21 Workers and Customers Share Their Amazing and/or Dreadful Buffet Stories

Author image for Eric Lund
Eric Lund
Aug 11, 2019 5:00 PM EDT

Buffets are a very interesting thing. For some, the concept of having a restaurant where the goal is to just eat as much as you can seems completely ridiculous. Everyone's been to one, with mixed experiences. Whether it's the diverse clientele, the sometimes sketchy owners, the dubious protection of a sneeze guard, or whatever might be found by health inspectors, they're places full of wonder and potential horror.

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  • 01
    Text - Text - Jef_Wheaton 35.7k points 3 days ago Not a "Horror" story, just funny. S 3 I worked at Wendy's when they had salad bars. You could get a single-serving bowl (They used to serve eat-in chili in Styrofoam bowls, and the Large doubled as a chili bowl), or "All you can eat" platters. (The Taco Salad bottom plate.) On a slow afternoon, this guy came in and got a single serving bowl. After a few minutes, our manager motioned to me and the sandwich guy to discreetly take a look at the sala
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  • 02
    Text - Text - Odogogod 35.1k points 3 days ago 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....ever....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."
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  • 03
    Text - 3 days ago ndkjr70 26.4k points 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
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  • 04
    Text - allhailkircules 14.0k points 3 days ago 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
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  • 05
    Text - lovelyyyrose1993 11.3k points 3 days ago 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
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  • 06
    Text - Text - TACObracommander 9.2k points 3 days ago 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 Home
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  • 07
    Text - Roz-Boy 24.2k points 3 days ago Not an employee, but once I saw someone using their shirt as a bag and filled it with bbq chicken wings.
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  • 08
    Text - Vismungcg 8.6k points 3 days ago 2 Buffet where I live got shut down for serving coyote meat and labeling it as other meats
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  • 09
    Text - Text - mysticbooka 22.4k points 3 days ago edited 3 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 t
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  • 10
    Text - natlach 8.5k points 3 days ago 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.
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  • 11
    Text - Text - Valkrine10 4.8k points 3 days ago .edited A woman came in with two of her kids, and had a pretty regular meal. You pay when you leave at our place, and she decided to sneak out with her younger daughter before paying, leaving her underage son alone at the table. We caught on pretty quick and sent someone after her, who found her in her car in the parking garage, waiting for her son to come as well. She refused to come back in and pay, so we had to keep her son 'hostage' until the p
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  • 12
    Text - Text - Zenkikid 4.7k points 3 days ago edited 3 Not a worker but I once saw a grown man have a child like meltdown over the fact that he showed up to Soup Plantation too late and missed out on the biscuits and gravy
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  • 13
    Text - Text - 3 days ago edited 3 days ago 2 chilibreez 3.8k points 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. My family
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  • 14
    Text - Text - which_spartacus 3.8k points 3 days ago S 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. So next
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  • 15
    Text - Text - Saberus_Terras 2.8k points 3 days ago I was a customer, not a worker. My wife and I went to a Sweet Tomatoes for lunch date, unlimited salad and soup was a 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. WTF, dude? I got up immediately and told the nearest staff what I'd seen, and they got
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  • 16
    Text - Text - e pm_me_nothing____ 8.4k points 3 days ago Worked in a buffet restaurant for a few weeks a while back. It was fairly common to see people do disgusting things like sneeze in the food or just poke their fingers in things like sauces to taste them. Even saw one guy literally drop a slice of pizza on the floor and after awkwardly looking around, he put it right back Brought it up a couple of times, but the restaurant wasn't doing well, and we were told that we couldn't accept the loss
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  • 17
    Text - obeyyourbrain 21.5k points 4 days ago I had a co-worker that briefly managed a Ryan's buffet. He said that it was fairly common for people to gorge themselves, then purge in the restroom and start eating again so that they could "get their money's worth".
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  • 18
    Text - Text - NightMgr 16.5k points 3 days ago 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
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  • 19
    Text - . edited 3 days ago blooberries1 8.3k points 3 days ago 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 a
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  • 20
    Text - Text - Leigh_Lemon 15.5k points 3 days ago Obligatory "not a buffet worker", just a witness. We were waiting in line for the soft serve machine at Golden Corral. The woman in front of us gets up to the machine and awkwardly jerks the handle around in an attempt to get at the sweet sweet ice cream within. She's pushing, pulling, twisting, doing literally everything but turning it to the right (which would have dispensed the ice cream). She's really perplexed by this. So she takes the next
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  • 21
    Text - EmmyTheSweet 7.3k points 3 days ago Not a worker -but I went to HomeTown 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..
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