Recently, we asked the Chuck E. Cheese employees of the BuzzFeed Community what it's really like to work there. Here are some of the, uh...✨insights✨ they gave us!
1. "I'm a former Chuck E. Cheese cast member. At my location, the costume was washed maybe once a year at most, and the head STUNK so bad."
2. "I worked for Chuck E. Cheese during high school and college and actually really enjoyed it. Overall though, parents tended to be more difficult than the kids. They would get overwhelmed by it all and were especially done by the time their kid needed to pick out a prize."
3. "When I worked there, I was shocked with how fertile Chuck E. Cheese was. Most of the employees would hook up with each other and end up pregnant. At one point, there were eight girls who got pregnant and all of the baby daddies were Chuck E. Cheese cooks or game techs. The place literally entertained kids and produced kids."
4. "I have a relative who used to work there. She said they used to make pizzas wrong on purpose so they could have some when it was sent back."
5. "Back in the early 2000s, I worked there as a manager. When we would have guests stay past closing, I would turn off the breakers one by one so that it looked like they were turned off on a timer. The guests would keep playing until their game was turned off. Some people couldn't take the hint we were closed."
6. "Women are usually in the mouse suit, which is good because Chuck gets hit between the legs a lot."
7. "Despite it being full of children, it really is clean, and the workers — especially in the game room — spend a lot of their time cleaning. I would be wary of the salad bars, however. I had one manager who wouldn’t always make us rotate the produce in the salad bar, meaning that old produce would stay there and get super gross."
8. "When I worked there (late '90s/very early '00s), each kid/adult's hands were stamped with a number in invisible ink. When a kid went to leave, an employee had to check the number against the adult's to make sure no one was trying to steal a kid."
—Anonymous
9. "The game room attendants used to sell full rolls of tickets to parents despite the fact that parents can buy any prize offered."
—Anonymous
10. "The salad bar is not as fresh as people think. Every night after closing, we had to 'flip the salad,' meaning pouring everything from the day into new containers. The only part of the bar that was trashed at night was the salad and sometimes the spinach, if too much water had gotten in the container, which made it mushy. The dressing was poured into a new container along with whatever food that had fallen into the container."
—Anonymous
11. "Kids who came regularly were the WORST. I had one family who left near closing time and FORGOT their 2/3-year-old. She was under the table eating salt and no one bothered to look for her. Her parents were gone for at least 20 minutes before coming back, and even then, the mom had the audacity to be mad at the little girl for not following them out rather than double-checking to make sure she was there."
—Anonymous
12. "I once had a mom come in with a makeup artist and barge into the employee area backstage so the artist could touch up her face. She had had her hair done for her kid’s birthday party too and walked out like she was royalty. My manager basically made us kiss her feet because she had spent a decent amount of money. I will admit that the job taught me how to deal with difficult people, and I still use those skills 15+ years later."
—Anonymous
13. "One time, we had a man straight-up punch out another man and then take off running out of the restaurant and left his kid. We had to call the police. He thought the man he punched was trying to cut a long line and thought it would be appropriate to punch him. We suspected he was drunk, which happened sometimes."
—Anonymous
14. "There was always salad EVERYWHERE. I would clean the bathrooms and full plates of salad would be sitting in the sink or thrown around the entire fucking bathroom."
–Anonymous
15. And finally, "It was usually the parents who were jerks. Some would get drunk and get into fistfights. They would also force their terrified children to hug this massive, sweaty, stinky, furry rat. Look, lady, it's not funny! I can't breathe or see in this suit, your kid is screaming and crying under a table, and I just want to take my break and swipe a piece of the birthday cake from the back!!!"
—Anonymous
Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.