Fast Food & Other Restaurant Horrors - Subtle Disgust to Literally Dangerous Mishaps

[JULAY]

Got norovirus from Sheetz (a chain of gas stations of dubious quality where Chris buys q-sands). Health department got involved, turned out that many of their food workers at that location weren't washing their hands after shitting. Needless to say, haven't been back to any Sheetz since.

 

[AlephOne2Many]

Got norovirus from Sheetz (a chain of gas stations of dubious quality where Chris buys q-sands). Health department got involved, turned out that many of their food workers at that location weren't washing their hands after shitting. Needless to say, haven't been back to any Sheetz since.

Sheetz? More like Shitz in the Loo

 

[Tehshigelisok]

I have a friend who said that he swore off Burger King forever after he went to one in Georgia staffed entirely by college kids, and one of them decided to top one of his sandwiches with... um... "special sauce".

 

[NimertiS]

The worst thing I encountered ever was a rotten slice of pizza here in Athens. It was 5 am in the morning I was returning from a club, hungry as hell. So, I found an open fast food store, with coffees, pizza slices etc.
Creepy owner, rotten pizza and the runs for me

 

[Trombonista]

Sheetz? More like Shitz in the Loo

Or just Shitz.

 

[D.Va]

Several years ago I went to Bangladesh for a week and got diarrhea that lasted for a few days.

It wasn't the various local restaurants I went to, albeit being an undeveloped country with an economy in the shitter. It was a rather swanky hotel on the outskirts, often used by the US military, that we stayed in on the last night before we left. They had a buffet there, and from the next day onwards I felt pretty terrible and needed to use the toilet pretty often. It made the plane journey home a little horrid.

 

[DuskEngine]

Several years ago I went to Bangladesh for a week and got diarrhea that lasted for a few days.

It wasn't the various local restaurants I went to, albeit being an undeveloped country with an economy in the shitter. It was a rather swanky hotel on the outskirts, often used by the US military, that we stayed in on the last night before we left. They had a buffet there, and from the next day onwards I felt pretty terrible and needed to use the toilet pretty often. It made the plane journey home a little horrid.

Were you in Dhaka? I hear the dining options there are actually supposed to be p good

 

[D.Va]

Were you in Dhaka? I hear the dining options there are actually supposed to be p good

It might've been, but it was so long ago I don't even remember considering we basically toured the country with the local curryhouse. We did stay at hotels in Dhaka, Cox's Bazar, and Chittagong. The only thing I really remember in particular is that this hotel was often used by the US military.

Edit: should point out that it was definitely not in the centre of Dhaka at least. Was definitely a more rural area.

 

[Morose_Obesity]

Generally the McDonalds completely run by Mexicans are fucked. They can't take an order correctly unless you point and grunt at what you want. Fuck the grinding McCafe blender, too.

 

[The Queen of Trash]

Not necessarily a story as a customer, but as an employee at McDonald's.

One time I had to work an overnight shift for some reason to help out with maintenance. While outside workers came in to clean the hoods of the equipment, the manager scheduled that night and I cleaned. Words cannot describe how greasy a fast food restaurant can get. And I'm not talking about the greasy film that covers the kitchen. No no. There are huge globs of grease under almost every fryer and stove. There is even grease that has been there for so long, it's managed to harden up.

I still have nightmares about it.

 

[Pikonic]

Me and my father have both been to Hardee's once.
I went to a rural town in North Carolina
He went to some place in Nebraska.
I walk in, the store seemed acceptability clean, nothing special but nothing negative. They were advertising something called a Texas Toast Thickburger, basically a burger with Texas toast as a bun. I like burgers, I like Texas toast, so I buy it with some fries and a sprite. I eat it and feel very full. About an hour goes by and my stomach still hurts from the fullness, at least I thought it was the fullness.
It wasn't, it was my stomach demanding this food leaves now. I feel the inevitable and run to the bathroom in my hotel. I never vomited so hard in my life, no alcohol, no stomach bug, just my Yankee stomach rejecting Hardee's. Everything needed to go, I threw up like 5 consecutive times. 30 minutes later and I'm starving again, I manage to find an acceptable Subway. I've never gone back.
Now my Hardee's was clean, my father was not so lucky. He and my mom were driving a long trip to Omaha and he finds a delightful looking restaurant with the yellow smiling star. The inside was awful, he described visibly dirty floors, ceiling drips, and greasy handprints on the door. My mother was NOT eating here, and my father agreed. He went to the men's room and walked out, the Hardee's in Nebraska wasn't even good enough to piss in.

 

[Piga Dgrifm]

Spoiler: Piga Dgrifm's Good Boy Points

Oh lawd... Buckle up buckaroos because I've got a wild ride for you. This is actually one of my earliest memories, and what a pleasant instance to begin my future, no-doubt bestselling memoir with! I developed pretty bad emetophobia (fear of vomiting) from this incident, so please donate to my Patreon, you filthy shitlords.

So, I was five years old, and had just started Kindergarten. Don't remember too much about the class anymore save for the fact the teacher was a heavy smoker and spent half the day coughing. The only really clear memory I have from that first year of schooling began on a Monday, with a tray of tendies (which I am now triggered by tbh fam.)

Normally my mom packed me a lunch, but she was sick that day or something. But whatever. I was happy because I got to be one of the Cool Kids(TM) and eat the hot lunch. The tendies tasted like Kid Cuisine that was pretty far past its prime. But, again, whatever. I wasn't one of those filthy poors carrying an old re-used paper bag full of off-brand Cheez-Its for once, so I had that going for me, which was nice.

Fast forward to later that night, and my stomach doesn't feel right. Feels like my organs are trying to curl themselves into a fetal position while sobbing. Bitch about it to my parents for a bit before falling asleep. Wake up the next morning really early and proceed to projectile vomit on the wall.

And then again.

And again.

Turns out Sam and Ella had been invited over for lunch that day and they were pretty unruly guests. Commence sobbing like the five year old I was, triggered like someone had just assumed my gender. Dad barrels into my room, yelling at me for making so much noise so early in the morning. Tune changes once he notices puke-mageddon though.

I believe that, if Hell exists, it would be perfectly tailored to each person. An arachnophobe spends eternity covered in spiders, Chris has to look at nothing but Sonic's blue arms... And I have to relive that morning over and over. I don't know how many times I threw up, but I do know that it was so much that by the end I was expelling nothing but stomach acid. That was the first time I ever prayed to God for forgiveness as whatever I had done must have surely been heinous.

In conclusion, that's where I was on 9/11.

Spoiler: The Time I Worked For A Shitty Restaurant

One of my jobs was at a chain Mexican fast food restaurant. I say Mexican loosely because the only thing Mexican about it was the employees that are going to be on the other side of The Wall after the 20th rolls around. Anyway, I've been into fast food kitchens before, and while a messier floor during a rush is understandable, this place took it one step beyond.

There was one cutting board to be used for vegetables and raw meats. Boss would yell at you if you tried to wash off the meat juices before chopping vegetables, but considering a certain... other matter involving this cutting board that was actually the least of your worries.

See, the board was stored on the floor. Literally the floor. In a dusty little crevice underneath a few shelves. Any attempt to wash off the board and put it somewhere else would get you screamed at. Board would be moved in time for inspections, however. Manager knew a guy so he always knew when the health inspection was coming.

I understood precisely zero shits of it.

 

[ADN_VIII]

It didn't happen to me, but I did see it. A friend and I were on our way from the airport, since he was visiting for Christmas. I'm driving, since six hour red eyes are not fun, and he's pretty wiped. I should mention that it's three in the morning, so only a handful of places were open. He asks if we can stop for food. I agree, since I've got to pee. We pull into a truck stop rest area, one of those food court things that are open 24/7 for interstate truckers. I order myself pizza hut, he has me order him McDonald's. We sit down for a little bit, chat and eat while talking about inconsequential shit. We get back in the car and start going. Half an hour up, he has me pull over at a scenic view stop thing. He gets out, pukes. I've never seen a human evacuate purple McDonald's food before, or ever again, but I can say with certainty that I'll never step foot in one again.

 

[MalWart]

I recall my mother finding a dead fly in her corn dog during a trip to Disney World.

 

[AlephOne2Many]

I actually found a bone in a bag of cracklings, I was advised to throw it away and was reimbursed the eighty five cents it was worth.

 

[Tehshigelisok]

Probably not a horror story in the conventional sense of this thread, but...

About an hour from me, there is a Hardee's that closed in 1997 when Carl's Jr. bought them, and it has been sitting ever since. They just put "Closed for the season" on the reader board out front one day, and somehow that became "closed forever".

I actually ate at that Hardee's all the time when I was a kid and we were going downstate to shop or visit relatives. The funny thing is, all the furnishings are still in there. The tables, the booths, the menu board, the pictures on the walls, the planters, the drink machine and cash register in the drive-thru, the BALL PIT. God knows what's lurking in there now.

Do you know how freaking surreal and creepy it is to see a building that you have personally set foot in, in such a condition? I ate dozens of burgers there in my life, and now it looks like it belongs in a Fallout game.

 

[Adamska]

Right then, I have a few corkers, evidenced by the one I told on the dysfunctional Taco Bell in the retail thread. I'll start with my best; the Hibachi Incident:

Now, I dunno how prevalent Hibachi's is, but it's this Japanese teppanyaki grill that I went with my dad and step-family for a celebration. The store's front was a bit suspect, but the interior felt bigger than the store's real size, and it was actually very well maintained. So with this and the crowd, I felt we were going to have a most excellent dinner.

We eventually get seated after a fairly long time, and I, being the guy who tries a bit of everything if possible, proceed to order some different items than my family did; the logic being that worst comes to worst, their stuff I was certain to like. The food itself was decent; I wasn't a fan of their steak due to being too chewy, but the tilapia was good, as was their egg and rice. I probably would've had a good night along with the fam if I didn't decide to try this crab sushi they had.

Never had sushi dishes (or sashimi or whatever it was), so I figured I might as well give it a shot. So I decide to try the crab, and hey it's decent. I bite a bit more into it and then this crunch happens. I go what the fuck, spit out the unidentified whatever that was, and hold off on eating more of it, deciding to just finish off my fish and try out their ginger and wasabi (which was disappointingly mild).

Fast forward to home, and the crab decides to enact the plan. My stomach felt like it was getting stabbed repeatedly, the tight feeling of my gut not leaving warring with this painful sensation. I decide to purge, and it just would not stop, and in fact spread down below too. Throughout the night, I was recreating this particular gag in horrific reality, with a phantom knife in my gut to boot.

The porcelain express ended after three days of this nightmare, and since then I have war flashbacks whenever I think of ginger or the taste of wasabi.

 

[MalWart]

A couple of more horrifying restaurant experiences that popped up in my head:

-Around 2004, my family decided to check out a new burger place that opened up at a local mall. We order a french fry/onion ring basket as our appetizer, and shortly after we dug in, one of us saw an ant crawing around the basket. What started off as one ant turned into a colony. They did nothing about it, I don't even remember a manager coming by to check up.


-My family had lunch at Olive Garden one day, and my mother found a piece of what appeared to be rubber in her pasta. She told the waiter about it, and even he wasn't sure about what it was. I think a manager came by, but it was no use.

 

[VJ 120]

When I was 4 or 5 years old, my family was moving cross-country and we decided to stop for the evening and eat dinner at this place called Taco Johns. I guess it's like a midwestern knockoff of Taco Bell. I don't remember a whole lot about the meal itself other than being irritated that the tacos had olives on them (gross, dude) and they served tater tots with your meal.

But later in the middle of the night at our hotel room, I threw up a bunch of times and had a massive headache. It was probably one of the most painful, disgusting experiences of my life at the time. It's been almost 20 years and I still feel a pang of nausea whenever I think of Taco Johns.

 

[Derbydollar]

On my 9th birthday my family decided to take me out to Red Lobsters. I ordered chicken tenders, and I took a bite out of them and they were completely raw. Yeah, that was pretty bad. So my Dad sends them back to the kitchen, and they come back looking like someone had dumped them into a bonfire and let them burn. At least I got a decent dessert, lol.

Another time my Dad and I went to a BBQ place nearby. His food came out CAKED with hair. Like, it looked like the chicken he ordered had grown hair after being prepared and put on his plate. That was pretty terrible, and made me always check my food for hair a while after that. How that thing ever got brought out to our table amazes me.