The original was about serving and a question related to the service customers receive. I was thinking it was about the things done to food prior to serving. So lets hear about it, spitting in food, adding ingredients not in the recipe, etc.
A couple of instance come in mind for me. The first was working at a Jack in the Box in the early 70’s. A couple of cops insisted on getting food for free or at reduced prices. We were threatened with traffic tickets and be arrested for petty stuff for no reason. At a small gag gift shop, I found a fake piece of cheese. It was just a piece of yellow rubber. A few nights later, here they come. Of course, I could not resist. They were handed the free food and away they went. 10 minutes later, with lights and sirens blaring, they come back. The cop that got the doctored burger was furious. The other officer comes in laughing, he thought it was funny. I gave him a couple of free burgers but he kept the cheese. It was also amazing more folks didn’t get E coli back then. when we got busy, half cook patties were common.
And while doing my mess cooking duties while in the Navy, the occasional mystery ingredient would be added to some items. And the time someone added a bunch of mushrooms to the spaghetti sauce in the officers mess. I was glad I got off work that day before it was served.
I worked at a pizza place about 20 years ago. Twice during my year of employment there were customers that we over the top assholes for no reason. Both of them got an extra ingredient on their pizzas. Once it was jalapeno juice and the other time it was anchovey juice. Neither of them called in to complain.
I used to do the sandwiches at Wendy’s. Usually I worked the drive-thru.
If some jerk came through the drive-thru and made a huge order I would sometimes give them a condiment burger … same thing they ordered, of course, but with a LOT of everything.
The nastier E. coli strains that cause bloody diarrhea and death have pretty much only emerged in the last 20-30 years, FYI.
I worked as a food server in my freshman dorm cafeteria and never did anything rotten, but had a great time seeing the looks on people’s faces while explaining exactly what I thought was in the “Jamaican Jerk Chicken”.
Well, I participated in the original, so I might as well jump into the sequel… The worst transgressions I ever saw were fry-borrowing and bun-scraping. Fry-borrowing entails people in the kitchen snagging fries off a plate that is waiting to be carried out to a customer. Bun-scraping is the economical solution when faced with a customer who decides maybe they didn’t want mayo afterall. (Like in the commercial, but with a clean knife as opposed to the edge of a table.) I prefer to think that food-spitting and more unpleasant activities are pretty much the product of urban legends.
Ive worked in a couple restaraunts doing everything.
Fry-borrowing - Well lots of times fries arent made 1 order at a tim, theres ussually some place with a hot lamp over it that keeps fries warm for a bit. THATs where we get our free fries.
Bun Scraping - Ive seen this at a seafood buffett I used to work at.
Ive never seen anyone spit in anyone’s food or anything gross. Reports of this or overexagerated IMO. You should worry about more unintentional or lazy health code violations, ie meat storage/preperation, cockroaches, freshness of food.
You should trust your instincts, if you here rumors about people getting sick or food not seeming fresh dont go there. Most places are respectable though, just be vigilant.
A long time ago I worked for a nationl pizza chain. We had this customer who worked the night shift at a local motel who would call in an order about 5 minutes before closing for a pizza with extra cheese. He’d call back a couple of minutes later to change the order to regular cheese. We figured he was doing this to get free extra cheese, sinc nobody would remake his pizza 2 minutes to closing. One time the asst. manager and the driver took his pizza (regular cheese–we never made the extra cheese one) to him, after spitting on it and holding it out the car window so it was stone cold when he got it. I don’t recall whether he ever ordered again…
