'I'm surprised we didn't all quit that day': 20+ Fast food workers share what happened on their worst day of work

Author image for Remy Millisky
Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
Jun 24, 2024 3:00 PM EDT

When you're working in fast food, not a day goes by without some kind of customer shenanigans. You can head into work in the most peaceful mood, ready to do your best and provide quality customer service, and yet by the end of your shift, the customers will have sapped all of your patience. That's because a lot of fast food customers have the attitude that their order is the most important thing in the whole world. I know, they're hungry, but it's more than hunger: entitlement will have them glaring over the counter to watch as the kitchen workers make their meal, or demanding that you make their drink faster. No matter how many other customers are around, they're insistent that they should get their meal first. 

One person shared that their worst day at work came while they were working at a restaurant known for its chicken. On that day, they had both a visit from higher-ups, as well as a massive order requiring hundreds of pieces of food. Giant orders like this can take hours to prepare, so this truly sounds like a nightmarish day for everyone involved. You can check out a bunch of eye-opening stories down below, as told by workers of all sorts of fast-food restaurants. 

Next up, read about some hilarious malaphors (mixed metaphors) that some creative people came up with, like one person who said, "I woke up on the short end of the stick." 

Advertisement
  • 01
    BURGERS and FRES
    via Marcel Heil on Unsplash
  • 02
    What were some of the worst experiences you have had while working in the fast food industry?
    via r/AskReddit
  • 03
    blatently_blunt I worked at Starbucks and a woman ordered her coffee at 140 degrees in the drive thru. She walks back in the cafe after pulling out and complains that her coffee was 139 degrees because she has a thermometer in her car and she demands it be remade. I laughed at her and asked if she was joking and she demanded to see my manager. My manager
    via u/blatently_blunt
  • 04
    remade it but I didn't get in any trouble. She was ridiculous but Starbucks' policy is to remake anything if a customer asks for it. Another time there was a long wait during rush hour in the morning and I apologized to a guy that it was taking a long time to get his white mocha to him. He glared at me and yelled, "you don't really mean you're sorry!" and refused to
    via u/blatently_blunt
  • 05
    be cordial. He continued to look at me with disdain for the next few minutes. It made me super sad at the time. I really was sorry! I learned not to be affected by people so much as I got older.
    via u/blatently_blunt
  • 06
    Lindvaettr I was working at a pub shortly after college. During the evenings, things would always get pretty stressful and hectic. People would be snapping at each other, or saying mean things, or arguing, or whatever. Pretty standard stuff in a high stress situation like that.
    via u/Lindvaettr
  • 07
    One day, though, in the middle of dinner, the other cook (my immediate manager, but not the restaurant manager) apparently just had a bad night. He'd been getting progressively more agitated all night (not with me, luckily). Suddenly, a waitress came back and complained that one of her tables was complaining because the food was cold. First, the
    via u/Lindvaettr
  • 08
    manager responded by telling her that if she'd come get her orders when they were done, they wouldn't be cold, but when she made some comment back, he snapped. He picked up a hot pan from the stove, and I was terrified for a second that he was going to throw it at her. Instead, he swung it at hard as he could at the entire stack of clean plates and
    via u/Lindvaettr
  • 09
    knocked almost all of them off the table, shattering them on the floor. Then he literally tore off his apron. and stormed out, but not before knocking a tray of full out of another watiress's hands.
    via u/Lindvaettr
  • 10
    Weirdly enough, the store manager was going to let him keep his job if he'd admit being out of line. She brought him in during lunch the next day to talk to him, and instead of apologizing, he smashed a coffee cup against the wall and left. All told, it was probably for the best.
    via u/Lindvaettr
  • 11
    inosilic had a rough looking guy in a beat-up truck try to use 1 year old coupons. I refused to take them. That was a mistake. He held up the drive thru and screamed and screamed at me. Including "smarten up son, or you're going nowhere in life". Made me feel like until I
    via u/inosilic
  • 12
    realized that someone like that who is screaming those things at a 15 year running the drive thru, did not go anywhere in life.
    via u/inosilic
  • 13
    semichaels I was a waitress at a pizza place and an older man and woman flagged me over and they just start yelling at me. going on and on that they found metal in their food. And she's showing me and yelling and I am trying to apologize and saying we can make you a new pizza, I am
    via u/semichaels
  • 14
    sorry, I have no idea where it came from. After several minutes of yelling the man. gets quiet and he goes "oh, I lost a filling". Then they tried to be all nice and laugh it off. I just wanted to say screw you for treating me like
    via u/semichaels
  • 15
    Trinkers I worked at McDonald's part-time while I was in college. One day, I was working the drive-through, and this guy ordered a lot of drinks. One of them was low on soda syrup, but instead of just telling me about it like a rational person so I could give him a replacement drink, he threw the extra
    via u/Trinkers
  • 16
    large drink at me. Of course the lid came off and I was soaking wet. The manager, who was actually pretty good as far as fast food managers go, saw this happen. He took off running into the parking lot, flagged down the driver
    via u/Trinkers
  • 17
    before he could leave, and told him to never come back. Then he came back in, found me a dry uniform shirt, and let me have a few minutes on the clock to sit in the break room and calm down.
    via u/Trinkers
  • 18
    mystriddlery I worked at Ikea in the restaurant, not the main one, but the one at the end. I remember we sold out of pizza and the next one was six minutes. We had six people ask for pizza and we asked if they were fine with waiting, so we eventually sold out of the pizza that was still in the oven. Well it's finally ready, people are waiting, they
    via u/mystriddlery
  • 19
    already paid, and my coworker took it out of the oven, as another coworker was calling his name from behind him. When he turned his head to see who called the pizza slid off the peel and fell cheese side down, making a huge splat, the sauce went everywhere, it looked like this and there was just a collective "AHHH"
    via u/mystriddlery
  • 20
    from the people who had ordered that pizza. At first I was laughing because at least it wasnt me, but then we had to process six refunds while the line piled up :P
    via u/mystriddlery
  • 21
    Magnese When I worked at Subway, this guy asked for siracha sauce on his sandwich. I put the regular amount on, then he asks for more. I put more on. He asks for more.
    via u/Magnese
  • 22
    Eventually, he's SCREAMING at me to put more siracha on the sandwich, to which I end up emptying out the entire bottle on it. He's still not satisfied, so I have to get more. One half bottle of siracha later, he says it's enough. Still remember him to this day.
    via u/Magnese
  • 23
    Sy... I used to work at Sonic. On rainy days, especially when it was pouring, people would intentionally park across the lot (the spare spots that weren't covered by their famous awning), and make the car hops walk the food out there to them. We'd be standing there outside their car window with the food on a tray, waiting for them to roll down their window.
    via u/SydneyDavisJrJr
  • 24
    They'd take their sweet time getting out their cards or cash while we were getting drenched. All the while, there were plenty of open spots under the awning, closer to the restaurant and out of the rain. By the time they took their food from us, they would demand the meal for free since it was wet. Mind you, not wet enough to give back the food, just wet enough to demand a full refund while they shoved
    via u/SydneyDavisJrJr
  • 25
    the offending fries in their mouth. Those people also never tipped. Also- we had people who would make us go back inside and replace their 44oz drink four and five times, even when you insisted it was the right drink. "This aint diet." "Sir, I poured this drink myself, I can assure you it's diet. "I want you to go back in there and do it again, and I better not have to send this back a third time."
    via u/SydneyDavisJrJr
  • 26
    KaleidoKitten I worked at a place known for waffles. We actually kept our store fairly clean, so there wasn't an issue there. Two of my favorite stories actually involved equipment breaking down. 1. You know the waffle irons? Apparently they sound like a stereo shorting when they decide to die. I worked
    via u/KaleidoKitten
  • 27
    third shift, so it's nice and quiet at about 0200, and then ZZZZZZBOOM. I nearly hit the roof. The electric outlet was sparking and on fire. Thankfully, our cook managed to get the fire out and the thing unplugged before it caused any real damage, but the whole place smelled like smoke and fried wires
    via u/KaleidoKitten
  • 28
    for a good day or so. 2. This is probably the worst, but even then I'm still warmed by how well our crew held together. A couple minutes after midnight on what was now New Years Day, our dish washer decided to journey to the giant garbage heap in the sky.
    via u/KaleidoKitten
  • 29
    HAPPY NEW YEAR So we are absolutely slammed with drunk people ordering a heap of food and no working dish washer. The entire night, us three servers and the one (!!!) cook, who is the same from the first story, took shifts hauling all the dirty dishes onto a cart and running them into the back room to wash by hand in the
    via u/KaleidoKitten
  • 30
    three section sink. One part for dirty dishes, one for soaking/washing, and one for drying. One of our servers was trained on the grill, so she and our cook would swap out every half hour, and even the cook was taking orders at times. Our regulars were stacking plates and acting as bus boys, my own friends were wiping down tables so the people standing could sit
    via u/KaleidoKitten
  • 31
    down, the plates and bowls were being used as soon as they hit the shelves. It was a nightmare. At the end of the night, when the manager and the morning crew showed up, they got a run down from us. The manager stared, then pointed at the back door and told us all to go take a long break before we had to do our end of shift duties.
    via u/KaleidoKitten
  • 32
    We all had that thousand yard stare, but lived. it, we
    via u/KaleidoKitten
  • 33
    YourDaily Devil Does Starbucks count? A woman demanded room (space for sugar, cream) in her latte, then burst back in line demanding more room,
    via u/YourDaily Devil
  • 34
    then berated me for throwing out the ones she returned for damaging the environment (because I didn't resell them, apparently) then demanded less room. Our manager ended up telling her she just had to leave because the line became enormous.
    via u/YourDaily Devil
  • 35
    System_Shutdown Worked on a pancake stand at a concert. We had two kinds of fillings and sometimes people would ask for both at the same time. I usually just spread one on one half and the other on the other half and rolled it up so that they'd get same amount of each with each bite.
    via u/System_Shutdown
  • 36
    Two days in my boss sees this and absolutely flips his in front of some guy who at that point has been my regular customer. Apparently i was supposed to spread one kind on whole pancake and then just do little dabs with the other one. The customer said he liked pancakes the way i made them but from that point forward i was not allowed to make them the same way.
    via u/System_Shutdown
  • 37
    kaaaristy Worked at chick-fil-a, woman kept saying "thank you" after I said "my pleasure." We went 'round and 'round.
    via u/kaaaristy
  • 38
    TheElusiveGoose10 Not necessarily fast food, but I used to work in a bakery where our "Head Chef" had a reputation of being a grade a Our nicknames were stupid and dumb We had to work at an insane pace and he acted as if he was God's gift to Earth.
    via u/TheElusiveGoose10
  • 39
    The one that stuck with me was when I made a customer a sandwich and she requested a side of avocado. Our avocados were not ripe at all. I mean it was like plastic! I mentioned this to her and she said it was fine. So I sliced it for her and gave it to her. She calls up like an hour later complaining that her avocado was not ripe and she was unhappy. People are stupid.
    via u/TheElusiveGoose10
  • 40
    Vinstur Not fast food but at a restaurant. I was the waiter for a nice, older couple and they ordered salads as an appetizer before their meal. After a couple minutes, the man calls me over and shows me the tip of a broken drill bit he bit into from his salad. Expecting a lawsuit, my heart skipped a beat and went into adrenaline mode as I quickly
    via u/Vinstur
  • 41
    got the manager. Tom came over white faced and apologized profusely while offering a few gift cards and comping (free) their meal. Shockingly, the couple didn't threaten or get irate. Found out later that Tom had been drilling near the prep line in the kitchen earlier in the day to fix something and saw the drill bit snap but couldn't find the tip.
    via u/Vinstur
  • 42
    The couple even tipped me well. You dodged a bullet Tom!
    via u/Vinstur
  • 43
    -SweetesFox- I used to work in a bakery in a grocery store. I was the cake decorator and the cakes were in containers and in a cooler that customers could just take and go to pay. While, two kids, 6 and 8 years old-ish ran over and started throwing the cakes on the ground. Like 'happy birthday to the ground'
    via u/-SweetesFox-
  • 44
    style. They were on their 6th cake before I could reach them and took the cakes in their hands. Their mom came over, sight and just turn the kids around and started to the produce section like nothing happens. No apology, no acknowledgment, no words to the kids about the one $100s they just cost us and my time.
    via u/-SweetesFox-
  • 45
    Whovianna I went to hand a drink out the drive thru window and the asshats in the car threw a large blue Powerade all over me. My manager said if I went home early due to being soaked, I was fired.
    via u/Whovianna
  • 46
    [deleted] I worked at a Canes Chicken around graduation season. He had massive catering orders, like 600 chicken fingers, 500 pieces of toast, 250 coleslaws... Multiple orders like this on the same day while also being our busiest day of the week. We were going nuts, even the owner was there to help. Of course, this is the day corporate decides to make a
    via u/[deleted]
  • 47
    surprise visit. The owner got reamed (even though we were consistently scoring as one of the top locations on a regular day), so he reamed the manager, who then reamed us. So we're already stressed out and tired and now we're being shouted at by irate customers, the owner, and our manager. I'm surprised we didn't all quit that day.
    via u/[deleted]

Want More? Follow Us and Add Us as a Preferred Source on Google.

Tags

restaurant restaurants restaurant work fast food boss workplace-stories jobs job bosses work coworkers customers karen-customers entitled customers workplace
Scroll Down For The Next Article