Fast Food Employees Break Down Which Menu Items People Should Avoid

Fast food is defined as "food that can be prepared quickly and easily and is sold in restaurants and snack bars as a quick meal or to be taken out."

Burgers dominate the fast food market globally, followed by chicken and sandwiches. In the United States, Mexican fast food also holds a large part of the market.

A billion dollar a year business in the United States alone, not everything is sunshine and rainbows in fast food.

Reddit user n0tter asked:

"Fast Food workers, what menu item should everyone avoid from where you work?"

Cappuccino Machine

"Worked CircleK for 3 years—coffee is surprisingly good and machines were well maintained, but the cappuccino/iced coffee machine was disgusting and impossible to clean despite best efforts (lots of tiny parts where powdered drink mix could sit and rot)."

"My location was next to a university and we had a regular who was an engineering professor, once he came in and watched while I was trying to clean the cappuccino machine, and said he should use it in class as an example of poor design."

~ pugteeth

Crust

"At Little Caesar's, normal crust is made in store. Make our own dough and everything."

"But if you order a thin crust, you get a premade crust that may have been sitting in an open cardboard box for days to weeks."

~ stryst

Stale Toppings

"I used to work at a froyo shop. If you see a topping and think, 'I’ve never thought of that being a topping for froyo', you probably aren’t alone."

"Things like Fruity Pebbles were just put back out every morning getting older and older because no one ate them."

~ Minaowl

Bacteria Bar

"I worked at Chuck E Cheese years ago, and while the pizza was good & safe (it's pretty tough to screw up pizza), the salad bar would be a pass."

"Adults and kids would just toss the tongs and spoons all over the salad bar, letting the handles fall into the food, getting all the different vegetables and dressings mixed together."

"All this at one of the grossest places on Earth where they are putting their hands all over video games, the ball pit, pizza, and around again."

"At the end of the night, then we would flip all of the salad bar vegetables over into fresh containers and top them off for the next day. They did get thrown out every few days."

"If employees ever made ourselves a salad we would make it from the ingredients in the fridge that were not yet out on the Bacteria Bar."

~ Inevitable_Tone3021

Dropping Standards

"I worked at Chipotle in 2019. At that time, everything was fresh, and I always trusted it."

"Right after opening, the meat is usually left over from the night before, but it was still good, and I personally didn’t think that was a bad policy as it reduced food waste."

"We would clean the restaurant top to the bottom, corner to corner, every single night."

"Post Covid, I wouldn’t eat anything from there. Nothing is ever clean anymore and I know from others who still work there that their standards have significantly declined."

"Absolutely disgusting for increased prices, decreased quality, and smaller portions."

~ grandma-core

Blender

"At Dunkin, I’d say everything is fine except frozen drinks made with the old Island Oasis machine.

"My store now has a Vitamix blender, but the old Island Oasis machine was never cleaned well enough."

~ survivorgreys

Ice Machine

"The ice machine. They don’t get cleaned as often as you’d hope."

~ ddrive1234567

Cross Contamination

"If you have peanut allergies, don't get drinks from Sonic. They do not care about cross contamination AT ALL."

~ LunaMothThinking

Roach Condo

"So, in the late 90s I worked at a particular Burger King. The shake machine was legitimately broken for about two years."

"The store manager kept the restaurant and the kitchen very clean. One day someone saw a single roach. And she freaked out."

"Had the exterminator company come out, they figured out that they had nested in the shake machine motor insulation. Just to remind you, it had not been used in about two years."

"They rolled it outside, put a line of some sort of gel around the outside of the machine on the ground, opened the covers on the sides and sprayed something out of a can. A lot of it."

"I saw thousands of roaches drop out of this machine and scurry away, but they hit the line of gel went about another foot and all died."

"They never used the shake machine again anyway, but it was insane."

~ thatdudefromthattime

"I was once got waved off from buying a shake at a BK drive thru by an employee. It was a really small BK and late at night. I pull up to the drive thru and order and add a shake."

"The guys like 'listen man, you do not want a shake from here, I can sell you one, but I’m telling you, you don’t want it'. Say no more my good man and thank you."

~ Maxwell_Perkins088

Fountain Fauna

"I do pest control. I pay a little extra for a bottled drink instead of the fountain."

~ goodbyeson

Condiments

"They don't have them anymore, but when I worked at Arbys the Arby-Q was the one thing I would never eat. That sauce would sometimes be 2 months old—I'm not kidding."

"Whenever I handed an order to a customer who ordered one I would say 'here you go!' not 'enjoy your food!'."

~ too_many_shoes14

Residue ≠ Flavor

"Don’t get iced tea from Taco Bell. The inside of the canister at my Taco Bell would always have a thick, tissue-y brown film all around it."

"My Taco Bell was actually cleaner than your average Taco Bell, but it was really easy to get away with not cleaning that thing, or otherwise just forget to."

~ iMakeTacos

Cleanliness Is Next To Godliness

"I worked at Jimmy John’s for almost 7 years and they are obsessive about keeping things clean, to the point they go through a 8ish page packet of cleaning lists each day and all food items are super fresh and labeled to be used within 24-72 hours."

"The only thing I would not eat from there is the bacon because it comes cold, and it’s just kind of unpleasant."

~ garbashians

Oleato

"Starbucks barista here, do not get any iced oleato drinks. It just doesn't work, and olive oil in coffee was already a big stretch."

"The hot latte is actually not too bad and tastes a little bit like Cheerios but the oil almost instantly separates from the rest of the drink when it's iced, which is no bueno."

~ Starmilkman

Diminished Returns

"I used to work at a Papa John's, and it's not a health reason to avoid things, but generally: avoid going overboard on toppings."

"There's a chart for how much of each topping gets used based on how many toppings are on the pizza, and it gets smaller as the number of toppings go up."

"Once you hit 3 toppings, you're basically paying $1 more to get half of each topping just to get the extra topping. A triple pepperoni pizza has less pepperoni on it than a double, for instance."

~ subnautus

What's something you'd recommend skipping from a fast food menu?