We cannot stress enough just how important cleanliness is in the food service industry. Without fundamentals in solid hygiene, someone could get seriously ill, your business could get shut down, and all of your employees would be out of a job. However, it seems like not everyone got the message—and common sense isn’t as common as it seems.

Reddit user u/stevesmd asked internet users to share the most disgusting things that they’ve ever witnessed in restaurants, and the responses they got were utterly revolting. We hope you’re not eating anything at the moment, dear Pandas, because you might just lose your appetite. Black mold in the slushie machine is just the tip of the iceberg of ick…

#1

A woman changing her baby’s diaper on one of the tables. Before you throw hate at me, there were changing tables in both bathrooms.

Image credits: nanspud

#2

Dead cockroach in the salt shaker. I served at the restaurant, and my grandma found it when her and my grandpa came in for lunch. They did not come in for lunch anymore.

Image credits: molly_203

#3

Working at a restaurant I pulled back the slushie machine because I smelled something off coming from behind. The smell was black mold. I quit on the spot and reported the restaurant to the health authority.

Image credits: Magic_ass1

Fundamentally, keeping any kitchen clean comes down to two things: managers who prioritize it and employees who care enough to keep things spick and span.

Management needs to find a way to incentivize their staff to take both personal hygiene and the cleanliness of the kitchen and seating area seriously. That comes down to providing workers with fair wages, education, opportunities for career growth, and setting a good example.

#4

Condensation above a buffet turning brown and dripping back down on the food.

Image credits: MountainHipie

#5

Buddy ordered a burger. Took two bites then tasted something strange. It was a band aid. A used band aid.

Image credits: NeverGoneTooFar

#6

I guess Starbucks counts as a restaurant, so a couple Christmases ago, I stopped in for some coffee after getting a couple gifts. I immediately see multiple baristas petting a dog I assumed to be their manager’s, but they went back to handling the food and drink without washing their hands, so I walked back out.

Image credits: ScorpionX-123

For example, everyone will be far more willing to scrub surfaces if they’ve seen their managers get their hands dirty. Similarly, those who take pride in their career and genuinely care about their customers will also keep a tidy station.

On the flip side, a member of staff who is underpaid, burned out, demotivated, and constantly has to deal with rude customers and toxic managers might not give a damn about cleanliness standards. For them, not cleaning might even be a way of rebelling against the system. Unfortunately, it’s not just the business that suffers—the customers do, too.

#7

Truly amazing food in Nola. Cockroaches running on the wall (it’s the French quarter, everyone has roaches). I need to go the bathroom, it’s a closet in the outdoor courtyard. Where apparently the kitchen is as well.

Image credits: GrumpyDietitian

#8

I helped a friend re tile a kitchen in a restaurant on Granville Island in Vancouver. A pretty nice place. When we were up to the top of the wall and looked into the ceiling space there was about half an inch of rat feces. This was about ten years ago.

Image credits: TECrec008

#9

Watched a kid take a spoonful of cookie dough and eat it then put the spoon back in the container. This was one of those build your own frozen yogurt places with 100 different toppings.

Image credits: moparguy_alec

Good standards start at the ground level. Members of staff ought to get in the habit of practicing good hand hygiene before handling food or after using the restroom. Nobody wants to deal with a server who sneezes into their hands and then hands them the menus. Nor would anyone trust a waiter who walks out of the bathroom without even having turned on the tap.

Meanwhile, the kitchen staff must have a system in place for storing food, preparing it, and cleaning the premises. Some food items like raw meat and seafood spoil very quickly, so they cannot be left out in the open for God knows how long. Raw food items also have to be kept separately from cooked ones in order to prevent cross-contamination.

#10

Steakhouse I was a server at had the tall tray holders you could put several trays of food on. This one happened to be all steaks.

As it was being rolled by a kitchen employee from fridge to grill area it toppled over spilling steaks out all over the floor.

Said employee pulled the steaks from the ground and proceeded to put them back on the tray to cook. Looked at me and said “the grill will kill whatever is on them anyway.”

Godspeed Logan’s Roadhouse. Your brief stay in my town humbled us all.

Image credits: anon

#11

I used to work at an Italian restaurant where there was a used tampon sitting around in the back of the kitchen. Of course, no one wanted to touch it so it sat there for the entire time I worked there. They never cleaned the back of the kitchen

Image credits: Mighty_Meatball

#12

I was working as a server at a steakhouse. Think something like… about as nice as an Outback. Not that nice, but the servers are wearing ties.

Big party comes in, maybe 8-12 people. They sat down and we’re taking drink orders. One lady asked for 2 to-go boxes full of ice. Strange request, but okay.

We bring them drinks and her 2 to-go boxes full of ice. Come back to the table a few minutes later and the boxes were nowhere to be seen. Until my coworker pointed them out.

She had taken her shoes and socks off and had her bare feet in the boxes of ice. At the table. In the middle of a full dining room.

Image credits: TheFuckNameYouWant

Kitchen staff ought to sanitize their work surfaces, tools, and cutting boards frequently. Learning to clean up after yourself as you cook is a very useful habit. In the meantime, management has to do frequent inspections of the kitchen and ensure that certain parts of the premises are thoroughly cleaned every day, week, or month. 

For instance, you want to mop the floors, storage areas, and walk-in fridges every single day, while also cleaning the food prep areas and sinks. You should also not forget to clean the beverage machines, microwaves, grills, toasters, coffee makers, and other appliances every day, too. Things like floor drains, mats, ovens, and deep fryers can be manually cleaned weekly. Once a month, the staff should focus on the walls, ceilings, vent hoods, grease traps, and the area behind the hotline. 

#13

I worked a single night as a dish rat in a $60 plate restaurant back in the 90s. It was Halloween, so the waitstaff was wearing costumes.

This one really thin girl, dressed up in a Playboy bunny costume, finished nearly all the food off the plates coming back. She ate everything with her hands, including chocolate mousse. I was shocked and she noticed me staring. Burned into my mind is her turning to me, with a fingerfull of mousse and saying “You want to try?”

Not really that gross compared to some of these other ones, but it was my first and only time seeing behind the scenes in a restaurant so it made an impression. Poor waitress was probably starving.

Image credits: AdWonderful5920

#14

Worms in a fish.

Worst part, it was my father’s restaurant. The guy who was in charge of grilling fishes only worked there for a month and he actually cooked fishes that were too old and badly refrigerated… he saw the worms and still cooked them.

He was promptly fired XD

Image credits: GussDeBlod

#15

Cutting raw and cooked chicken on the same cutting board at the same time. The kitchen is open and you can see what’s going on from the dining area. Everything comes pre packaged, they don’t have anything fresh. Haven’t eaten there ever since

Image credits: Content-Wing-5015

#16

One time a family of cockroaches fell from the ceiling right into my plate of food

Image credits: soapyrubberduck

#17

Not in a restaurant, butva food court.

I was having lunch with a friend and I thought I had stepped on her foot, so I playfully pressed harder but she didn’t respond.

A woman sitting on a table next to us screamed that there was a rat squirming under my shoe.

Image credits: atot806

#18

We had a guy that would come into our aunts cafe and he would empty his colostomy bag under the booth he was at instead of using the restroom. After a few times of doing this she finally told him to not come back.

Image credits: Federal-Echo2599

#19

As a waiter: watching the “chef”/owner scooping spaghetti out of the steam table with bare hands and plopping it on a plate. We didn’t call the resort “Shithole” (Chateau) [name redacted] for nothing.

Edit: Same place. Fermented ketchup exploding onto guests (refillable glass bottles stored in a hot kitchen that were topped off and not emptied, washed, and refilled fresh). Oh, the 80s were a magical time for food health and safety…

Image credits: calnuck

#20

The owner was snacking out of the garnish tray for the bartenders. Just snacking on the lemon wedges and sugar sticks meant for the drinks. She was putting her fingers in her mouth and then diving back in for another cherry or orange wedge right there at the bar in front of me and a friend. I looked at her and said, “What you’re doing is f*****g disgusting, those go in people’s drinks and you’re putting your gross fingers in there”. She scoffed and walked away. The bartender came over and thanked me for saying something and explained the staff tells her that all the time, but she doesn’t listen because she’s the owner.

Image credits: GrimwoldMcTheesbyIV

#21

I used to make deliveries to a bunch of places in downtown urban locations…several Jamaican bakeries. All but one were immaculately clean. The other one…oh my gods, so gross. There was always a guy in back chopping chicken into pieces and throwing them into a 5-gal home depot bucket that always had flies buzzing around and landing. Sometimes pieces would fall on the floor and they’d just pick them up and throw them in the bucket. Blood and viscera on almost all surfaces. A REALLY scary basement with goats hanging on hooks, also with flies on them. I would throw up in my mouth almost every time. Needless to say, I’d never eat the free food they’d offer.

Image credits: labowskichris

#22

A napkin run across a floor. It was really a rat that somehow had a napkin draped over it but it was surreal and super funny to watch. We’d joke about eating at the place that held napkin races any time no one could come up with a place to eat then usually someone would be like “Naww, let’s just hit up _________”.

Image credits: Sleestak714

#23

One of the cooks pissed in the cooler. He was almost blind drunk, and just dropped trou and started pissing.

Image credits: ericbsmith42

#24

In my pest control days. I watched a cook start up a flat top with mouse dropping all over it. He cooked chicken in the s**t and served it up to an unsuspecting customer. I called the dept of health on them. It was appalling.

Image credits: POWERRL_RANGER

#25

Former Souz chef in university for a seafood and Chophouse. We butchered, but not live animals (so technically cut meat and entrails). We were a really upscale and on the level place. However, our owners also owned a local brewery and restaurant.

Our old fish went to them. Our old everything went for them. They made sausages from old meat and used beer barley and hops. People loved them. Couldn’t get enough, watching those people lick their fingers clean was an event.

However the worst part was shoveling entrails and carcasses into bags for trash. Not on garbage night. In bear season. Next morning about 100lbs of pig, chicken, fish heads and scales, along with a copious amount of blood and s**t was all over the driveway, the roadside, and had been dragged up and down the road, to the neighbours, our back of house…..

We all, including our $75/hr chef are all in dishwasher black rubber boots and aprons and gloves, masks on, goggles and bandanas, scrubbing the walkway. We looked like a biohazard team cleaning a mass murder scene. So yes, the cops were called and we had a great time explaining everything (they knew it was animal, not human. No one else did tho). This was dead-end of summer, around 95° out. I still smell it sometimes when passing chicken farms and PTSD is real.

Image credits: Superbly_Humble

#26

Was hired on at a place. My first shift I saw the dessert and shake station was a mess… I started to clean up, I opened lowboy and saw what I thought was someone had dumped like a 5lb bag of oreo crumbles.

Was not oreos.. Was a mound of mold. I think I was the first person to open the lowboy in a minute.

I walked up to owner who was in the dining room and threw my apron at him and said loudly ” you don’t pay me enough to kill kids.. your being reported, this place needs shut down.” And told a Lady with a milkshake to not drink it. And left.

Yea that was f****n horrific.

Image credits: dot5621

#27

In a very posh restaurant a man early 60s smart suit on what looked like a first date. They chatted happily ordered wine and steak the meal was served he cut his steak while chatting looked into her eyes and dipped his steak into her red wine up to his knuckles opened his mouth wide and threw it in picked up a chip and repeatedly duncked that in her drink while she looked on shocked he wiped his fingers on his tie and drank his drink she looked visibly shocked she went to the toilet and snuck out the back and away into the night. he got a call spoke at top note to I assume a friend about how a steak meal guarantees a booty call its on tonight I ate slowly to watch him realise she had left one hour later he got madder and madder screaming into the phone at her number calling her horrid things that lass had a very lucky escape

Image credits: Plus_Data_1099

#28

A single person bathroom with a backed up toilet full of diarrhea. Management didn’t seem to care

Image credits: Alltheprettydresses

#29

Party of 10. White table cloth restaurant. Party leaves. When we approached to clear the table, they had used the corner of one table cloth to wipe their babies s****y a*s.

Image credits: um8medoit

#30

Worms squiggling around a toilet in a bathroom. (Indoors)

#31

In-N-Out in SoCal. Saw a man chow down on his double-double, then immediately throw up into his red tray. He just kinda sat there shocked, and nobody else seemed to notice but me. It was surreal honestly.

#32

Drunk guy pissing himself in the middle of Applebee’s while grinning and making eye contact with me (10 yrs old at the time).

#33

In Thailand our favorite restaurant the waitress laying on her back while the cook combed the Lice nits out of her long black hair! I can never unsee it, lol!

#34

Two pieces of fried chicken held together by a single piece of hair. We called it dingleberry chicken. Happened like 25 years ago.

#35

Actual human s**t roll out of someone’s pants leg. They didn’t seem to notice or mind.

Image credits: schplanko

#36

A rat ran out from the kitchen and jumped on a table people were eating at. They all screamed, the rat ran along the table on the booth/table trying to find a way out but essentially took the worst route possible.

This wasn’t a high-end place and none of the wait stuff seemed that bothered, they had a similar attitude to if they had brought you the wrong meal. Like apologetic, but it’s not a big deal. Which gave the impression this happens all the time and it was just another day for them.

So we stopped going there.

#37

Not me, but I’m friends with a health inspector. He told me that one time he saw a mummified mouse hanging from a drop ceiling in the kitchen. He immediately shut down the kitchen and ceased operations until cleanliness was improved. He won’t tell me which restaurant tho.

#38

A family of rats gallivanting in the premises. They looked well fed too

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