I worked at both Mickey Deeze and Pizza Hut. I worked night shift at both and both had pretty chill shift managers. Neither one cared about us eating what we wanted after closing and they never had us pay.
At McDonalds I’d make up these monster burgers with tons of bacon, pickles and cheese. I’d make myself a fresh batch of fries and a bunch of apple pies.
At Pizza Hut I’d make up pies with tons of toppings and experimented until I found the ratio of most amount of toppings but would still cook all the way through. For the sauce I’d make a mix of BBQ sauce and ranch. It was awesome.
The last four months I worked there one of the drivers, I was also a driver, became a shift manager and took over night shift. He made a deal with the liquor store across the street where we would trade pizzas for beer. So most nights after hours we’d trade and be sitting in the back eating pizza, drinking beer and telling stories. One of the funnest times in my life.
I worked for a summer at a Chili’s, and I still will eat there. The menu’s extremely different now, but they had a pretty good attitude about things like sanitation, food safety, etc… when I was there, so I had/have no worries about getting sick, and I haven’t ever really stopped liking hamburgers and the other types of food they sell.
I worked at a Baskin-Robbins ice cream store 25 years ago. One of the perks was that you got to eat ice cream pretty much whenever you wanted to. They actually wanted you to sample as many flavors as you could so you could intelligently comment on them to customers.
As it happens, I don’t have a big sweet tooth (salt is my big weakness), but at the same time do enjoy ice cream occasionally. So I intentionally paced myself and might have a sundae or cup of ice cream once or twice a week. What I observed was a lot of new employees scarfing down as much ice cream as they could and getting sick of it after a short while. But I never got sick of it and to this day still enjoy their tasty ice cream
I started at Caniglia’s, a locally owned Italian restaurant at age 14. That family owned four other places. They are all closed now, but I loved the last meal I had there. I would absolutely love to get a large double crust combo pizza from there.
I worked at a couple of other Italian places after that, but they are gone too. It seems like the third or fourth generation just isn’t interested in running restaurants.
I worked summers in a pretty nice steak house in a casino. The food was real good, although we ate in the employee cafeteria. Ah, but you know, every now and then one of those inch thick Ribeyes or a slice of Prime Rib would get, “misplaced”.
They had something called “Whisky Beef” that was simply fantastic! To this day, I can’t duplicate it. I wasn’t into cooking back then, and it never occurred to me to get a recipe.
