I'm almost positive that a good chunk of the people reading this have worked in the fast food industry before or have had a customer service job where you dealt with infuriating customers.
If you haven't, then you probably know someone who has. That's why when Reddit user u/Brando224 asked, "What were some of the worst experiences you have had while working in the fast food industry," plenty of people had ample to say.
So here are just a few of the most disgusting and shocking stories people have from their experience working in the fast food industry.
Disclaimer: Obviously, we can't 100% confirm these stories, but these people are supposedly speaking from their own experiences as alleged former employees.
1. "I went to hand a drink out of the drive-thru window, and the asshats in the car threw a large blue Powerade all over me! My manager said if I went home early due to being soaked, I was fired."
2. "I worked at a huge coffee chain, and a woman ordered her coffee at 140° in the drive-thru. She then walks into the cafe and complains that her coffee was 139° and demanded it to be remade."
"I laughed at her and asked if she was joking, and she demanded to see my manager. My manager remade it, but I didn’t get in any trouble. She was ridiculous, but the policy is to remake anything if a customer asks for it."
3. "I worked at a fast food chain for two weeks, and it wasn't too bad until someone spread shit all over the men's bathroom, and they wanted me to clean it all up."
4. "I was a waitress at a pizza place, and an older couple started yelling at me about how they found metal in their food. After several minutes of yelling, the man gets quiet, and he goes, 'Oh, I lost a filling.'"
"Then they tried to be all nice and laugh it off. I just wanted to say screw you for treating me like crap."
5. "I worked part-time at a fast food place while I was in college. One day, I was working the drive-thru, and this guy ordered a lot of drinks. One of them was low on soda syrup, but instead of just telling me about it like a rational person, he threw the extra-large drink at me. The lid popped off, and I was soaking wet."
6. "At the fast food establishment I used to work at, we kept the grilled onions in a heated tray. One of the other workers got caught spitting his chewing tobacco into the grilled onion tray and got away with it until someone saw the security tape."
"He was fired on the spot. I’m not sure what they did about the burgers that went out served like that..."
7. "I worked at a fast food restaurant for a short time, and the soda machine was literally never cleaned. I went to take the nozzles off, and there was mold literally caked around and inside the nozzle."
8. "I was 16 working as a cashier, and a man walked up, and instead of ordering, he started talking about how his daughter was in vet school. I smiled and said, 'That sounds nice.' He then responds, 'Yes, she did something with her life, unlike you.'"
9. "At the pizza place I worked at, we had a pizza that came with shrimp, but only if people specifically asked for it. So naturally, barely anyone ordered the shrimp on their pizza. The shrimp would just sit there for days on end, getting frozen every night and thawed out every morning. And whenever someone would actually order the shrimp pizza, they’d get like two-week-old shrimp on their pizza."
10. "I was working the register, and a buff dude with his 5-year-old daughter came in. He yelled his order at me and demanded a girl's toy for his daughter's kid's meal. I repeated his order to him, and he angrily said, 'With a girl's toy, right?!' I told him the toys are unisex. His eyes bulged, and he yelled, 'WHAT ABOUT SEX?!?!' I explained the meaning of the word, and he mumbled, '...OK...just don't mention sex around my daughter again!'"
11. "My grandmother died of cancer just before my shift. They said if I didn't show up, I would be fired."
12. "A coworker dumped mop water through the ice cream machine in an attempt to clean it...like, the part where the soft serve goes to freeze."
13. "I was working at a burger place, and one day a customer came through the drive-thru and ordered a plain hamburger. After I gave her the sandwich, she took it out of the bag, looked at it, and told me there was supposed to be cheese on it. I took it back and put a slice of cheese on it. Again, she looked at it and said she was unhappy about her sandwich. I'll never know what though because this time she just looked at me, flipped me off, and drove away."
14. "I was working the drive-thru handing out food and while I was getting some other food, I see out of the corner of my eye the lady put a cheeseburger in her glove compartment. I thought it was weird but didn't think anything of it. I handed her the rest of the food, and the lady put the first bag in my face and says, 'I didn't get my cheeseburger.'"
"I busted out in laughter and told her that I saw her hide the food. She gave a nervous laugh and drove off really fast without the rest of her food."
15. "I work at a pizza place, and one time the cook that was making the pizza lost their Band-Aid inside of a pizza, but they didn't know which one. They seriously wanted us to serve the eight possible pizzas that could've had a bloodied Band-Aid in it and just wait to see if someone complained."
16. "I just started working at this fast food chain, and at this point, I had only been trained to work in the kitchen. One day, I had to wipe tables since the person who was supposed to do it called out sick. About two hours in, a woman comes up to me and mumbles something about there being something disgusting outside. I went out to discover a perfect log of shit sitting in a nugget box with BBQ dip and a note that said fuck you."
17. "I dropped a chicken wrap on the floor and was on my way to tell the customer that it would be a little longer since those were the last strips. A coworker told me it was no problem and to just drop it in the fryer since that'll kill the germs."
18. "I worked at a major coffee chain, and I'm brown. This customer came up to order coffee, and when I asked her how she'd like it, she replied, 'Make it like the color of your skin.'"
19. "The fast food place I worked at blatantly ignored cross-contamination protocol. The grill operator had one spatula for laying, flipping, and distributing meat. One that would lay a raw patty, squish the juice out of it, then immediately lift and serve a cooked patty. I regularly could see drops of blood on the bun being served."
20. And finally, this disgusting story, "I was working as the cashier, and my boss came up to me and told me to grab a mop because someone made a mess in the women's bathroom. She gave me no other details and told me I could go home once I finished. I went to look, and there was a diarrhea trail from the bathroom door to the first stall. It had the consistency of chewed-up Snickers bars. And when I say trail, I don't mean a smear; imagine a paint can tipping over. I learned that day that fast food restaurants have hazmat bags...just in case."
Did these stories remind you of any disgusting and/or shocking stories you have from your own job? Feel free to drop them in the comments below!
Note: Some submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.