'[He] starts pulling chicken wings and chinese donuts out of his pockets': 30+ Chocolatey catastrophes and fishy faux pas that happened at all-you-can-eat buffets

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Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
Sep 16, 2023 5:00 PM EDT

When you want to get the most amount of food for your money, it's time to head to your local all-you-can-eat buffet. 

Going to buffets was always a treat when I was a child. When you walk into a buffet, you're overwhelmed with the delicious smells and dozens of food choices. Whether you want roast turkey or green beans or cheesecake, an all-you-can-eat spot is bound to have a massive selection. I always loved getting both mashed potatoes and fries, and dipping the fries in the mashed potatoes. That's the kind of delicacy you can't get just anywhere! 

Be warned, though: if you're about to chow down at a buffet in the near future, these stories will convince you otherwise. These buffet workers and those who frequently dine at them shared their most shocking stories. Especially at the buffet that has the chocolate fountain that you can dip desserts into… these tales have fully convinced me to never use a chocolate fountain. 

Up next, this very literal video store employee decided to follow their boss's orders to not leave the floor under any circumstances… too bad their boss got stuck in an elevator. 

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  • 01
    Food
    via Ulysse Pointcheval on Unsplash
  • 02
    Hair - All You can eat buffet workers what are your horror stories?
    via u/Tristanmemes123
  • 03
    Font - baddidea A waiter at a buffet in Vegas told me the following story: "Had an elderly couple flag me down at their table. The man says "this is the worst guacamole I've ever had". Waiter replied "That's wasabi..."
    via u/baddidea
  • 04
    Font - lovelyyyrose1993 Went as a customer to a golden corral. Im walking to the chocolate fountain and 3 little girls step in front of me, and all 3 of them just go hands deep in the fountain. The family was the first table by the fountain and all they did was laugh about how cute it was.. Employees turned it off immediately.
    via u/lovelyyyrose1993
  • 05
    Font - which_spartacus Years ago, I worked at an all-you-can-eat country buffet in South Carolina. I was a busboy. One day, I went to a table. It was a mess, as per usual. It looked to be a large family/group of families of around 12 people or so. The thing that stuck it in my memory is that whenever they had finished with what they were going to eat, they would scrape their plate and use it again. Scrape their plates... onto the floor next to their chairs.
    via u/which_spartacus
  • 06
    Font - So next to each chair, there was a 6inch to 18 inch pile of chicken bones, crab legs, mashed potatoes, remnants of backed potatoes, etc. Just disgusting.
    via u/which_spartacus
  • 07
    Font - 10 ASuitofT51PowerArmor. I bus at a slightly nicer resteraunt. On Fridays and Sundays we offer a prime rib and crab leg buffet, among a salad bar, hot and cold entrées, and a desert bar. It's honestly pretty nice and our buffet runner keeps anyone from doing ungodly things to the buffet. But the one incident that will always stand out to me was when this family of five came in. From the moment they came in to the moment they left, they ate as many crab legs as they possibly could. Their s
    via u/ASuitofT51PowerArmor
  • 08
    Font - return it seemed like another mountain of crab leg shells would appear in front of each member of that family. I know not how they ate so much and I honestly can't recall if they are anything besides the crab. Piles upon piles of shells were left upon the table after they left. It was truly a sight to behold. What's more is after I wiped down the table and came back with settings, I had to get another rag to wipe down the table again because something in the crab leg juice combined with o
    via u/ASuitofT51PowerArmor
  • 09
    Font - When I leave this job I'll never be able to look at crab legs the same way.
    via u/ASuitofT51PowerArmor
  • 10
    Font - Gosupanda Not mine but I had a buddy who was 400+ lbs. and the dude could put away some food. He went to a casino buffet that was one of the higher end ones that had crab legs and steak. On about his 4th or 5th plate stacked full of crab legs the manager came out and gave him $250 in free slot play to leave the buffet.
    via u/Gosupanda
  • 11
    Font - sixpackshaker My first job was as a dishwasher in an all you can eat fried catfish buffet. People are animals. Especially the ones that get far more food off the buffet than they can eat. Then they take the left overs and pile them on a plate or tray, cover in ketchup and tartar sauce, then pour their iced tea over the top of all that. A lot of people did that got at least two plates like that a night.
    via u/sixpackshaker
  • 12
    Font - nuttallfun I used to work all you can eat crab night at a place where a 600 pound Elvis impersonator used to come in with an enterouge that would crack the crab legs for him so he could grab fist fulls of crab meat, dip his hands in bowls of butter, and stuff his face as fast as possible from the moment we started selling crab until we ran out of crab or closed for the day. He was very polite and tipped me very well, but it was horrifying to watch.
    via u/nuttallfun
  • 13
    Font - Vismungcg Buffet where I live got shut down for serving coyote meat and labeling it as other meats
    via u/Vismungcg
  • 14
    Font - natlach At one point myself and 2 other family members worked at a Golden Corral (each in different sections) because small towns don't have a lot of job options for high school/college kids. I worked in the bakery which was surprisingly low in horror stories other than the chaos the remained after a large group of children came through. My brother worked the steak station. He got these regulars that would tip him pretty well if he would prepare blue steaks for them. The very idea of orde
    via u/natlach
  • 15
    Font - My cousin worked the salad bar. Management would require her to keep seafood items on the bar for long after the point where they'd be safe to consume. I think the record was chilled shrimp from Mother's day that stayed for over a week and a half. They finally caved and let her toss them when a customer complained about the smell.
    via u/natlach
  • 16
    Font - RoxyFurious watched a man at the ponderosa walk up to the buffet without a plate, untuck his t-shirt, pull the hem up to form a basket, reach into the steam tray of chicken wings with his bare hand and just load up on hot wings in his makeshift shirtbucket. The woman in the kitchen was like "please sir, could you use a plate. Or just tongs?" Guy scoffed and looked at her like she'd asked him to don a tuxedo.
    via u/RoxyFurious
  • 17
    Font - Odogogod Picked up some fish and chips recently. Saw they had "all you can eat" on Wednesdays. So I asked "What is the most that someone...." "18 pieces of fish and 3 plates (she held up this huge platter) of fries......every....single..... Wednesday." "So he eats that exact order every week?" "Yes, and he goes to a different 'all you can eat' every day of the week. He got banned from the Chinese place down the road."
    via u/Odogogod
  • 18
    Font - blooberries1 My parents owned an all you can eat buffet and I was there every day of my life from 4-14. My favorite horror story is when a couple came in to eat (obviously). They loveeed the crab legs and every time my mom put some out, they took it ALL. Also, just a reminder, crab legs are expensive! Forget the other customers, they just took it and ate it all. So they're there for maybe 2 hours now and it's getting dark. They've eaten through at least a week's stock of crab legs and my
    via u/blooberries1
  • 19
    Font - customers who wanted it but couldn't get any due to this couple. Understandably, the couple is angry. They literally flipped the chairs at their table, flipped their plates, bowls, cups, etc and completely trashed their area. Food was all over the floor, table, chairs. Sticky soda was dripping into the carpet. They left in a hurry, but someone caught their license plate. We called the cops and I think they said they charged them with something? I can't remember the aftermath details clear
    via u/blooberries1
  • 20
    Font - remember looking at the mess and feeling really angry that my sister and I had to clean it up with our mom. It was a family run business, so we didn't have much help. Anyways, that's my horror story. The end.
    via u/blooberries1
  • 21
    Font - 97 A_Wild_Taka_Appears Not an employee, but a customer. A long time ago, my mom and I picked up a friend of hers and we went to a local Chinese food buffet. This place had a thing where you could get a pound of food for $5 in a takeout container instead of sitting and eating at the restaurant if you want, so that was our plan. The three of us were browsing around the buffet line with our takeout containers, adding what we wanted to them... and then I noticed my mom's friend doing somethin
    via u/A_Wild_Taka_Appears
  • 22
    Font - He was eating a chicken wing. Like, right in front of the buffet line, hiding his face behind his takeout container. And then he took the chicken bone and put it back in the buffet tray. I walked over to my mom and told her what he was doing, and at first she thought I was joking. So she walked over towards him and now he was standing there eating a slice of watermelon right off the buffet, and then putting the rind back in the tray. So my mom is like "What the f are you doing!?" and he's
    via u/A_Wild_Taka_Appears
  • 23
    Font - So of course both me and mom are panicking, worried that they're gonna call the cops or something because of this dist. We basically pretended to not know him and continued to fill up our containers the right way. After a couple minutes, one of the employees walks up to my mom and tells her that they noticed what the guy was doing, and they noticed that we were also uncomfortable about it and didn't intend to blame us. But they warned her that if she doesn't get him to pay for the food in
    via u/A_Wild_Taka_Appears
  • 24
    Font - So of course mom tells him that we need to go. Now. And he just brushes it off like "I don't care. They're not gonna do anything!" Well, me and mom walked up to the front, paid for our containers, apologized, and walked out and left him in there. A minute later, you can see and hear him shouting with the staff. He throws his container on the ground and food splatters everywhere. He storms out, shouting insults as he leaves, and of course gives them a "I'm never coming back!", to which the
    via u/A_Wild_Taka_Appears
  • 25
    Font - So we're standing out by the car, waiting for him. Of course, we yell at him for being a piece of s We get in the car and the next thing you know, this motherf er starts pulling chicken wings and chinese donuts out of his fing pockets and eating them. We dropped him off at home and never spoke to him again.
    via u/A_Wild_Taka_Appears
  • 26
    Font - EmmyTheSweet Not a worker - but I went to Home Town Buffet and the kid in front of me was slightly shorter than the buffet bar but had his hands in the yellow jello - just massaging it. Then his mom came by and snatched him away but didn't say anything while a guy came and made himself a bowl of jello. 10 yr-old me was too appalled to say anything. I haven't eaten jello since then....
    via u/EmmyTheSweet
  • 27
    Font - allhailkircules I was once at an Old Country Buffet, waiting patiently to get some Mac & Cheese. The kid in front of me plied his plate high, and then started tapping the serving spoon to get all of the chessy goodness free from the confines of the spoon. Once he was satisfied with his handiwork, he licked the spoon clean. I didn't have any Mac & Cheese, and haven't been back since
    via u/allhailkircules
  • 28
    Font - DemocraticDoge So I work in an 'all you can eat' using tablets. This is (according to my boss) based on a Japanese kind of restaurant. We serve (mostly) asian food, from Chinese to Japanese and even some Korean. The premise is that people order their food in rounds and we then bring the food to their table when it is ready. We always warn customers before hand that, if they leave food behind, because they ordered too much, they will have to pay extra. Depending on what they left behind.
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  • 29
    Font - We have seen people try the weirdest stuff if it comes to not paying extra; people dumping food in their handbags, to people shoving it in their mouths then go to the toilet and flush it, to putting hair on it and blaming us for it (we see them pull this stuff), etc. And when we actually catch them doing it, they blame us for it and refuse to pay. Some people let it come down to the police to sort it out sometimes, there have been multiple occasions on which they were involved to solve th
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  • 30
    Font - ndkjr70 College friend worked at a chinese buffet. He said they caught a regular dipping his pizza in the wonton soup bowl (like, in the queue and not at his table) and eating it. Bite, dip, bite, dip, bite, dip. After the fourth time in a month he did it management finally kicked him out.
    via u/ndkjr70
  • 31
    Font - TACObracommander. Not an employee, but I was standing behind a woman at Hometown Buffet. She was getting some lasagna or something, basically a really cheesy pasta that when you lift the serving utensil, a lot of cheese hangs on. I witnessed her lift her pasta, twirl all the excess cheese that was connected around her index finger (and there was a lot), clip it off with her thumb nail, and then fling it back into the pasta. I knew I shouldn't have been at Hometown Buffet in the first plac
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  • 32
    Font - roxan1930 I was just a witness but I saw how a woman came in with about 5 kids and she made them all sit at a table while she got food, even if they seemed old enough to get it themselves. She just grabbed two trays, placed three plates on both of them and literally poured all the chicken nuggets on one plate so it was a huge mountain.
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    Font - She did the same to five other dishes and left 5 pans that were full or almost full before she came empty. Needless to say people were ped, especially when she did it multiple times again with other dishes and would often glare at people if she saw them taking food from dishes she probably wanted.
    via u/roxan1930
  • 34
    Font - m2toofly Family was gone and i saw their dirty plates with napkins crumpled on top so of course i clean it up and bus the plates, 15 mins later they come back and the mom starts yelling at me in spanish so i get my co worker to translate and basically her daughter's retainers were in the napkins and i already threw them away. She kept complaining about how they were $250+ so I literally had to dig thru a huge trashcan full of a sludge of food and drinks for 15 minutes. But fortunately i f
    via u/m2toofly
  • 35
    Font - 32 mysticbooka At one point i worked for a pizza place that used to have a day buffet that I would make pizzas for. One time two huge dudes come in the moment we open for the buffet. The manager on duty dropped the first two pizzas down on the buffet, turned to grab the next two, turned back and both pizzas were gone. A few minutes later both dudes walk back up and each take an entire pizza again and walk back to continue eating. They proceeded to do this over and over, grabbing an entire
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  • 36
    Font - o chilibreez Not an employee, but I witnessed a marvelous thing. Sitting in a small town Chinese buffet. Three big dudes, not obese but farm built big, come in. These guys proceed to just.. clean house. Plate after plate after plate. They weren't wasteful; they ate everything they took. They were very polite to the staff and other customers. But I bet each man ate a dozen plates, each stacked high. The cooks were working to keep up.
    via u/chilibreez
  • 37
    Font - My family and I found ourselves watching this marvelous feat of eating unfold in awe. When they approached the counter to pay, all this eating unfolding in only 45 minutes or so, the manager greeted them at the counter. In his broken English he simply said "You men. You no pay.. but you no come back." The guys gave each other and the manager a "yeah fair enough" look and left.
    via u/chilibreez
  • 38
    Font - grwrnotashowrthought. The professor of my college microbioilgy class was also a director at the state health department in charge of inspecting restaurants. The first thing she told us on day one was never ever eat at an all you can eat buffet.
    via u/grwrnotashowrthought
  • 39
    edwadokun Not a worker but I was in China for a vacation at a new buffet. I made the mistake going week 1 but my relatives were dong to go. There was a lobster station that served fresh steamed lobster. Any time a new tray came out people would swarm it. Before they made a rule about how many you can have, people just grabbed as many as they could. This one table had about 2 dozen lobsters on their table for about 6 people.
    via u/edwadokun
  • 40
    Font - Some guy at the table would constantly bring back more and more and eventually, people got ped because it was just sitting there not being eaten. At least not yet. So a few people got in the group's face and started taking their lobsters. Within 3 minutes a full-on fight breaks out people are SWINGING hard and lobsters are flying over the place.
    via u/edwadokun
  • 41
    Font - carlweaver I worked at a Shoney's in high school and we had a breakfast buffet every day and a seafood buffet on Friday nights. You'd see stuff dropped in the wrong containers, cheese sauce splattered everywhere, People tasting things off the bar instead of at their seats. The leftover Friday fish fillets became fish chowder the next morning. The leftover chowder from Friday also became chowder the next day. My
    via u/carlweaver
  • 42
    understanding is that you are not allowed to save cream-based soups and foods from one day to the next. We would serve that stuff all weekend. We also often had nasty slippery shrimp we would bread and serve. I handled so much shrimp on a daily basis there that I smelled like de d fish nearly all the time, even after showering.
    via u/carlweaver
  • 43
    Font - Saberus_Terras I was a customer, not a worker. My wife and I went to a Sweet Tomatoes for a lunch date, unlimited salad and soup was always good. One time, I saw a man over by the soups take the serving ladle for one of the weekly specials and take a big slurp from it. Then apparently he didn't like it and spat it back out into the ladle, and put the ladle back in the soup. WF, dude?
    via u/Saberus_Terras
  • 44
    Font - NightMgr There was a fairly expensive restaurant in Dallas in the 80s called Southern Kitchen. About $25 per person back then with food served to the table. Really good stuff. They were famous for cinnamon rolls. The owner said he'd seen many, many women ruin expensive purses hiding those rolls. Man I miss that place.
    via u/NightMgr
  • 45
    Font - cawatxcamt Pickle Boy There was this man who used to come into our restaurant who clearly wasn't all there in the head. He was functional but very weird. As the months progressed, he got WAY weirder. He started wearing women's underwear over his clothes, even going so far as to stuff his bra. Picture a 6'2" 250lb dude with a baby face wearing silky under nts and a lace bra over ratty jeans and a stained Hawaiian shirt; that's our guy. He went from being able to hold a sort of normal conve
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  • 46
    Font - the weirdest thing was his change of eating habits. He used to eat a variety of our soup/salad/baked potato options from our buffet, but as his mental health deteriorated, so did his desire for variety I guess. By the time his weirdness devolved to aggression and we had to 86 him, he was coming in for two things: pickles and ranch dressing. He'd pile as many pickle slices as he could onto his plate, then put so much ranch on them the dressing and pickle juice would be running all over the
    via u/cawatxcamt
  • 47
    Font - the wait station, sliming it with pickle ranch slobber. Never a dull moment with that dude around! Pickle Boy, wherever you are today, I really hope you got the help you so desperately needed but I was not sorry to see you go. ETA: For those who are asking about the term 86, on this case it means we kicked him out permanently.
    via u/cawatxcamt
  • 48
    Font - UmbralApocrypha Not a worker, sorry, but the Golden corral in the city where I went to college got shut down thanks to an employee. He found it odd that they made a busboy sign a non-disclosure form to work there, he found out it was because they were breaking just about every health and safety rule.
    via u/UmbralApocrypha
  • 49
    Font - They were serving meat that had gone green, they would leave food out overnight, the freezer once broke down for three days and they kept serving from it despite it being in the danger zone. He wore a hidden camera and gave the news the footage. It made me SO glad I never ate there
    via u/UmbralApocrypha
  • 50
    Font - I got up immediately and told the nearest staff what I'd seen, and they got right on getting that nearly full pot of soup out of there. I didn't have any more soup that visit, the what- ifs were too d strong. Which is a shame, because I love their chunky chicken noodle.
    via u/UmbralApocrypha
  • 51
    Font - Hotsauce McGuyver. I used to manage a KFC with a buffet. On Tuesdays, we had senior citizen discount so we would have livers and gizzards on the buffet. Typically, they went pretty well but not insanely fast. One day, we just couldn't keep the gizzard pan full which made no sense. There were only maybe six people in the dining room so unless they were big time gizzard eaters, one full pan should have lasted a while. I had the buffet worker put a fresh pan out and then watched as a woman w
    via u/HotsauceMcGuyver
  • 52
    Font - overflowing pile of gizzards. No big deal if she's actually eating that. It's her a will feel the pain later. that As I kept watching, though, I saw her take the plate and dump all the gizzards in her purse. I went to her table to confront her and said that the all you can eat buffet does not allow for takeout. She screamed at me and said I was accusing her of lying and stealing. I pointed out that her purse was wide open and I could see the quart-size ziploc bag filled with gizzards. I g
    via u/HotsauceMcGuyver
  • 53
    Font - never coming back and calling the manager (me) and calling the BBB. Surprisingly, I never saw her again.
    via u/HotsauceMcGuyver
  • 54
    xxluisfrewxX not me but my uncle is a chef and is right now rotating round different carverys (what us brits call buffets) trying to show them how to properly run the business and make actual edible food so people will come back and the place won't shut down. he's told me of a few places that even he's not wanted to go into cause of the state of the kitchen and he questions how they haven't k led someone yet. most recent one is chefs just cutting of the rotten pieces of food and then serving it.
    via u/xxluisfrewxx
  • 55
    Font - [deleted] local chinese buffet was shut down after multiple reports (and picture evidence) of roaches around the food and in the restaurant. we don't typically have roaches in alaska.
    via u/deleted
  • 56
    Font - Not a buffet worker but I was on holiday in the Caribbean and at the hotel there was an all you can eat buffet. I had finished my dinner and went up to the dessert station where it had self serve ice cream, and was in a queue behind two people. The person at the front was by observation a mid 30's Floridian woman. I myself was British and so was the person directly in front of me. Anyway, she gets a bowl, and takes the little ice cream scoop and fing LICKS it.
    via r/AskReddit
  • 57
    Font - Then scrunches up her face, goes to the chocolate flavour and DOES THE SAME THING AGAIN. At this point I'm just like, nah I'll pass. The person behind already left and the one in front of me just muttered "you f pig". She then turns to us with a confused expression, and says "What, there's water to wash it in anyway". So that's how I lost my faith in humanity, don't worry, I'd lost my faith in Floridians long before. EDIT: The reason I could tell she was Floridian was her accent. Hope tha
    via r/AskReddit

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