Questin for people who have worked in the food service industry.

Grew up in a real small town with a little take out burger joint on "front" street. The owner habitually scratched his booty hole while flipping burgers to the extent it was the joke around town.

quote:

---

Does anyone else have a worse story than that?

---

Yes. I did the restaurant thing for about 3 years.

I had a coworker who had pink eye. It was mostly healed and supposedly not contagious any more according to his doctor so he came back to work. It was still sort of red though and clearly still bothering him, and there were a couple regulars who came in who he actually started talking to about how much his pink eye bothered was itching or whatever. I'm sitting there like dude, it's bad enough you're even here right now, but why the frick are you telling customers about it? And he was essentially the manager (very small place, we didn't have titles) and only answered to the owner so I couldn't send him home or even say much
I was the kind of worker who if I felt a cough or sneeze coming on I would try to duck behind where a customer couldn't see me and then I would immediately wash my hands before continuing, so that was just mind blowing to see him say that to a customer.


Another time I showed up at 630am to find the guy who was opening changing the fryer oil, which was weird because that's usually a once a week after close on saturday thing. Apparently when he got there at 530am he found a dead rat floating in the oil. Not really a big deal because it was emptied, scrubbed out, and changed before before we opened and nobody buys much fried for breakfast so we had time to heat it up again. Just gross to think about.


Those are the only two "gross" stories that stick out, we were small and only a few of us who were all good workers so it was easy to do things right and clean. The only times we ever got points off on our health score was for little tick tack things that didn't really affect the food.

I have tons of other good stories from my time there, those are just the only really "gross" ones.

quote:

---

I do not know how they do it but Chik Fil A is cleaner then a NASA prep room for a mission to Mars

---

There is always somebody in there wiping everything down and cleaning. I've never gone inside a Chik Fil A and not seen somebody wiping a table at least.

It helps a lot that their food isn't greasy. Cook a few hundred hamburger patties every single day and you'd be surprised the places that grease builds up. On the walls, on your clothes, behind things. It basically floats through the air and gets everywhere. Not really a problem when most of your menu is chicken fried in peanut oil.

I worked in the kitchen way, way, back when at a food court in Memphis and it took me a decade or so to get to where I could eat at any food court again.

My favorite was the time the manager was helping to prepare the food, slicing things up real quick... well he'd just stop every minute or so and lick the knife clean and then keep on going.

quote:

---

in college 

---

quote:

---

piggilicious

---

One time I pulled up to the drive thru window at a Chinese restaurant. I was waiting for my cashew chicken and just happened to look through the window in to the kitchen. There was a dude stirring this huge pot of fried rice. He was smoking and the ash on his cigarette looked about half the length of the cigarette. I looked away and looked right back and he was still stirring the fried rice, but the ash was gone from his cigarette. I didn't look away long enough for him to flick the ash away. It had to fall in that pot of rice.

quote:

---

Apparently when he got there at 530am he found a dead rat floating in the oil.

---

If he had been alive and gotten fried you could have sold "Rat on a Stick"