant shut down is just a simple warning from a health inspector.
You think the restaurant you eat in is pest free? Think again. Even the nicest, outwardly cleanest-looking restaurants have roaches and rats. You can’t eliminate them - you can only manage them.
It's not about that they are there, but how many and where exactly they are. I worked in two bakeries. Both had mice. I would take home food from one of them but not the other. In one of them the mice came through the doors and never too many, but due to generally being as hygienic as possible and using appropriate storage containers, they weren't in the foods or ingredients, they merely were on the floor and behind corners and lived of the unavoidable spills and kernels falling onto the floor in the loading areas. In the other bakery they came through the walls already since no one bothered to ever move the storage cupboards to clean behind and since the storage was problematic, they lived behind furniture and machines and were everywhere. I wouldn't buy from a that bakery since I saw people clean mice droppings from sheet pans right before use, something that never happened in the other bakery. But yes, both had mice. You couldn't prevent it completely.
In most places in the US, your tips are the servers wages. The tipped wage minimum in the US is $2.13/hr. Any tipped employee can make below minimum wage, so often a server has to tip out the bar tenders and other staff. The restaurant is supposed to make up the difference if you don’t hit normal minimum wage. Often, they don’t. Wage theft is not everywhere, but is common.
Not here in Oregon. Minimum wage is $15/hr and you will make fifteen an hour, before tips, or BOLI will shut the whole place down.
I worked for a pizza place in college. The hot wing sauce was just straight Frank's (I think it was Durkee brand back then and later changed to Frank's). The mild and medium were Frank's diluted with liquid butter... ungodly amounts of liquid butter.
Hand-washing by the cooks sometimes was just a quick rinse in the pot sink water. But those same cooks prepared my free shift-meal with those dirty hands, and I ate it, often sitting on a milk crate next to a dumpster. Now, restaurants are best-enjoyed by forgetting I ever worked in them.
Many people in the biz have substance abuse issues or personality disorders.
I worked at Chipotle for about a year. We did not clean the ice machine or soda machine that entire time. It honestly didn’t even cross our minds. The rest of the restaurant was spotless though so that’s good I suppose.
Until someone files a complaint with the health department, because they got sick.
We served instant potatoes (like from a powder) mixed with boursin to a $500/plate event because our exec was a moron (and banging the owner) and forgot to order. They got rave reviews because boursin is amazing.
This is probably more common than anyone who pays that much for a dinner cares to know.
You go to, like, an 'Irish pub' or something that has 'shepherd's pie' on the menu. Guess what? It's topped with instant mash. There's no way anyone is peeling, chopping, boiling, mashing a whole lot of spuds for something you can do with just boiling water. Jazz it up with some milk, some butter, some cheese, whatever, but it's still instant, and no-one ever complains that the mash isn't 'real', because it's good. Same for most whipped/creamed/mashed potato items.
Worked in a place that has won "Best Pizza" in the city awards in a large regional city, nearly a million population and lots of restaurants.
All of the ingredients they used were bought prepared from supplier from crust, to sauce, shredded cheese.
There were no culinary skills involved. Customers could have made the same pizza with a Kraft pizza kit from the grocery store. Yet everyone right up to food critics just f*****g raved about this pizza.
Too many pizza places are like this. The one that gets me is the bagged shredded cheese. I can tell the difference. Fresh shredded gives you that authentic stretchy melted cheese you used to see at pizza places until the '90s. The pre-shred has anti-cake like corn starch added to keep it from clumping together. So no more gooey stretchy cheese. :(
Sometimes your ginger ale is sprite with a splash of coke.
Appropriate-End714:
And if you think you can tell, I promise you can't.
Note: this post originally had 66 images. It’s been shortened to the top 35 images based on user votes.
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I worked a few different restaurants and also was an area manager for a chain of 13. 98% of the things people on here are saying I have never seen. I also know many food service employees well and have never heard anything like this from them either.
Right. I commented above that my husband worked at McDonald's in college, and I just remembered he worked at a Little Caesars too. He always talks about how strict they were about cleanliness standards. My son worked at a Cafe Rio and said the same thing. I have a good friend who manages a restaurant now, but has worked in the kitchens, and as a server in several restaurants and I've never heard anything like what was listed here.
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I have been a server in lots of restaurants and never seen a lot of things on this list.
You know, the people writing this stuff CAN (and should) do something about it. Don't let bystander effect get you! If you see health violations- record and report! The standard you walk past is the level you endorse. If you think a restaurant should do better, start by you doing better!
But if the place they work gets shut down they're out of a job.
Load More Replies... I worked a few different restaurants and also was an area manager for a chain of 13. 98% of the things people on here are saying I have never seen. I also know many food service employees well and have never heard anything like this from them either.
Right. I commented above that my husband worked at McDonald's in college, and I just remembered he worked at a Little Caesars too. He always talks about how strict they were about cleanliness standards. My son worked at a Cafe Rio and said the same thing. I have a good friend who manages a restaurant now, but has worked in the kitchens, and as a server in several restaurants and I've never heard anything like what was listed here.
Load More Replies... I have been a server in lots of restaurants and never seen a lot of things on this list.
You know, the people writing this stuff CAN (and should) do something about it. Don't let bystander effect get you! If you see health violations- record and report! The standard you walk past is the level you endorse. If you think a restaurant should do better, start by you doing better!
But if the place they work gets shut down they're out of a job.
Load More Replies...