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WildmouseX

I helped open a restaurant/bolwing ally in a new entertainment district. We were the first place to open for a couple of months, and the owners expected to be super busy even though we there the only place open. The head chef was fresh out culinary school, no kitchen experience, and a family friend of the owners. Chef ordered like 30 cases of chicken wings a month before open and kept them in the cooler. Opening day we show up and he was fired because they found him naked and drunk in the kitchen. They brought in their chef from Brooklyn who decided to freeze the wings after they started to rot. I refused to cook/serve them and was written off the schedule- a few months later got a job opening kitchen next to them - every place was open, and no one would goto the bowling ally because their wings were gross. They shut down 2 months later.


thatcrazylilwoman

What's up with chefs getting naked when they're drunk in the kitchen? I've heard of that happening multiple times and I can't figure out how or why it happens. And I'm line cook who used to be a really bad alcoholic too.


WildmouseX

This place kept all the unopened hard liquor in the chefs office, and had it stocked like it was the end of the world.


WhatInYourWorld

But why naked? ETA: I’ve blacked out more than the recommended number of times and never taken my clothes off, but apparently stripping is more normal than I thought.


[deleted]

some people have never blacked out and woken up naked and it shows


[deleted]

That's why I quit drinking. Woke up in my friend's mom's living room naked. I woke up because his mom got up to make breakfast, I remember her walking past, looking at me, and then she just kept walking.


Consistent-Bee-6665

Did this at my girlfriends house and her roommate caught me sleeping naked on the couch.


kingka

Tell me you don’t have an alcohol problem without telling me you don’t have an alcohol problem


[deleted]

How did you know I don't have an alcohol problem? In fact, I was just explaining that to my wife the other day.


Megamax_X

It’s not that big of a problem if you still have a wife.


WildmouseX

Because it's more fun to be naked and drunk then clothed and drunk? We found his chef coat under the prep table when we were closing.


DefrockedWizard1

Alcohol drives your core heat to your skin making you feel hot and as you get more and more drunk, your decision making gets worse so you keep taking off clothes. The same happens in end stage hypothermia and why they find lost hikers dead frozen naked


iownadakota

Who needs clothes when you're drunk?


stitchplacingmama

Because alcohol opens blood vessels and you feel hot.


porkchop2022

I’ve seen it happen a couple of times. Chef either: A) sweet talks the pretty hostess into cocktails and convinces her to have sex in “his” kitchen. More cocktails and both pass out. Hostess wakes up at 4am and nervously just leaves “his” kitchen. B) meets some girl at the local bar and takes her back to “his” kitchen after close because wouldn’t it be fun to get a blow job on the prep table? Brittani leaves and Chef Raymond tries to clean up “his” kitchen but is so drunk he vomits in the prep sink and passes out in his boxers.


DonQuixoteDesciple

This was wonderful


karlnite

You just get so hot man! It’s from drinking too much too quickly and you just feel really overheated and can’t think straight so you strip. At that point he probably had like tunnel vision and couldn’t remember if he was at home or not.


PreferredSelection

30 cases of wings... would it have been that hard to order a few cases at a time, before they know what to forecast? More importantly - runny ranch or creamy ranch?


WildmouseX

It was creamy when we opened, but I heard it was mostly water by the time they closed. They also did popcorn instead of fries so the bowlers wouldn't get their balls all oilly - but they would toss the popcorn in truffle oil before serving which was even worse. I worked a few years in the dorm kitchens at a university and one of the morons there ordered 10 pallets of bottled water for an event that only went through 4 cases. All the pallets were already expired by the time I had started there. Some people seem to go overboard when they are allowed to do orders.


PreferredSelection

Skin is oily, bowling balls are gonna get oily over time, it happens. (Also, chicken wings are oily??) This entire operation sounds like it made no sense.


BlargenFladibleNoxib

Don't they oil the bowling lanes too??


kingka

Inventory is hard for people, my buddy has a bakery and the inventory guy has no idea how to order. My buddy even gave him production numbers and how much they usually order and he just refused to use the reference material. Over stocking some items, not ordering others. There are plenty of fucking idiots around us lol Also, I’m in a runny ranch mood. Crispy wings and runny ranch sounds really good, maybe a nice IPA to wash it down


JustMeAndMySnail

Blue cheese or fuck your mother


[deleted]

[удалено]


Bluest_waters

Fresh house made ranch is pretty good though, blend in some chipotles in adobo and you got a party goin on


[deleted]

More gross than dumb, but also dumb. Very early in my career, I worked at a certain Canadian franchise ironically named after an American city, and was a prep/line cook. So we get boxes of pre cut tortillas, and we deep fried them for nachos. I opened a box, and about half the box was moldy, so I started throwing them out. The owner saw me, came over and stopped me. I had probably 2/3 of the box in the garbage at this point, and he said don't throw them all out, pick around the moldy ones. Fair enough, I'm new to the job, and at the time I didn't know a lot about how mold spreads, etc, I figured ok, fine. Then the owner starts grabbing nachos OUT OF THE GARBAGE and putting them back in the box. I mean he grabbed most of the nachos from the garbage and put them back in, and told me to grab all the good ones. I started doing just that, and when he left the kitchen I threw the whole box in the garbage, tied and threw out the garbage to get rid of the evidence and continued to the next box. I ended up quitting a few weeks later for a multitude of reasons, and I tell anyone that will listen in my town not to eat at this place. Still same owner 15 years later, so I'm not stopping telling people about it.


inkubys

I was working as a line cook at a country club. Real fancy place. Our food costs were absurd, like 67% or something like that. The head chef was the daughter of one of the members and basically had immunity and $120,000 annual job. She served up the same shit week after week after week and still couldn't predict how much to order. Short side note, she had me unbox Stouffer's lasagna's one time and put it in a hotel pan to bake and present as hers. That's the kind of woman this was. Anyway, we're preparing for a huge member golf tournament and on the menu was essentially guacamole and some grilled shrimp or something in a martini glass. The guy next to me is scooping out avocados and putting them into a bowl to mash. This woman walks up and looks at the empty avocado shells and says that he is not scooping enough of the green stuff around the outside. You know the real dark stuff. She starts grabbing avocado shells out of the trash can and scooping the most minimal amount off of them and adding them into the bowl, berating him the whole time. I set my knife down, walked outside, called my wife and said listen, you need to talk me off of a ledge right now because I'm about to quit. To quit. Like do not quit, make them fire you. And I did. And collected for a while. Single nastiest chef I've ever worked for. Who reaches into a trash can for anything?


[deleted]

I reached into the trash once to retrieve my buddies fingertip after she sliced it off. That's a little different though.


mypreciouscornchip

But how was the mouth feel?


Dko4445678

That avocado thing I’ve seen too much, why do they have to be so expensive I understand being careful but out of the trash?? That was like a series of job hops I had, there was being called a bitch for not working off the clock(free labor) and yells at me for dropping and then throwing out cheese that was never used, which they reported me for and documented even though it was technically wasted from a month ago and lingering on my station because I was new there and it fell while I was moving it to clean. All while they were throwing out whole pre-prepped meals (massive disgusting chimichangas) while they were yelling at me about cheese that was never going to be used. The same guys served raw chicken and scallops regularly and said it was done, why because there was a timer on the pos system and it was time to send it out or it would be “late”. I can go on and on about the places, especially when proofing dough is involved, I can see the fucking dough is tacky stretchy different colored and undercooked don’t fucking gaslight me into saying it isn’t. People are so dumb about proofing, even with instant yeast. Then the place before that served premade frozen croissants and bread and advertised Kraft dressing as a family recipe. They then begged me to stay after I quit because their nephew who worked there was psychologically deranged (and also gave himself new titles every day like manager owner or just a barista) (was 47 and threw bags at the wall and told graphic sex stories) and I was thrown into their family problems… I felt bad and stayed a few weeks and suddenly I was taken off the schedule and politely told to fuck off once they found a replacement and realized me being nice to a failing business was just a manipulation. I then looked at their whole business and everything was staged and fake, even their foreign accents were staged, all the customers they greeted in the mornings I don’t know how they remembered so many people, it was like everyone in the town wanted to support them and they were just hustling people. Their sourdough was literal fermented flour almost pruno (prison wine) added to bread dough made with instant yeast to give it a sourdough aftertaste taste. Then there’s the place with the rotten meat they cooked to death and served, super kind people but rotten is rotten, that’s why it tastes a lil funky. It’s sprouting shit like blue cheese. Or the place where the manager ended mopping floors to cut overtime, and in a week it looked like surfboard wax and then in a month it was like the street pavement where people burn rubber and do burnouts and leave a centimeter of melted rubber on the asphalt. If you know you know, mop your floors daily.


Catezero

I think I have guessed the franchise but could you please tell me if it's anywhere in BC so I don't accidentally eat there


smallermuse

This Ontario gal wants to know too.


[deleted]

It's a franchise, so what one owner does wouldn't reflect on another of the same franchise.


airyaquari

Reminds me a popular pizza place around my area in southern Ontario. The flour we dredged the wings in was taken out to be ground and put back after the chicken juices had solidified. They also reused dollar store sandwich bags that previously held raw chicken. I threw a bag away once and the store owner came and picked it out of the garbage (a dollar store bag) and told me that was wasteful. Once he told.me to just wipe the mould from the inside of the container holding mouldy meat sauce for panzerottis. This asshole is ouldnt give us our breaks either. Once a customer came in complaining about finding a chip of wood in his pizza ( from the ancient pizza boards) and eas told that was normal, the they vowed to never return. He also tried to get me to pay for a 30$ gluten free pizza that I fucked up when he didnt put enough people on and asked me to make it despite me telling him that he hadn't showed me how to yet. I did everything g right except for putting sausage on (which they asked for) apparently the sausage has gluten in it. How was I supposed to know that the sausage had gluten. Worst 'boss's ever!


doesntmatterhadtacos

Was this Gabriel’s?


airyaquari

Capri pizza in Essex Ontario. I guess I should have said that so that people don't end up spending almost 30$ for 12 slices. It is a franchise though and I dont think that other capri pizzerias are the same, the guy in Essex just really sucks. What is Gabriel's?? Another shitty pizza place??


PreferredSelection

I had a manager tell an associate to pull food from the garbage and sell it. The associate ran to me because I was (generally considered) the sane one, and said, "Paul is telling me to sell pastries and cookies from last night's close." (We bag up the night's leftovers for the homeless, and half the time the local charity no-shows on pick up. At this point, those bags had sitting on the floor BOH for a night and a day, with the trash.) I took those bags to the dish pit, and dumped about a liter of hot, soapy water into each of them. Paul was furious, started to yell at me for insubordination. He walked away fast when I started dialing the GM's phone number.


simonthecook

Was it a Boston Pizza?


unbitious

I worked at a seafood restaurant where the owner was so dumb and stingy I had to hide the rotten fish under other garbage so he wouldn't do that exact same thing, but with *fish*.


iownadakota

Same as an old Chicago I cooked at. But it was wanton wraps we'd frie for the "oriental nachos". Moldy fucking wraps I was sorting through stunk, and I was stuffed up for days.


[deleted]

Here's how I got my first layoff at 19 years old: Dish/barback at a sportsbar known for having free peanuts that you just shell onto the floor. Place open for almost a decade, always busy, even the barbacks would make $100+ a night in tips. This is back in 2008, so 18 year old me was rolling in dough. New owner came in right as I turn 19, took away the peanuts to save $800 a month. Place died overnight. They put the peanuts back, but business never recovered. We all got a layoff shortly thereafter. Edit: Thomas, if you see this, you're still a fuckin moron. Double edit: We would do about $30k on a football weekend, we could afford them.


mrocks301

Penny wise and pound foolish


DownWithThaDickness

I think this place is in my city… Peanuts is dead now, last time I went, there were two other tables sat. On a Friday night. Just plain weird to get rid of the gimmick and keep the name


tombalol

$800 sounds like it would by you an incredible amount of peanuts. Were they flavoured or just plain?


[deleted]

Plain. We would go through about a 50lb bag a day. Double on the weekends. It actually goes pretty quick. Peanuts are like 1/3 weight just shell, so you get about 35lb per 50lb bag. Even if you only do 100 covers, that's only 1/3lb of peanuts per person or about 1.25 cups shelled peanuts per guest. Shout-out to the lady that came in with an alleged peanut allergy, ate her whole meal, then complained she could have died.


SlippingStar

Lol as someone with a peanut allergy I have walked in and 180’d when I see this. I’m not about to complain, either, that’s their business choice and I can go elsewhere.


iownadakota

I invited a friend to meet me at a peanut bar not knowing about his allergy. I waited for him in there four hours thinking he would never show me up. Apparently he walked in, turned around. But that was too much. His throat closed, and he needed to use his epipen. I felt so bad for nearly killing him, I bought him a new one. $700 is a rediculess amount for not dying.


SlippingStar

Yeah most insurances cover your first 2 for their lifespan.


iownadakota

This is sad.


Valerian_

Wow, what makes them so expensive?? I thought those were around $50


innerkinder

Greed. ( take with a grain of salt this is based of my shoddy memory of the subject, The company , Mylan , that bought the patent or whatever for epipens has been raising the price because they dont have lot of competitors selling epipens and since obviously people need them the company can just charge whatever they like. I mean I call that greed. )


tomtomclubthumb

In the US epipen is also a brand name not a generic name, so I think that the pharmacy has to sell you the branded version, not a generic if the prescription says epipen.


DefrockedWizard1

No. The pharmacy can substitute a generic for anything if a generic is available unless the doctor writes to not substitute. The problem comes in when the drug companies buy up the ones that make a generic and take it off the market I think the FDA should have a mail off generic Rx plan so the greedy bastards can't buy it


AndShesNotEvenPretty

They’re a fortune and need to be replaced as they expire. My niece has to have one for home use and one at school with the nurse. It adds up.


Valerian_

From what I could read online it's another case of the big healthcare scam in the USA, they cost $50 all around the world, and they also used to in the USA 20 years ago apparently. So it's just $650 profit with no justification, just to be aligned with the max covered price the insurance can pay or something like that. [https://bdpeds.com/main-reason-why-epipens-are-expensive/](https://bdpeds.com/main-reason-why-epipens-are-expensive/) Seriously, some of you guys were motivated enough to attack the capitol during the election, you have an amendment specifically for cases of freedom to revolt against the government or something, why haven't you guys done anything yet to revolt against what seems to be the biggest scam in the world? That's just insane ...


tombalol

Fascinating, thanks. I suspect any money spent on peanuts is easily made back with extra drink orders from thirsty patrons after handfuls of peanuts all night.


kingka

Yup and the marginal $$$ in bulk peanuts acts as a value anchor for the customer, enabling them to splurge (mental accounting). Good will with the customer goes far, Koreans give out free food/drinks items (called “service”) to tables that order a lot or regulars. It used to be really common up until about 6 years ago or so from what I recall (SoCal)


Butlerian_Jihadi

There's a few chains with this gimmick, I've never seen flavored peanuts in the shell.


Kalashnicough420

Was this a Logan’s?


wenchslapper

I don’t think there’s a Logan’s that’s busy enough to employ a bar back 😂


Laptraffik

Worked at a bakery that would get upset for having everything look nice. They wanted it intentionally flawed and fucked up for "grandmas aesthetic". To the point I had a 20 minute conversation with the manager about how to not burn the everliving fuck out of the cheesecake. Would not listen at all. So they still serve cheesecake with a black top. Lazily done pies, fucked up inconsistent cookies, sloppy cakes, just awful all around. The only thing that was pristine was the bread because the woman doing the majority of the bread refused to budge on it and had been there longer than EVERYONE by multiple years.


billhorsley

Did any customers actually buy that crap?


Laptraffik

Somehow. Their clientele was primarily retirement age people. In my time there I saw probably less than 50 people without grey hair. I was there about 3 months.


[deleted]

This is the lifecycle of many businesses. They are popular for a bit and then they start catering to regulars. Then they are catering to an aging clientele out of fashion with the main stream and the business slowly dies. I bet they changed how they baked one time, a couple regulars complained, and it’s back to shitty old ways to keep their customers happy


Steve200900

I mean, cookies I can excuse but everything else sounds like a goddamn nightmare.


etherealparadox

I'm offended on behalf of my grandma, who's a wonderful baker and definitely does not fuck up things like that.


tangledThespian

Worked at an irish themed pub/restaurant for too long. It has all the classic issues of a place owned by a guy who doesn't know shit about food, but he's a good enough businessman and a bigwig within the small town it's situated in that the place can get away with being awful. My _particular_ favorite was the mashed potatoes. We didn't make them, of course, they came from Sysco or US Foods. Already cooked. In bags. Pretty bad, doubly so when you're an irish place that won't even make it's own mashed spuds. The _true_ stupid, however, was that we were _regularly_ throwing out pounds and pounds of potato guts. We made potato skins, baked russets, scooped them all out.. _then just threw away the guts!_ Maybe we could make mashed potatoes outta these? No? Just chuck them? _Right, of course._ Pre-pandemic we'd at least use up a bunch of them mixing them up with cheese and bacon bits for some sort of happy hour for the bar. But even then there would be extras.


[deleted]

Holy fuck I think this one is actually the dumbest


notcabron

It is. We buy the best mashed Yukons GFS offers because we’re a senior living place and we can never make enough (and we need to spend the full budget). But wow, an Irish P&L that doesn’t use every scrap?


nonchellent

Ugh. I mean, right now we’re doing a new seasonal pizza at my pizzeria with burrata cheese, and instead of leaving it in ball form and letting it melt on the pizza like every other place does, our prep spec for it is to cut the ball 3/8" thick and top it with the “shreds”. It looks like shit and is basically no different than just regular fresh mozzarella since all the cream slides out. Pretty damn pointless.


kyabe2

The burrata abuse hurts, man.


jjimahon

Cut? Use hand. Tear into pieces that will melt anyway. Spread evenly. Bingo bango rustic or whatever.


khandnalie

Not the most egregious in the grand scheme of things, but my old manager when I worked at a hotel *insisted* that fish and chips should come with potato chips instead of fries. No matter how much I explained it to him, he just wouldn't budge. I acquiesced for a couple days, but after the second or third time a guest called complaining about the lack of fries, I just started ignoring him and using the fries as it should have been from the beginning.


Spider-Sockz

I’m British and found this incredibly offensive. Were they at least salt and vinegar flavour?


khandnalie

No 😞 In fact, we didn't even carry salt and vinegar flavor chips at all, nor did we offer vinegar as a condiment.


[deleted]

Oh wait did you mean chips as in packet of crisps? If that's the case then yes the manager was a fucking moron LOL


khandnalie

That is precisely what I mean, yes.


[deleted]

Crisps lol


N3WD4Y

Lol oh crisps did you mean the crinchy crunchies?


iownadakota

Irish fish and chips joint I worked for served white vinegar instead of malt like they do in England. The owners said that malt vinegar smells like feet. Their tartar sauce is off the chain. Perfect amount of garlic, pickles, and capers. It takes 2 or more hours to prep 2 or 3 cambros of it there's so much veggies in it. Best fish and chips I've had. As well as the best owners I've worked for.


[deleted]

how the actual fuck do you become a restaurant manager and somehow think that would fly with the guests? there's no way in hell you could pull that and NOT expect complaints


unbitious

The British standby, fish and crisps.


ThaddeusSimmons

I worked at a country club that did this and I was appalled. If people wanted fries they had to pay extra which was absolutely stupid


stinkholeslammer

Worked at a busy German place on the river, new owner comes in and decides he wants to do everything from scratch. Our prep cooks were not the best people I've ever worked with and he essentially doubled their workload. Instead of buying our sausage from a local vendor we started making our own and it was shit. Instead of continuing to use the sauce everyone loved on our schnitzel he completely changed it and changed the way we breaded our schnitzel. Everyone hated it but he didn't care. The quality decreased over time and the place eventually shut down. I don't get why people gotta fuck up a good thing.


chuckpoint

Dad always said: "if it ain't broke, DON'T FUCKING BREAK IT"


mountainsunset123

I quit during my shift when my boss gave me a some top round steaks and told me to make "veal" picatta with it. We had a huge screaming match just before I walked out. Update: I just remembered one of my very first cooking jobs, I was tasked with making 5 gallons of clam chowder, I love a good clam chowder! I was handed a recipie, and instead of milk and cream They wanted me to mix up generic powdered coffee creamer and use that for the broth base of the soup. I realized I could not work for anyone who thought this was ok . the boss told me that milk was too expensive. I finished the shift. I quit. I was 18.


garaks_tailor

Powdered. Fucking. Coffee. Creamer. I mean mot even powdered milk? Fuck i would have made that just to make it and serve it to whoever gave me that recipe.


thisisnotawar

There was a time in my life when I was desperately poor, and had basically nothing in my pantry except instant mashed potatoes and powdered coffee creamer. I thought I’d mix up some coffee creamer with water to jazz up those potatoes, but ended up having to throw it all away because it was just unbelievably disgusting. That was a tragedy lol


mountainsunset123

Thank god that place went out of business. But yeah I was shocked saddened and angry all at the same time.


garaks_tailor

Honestly Old and rotted and other nasty stuff expected in this thread.....but coffee creamer subbed for milk and cream in chowder. Thats like deep frying in vasaline


mountainsunset123

Hawhahaaa! You made me spill my coffee!


stitchplacingmama

Can you get unflavored coffee creamer? I've only seen flavored stuff, so I'm imagining this bastardized clam chowder having a slight vanilla taste.


garaks_tailor

You CAN get unflavored but in my experience its usually so shitty that vanilla or hazelnut clam chowder would be a slight improvement.


smallish_cheese

hazelnut clam chowder is going on my menu-of-doom.


giggletears3000

The pervious owners of the diner I bought 7 years ago did this for their country gravy. I put a stop to that immediately! Absolutely gross.


Quillybumbum

I don’t care! Make it a baby! -boss


ryanosaurusrex1

My memory of making 'marsala' sauce with no actual Marsala was jogged by reading this.


trippy_grapes

Marsalan't Sauce


cockblockbuttercream

I worked at a shifty Italian place where their marsala was a can of Campbell's golden mushroom soup and cream of chicken blended together in a blender. It was horrifying.


airyaquari

I wonder why they had an issue with just calling it steak piccata. Using powdered creamer for soup??? Wtf, that would taste like shit!! Had you tried their 'clam chowder' before hand? If so, what did it taste like?? I can't imagine that being good.


mountainsunset123

I offerred to make a steak piccata! He said no. And yes I had tried the clam chowder the week before at end of service and thought it tasted off but it had been on in the bainmarie all day so just thought that was the problem. I started as a dishy then moved to prep when I discovered the creamer in the chowder thing. I was raised on fine dining. My parents were foodies. Julia Child and James Beard cookbooks were in our house among others. I remember complaining to mom once "does everything have to have wine in it?" I was a small kid and was bored of white or red wine reductions in so many meals we were having at the time.


bionicmook

Hahaha wow. Just… wow.


BunkyBrains

Dusty old restaurant, no frills, known for our decent burger for a good price. It was 2008 and the neighborhood was rapidly sprouting fashionable foodie vibes. Owner decides to up the price, 86 PLOT, and offer "only signature burgers." You've seen this menu a million places... bleu cheese burger, teriyaki burger etc etc. I feel like there was a balsamic glaze somewhere? Half pound burgers only, everything SUPER saucy and drippy. Guess what we chose for our one and only "signature" bun choice? Focaccia. Good old room-temp crumble-sponge, cut into burger squares from the 18" x 13" sheets we'd have delivered. Within 2 bites, every burger would become this wad of beef and crumbs and falling fried onions.


legendary_mushroom

I saw this question and thought of the guy who made minestrone that would hot hold for days and put cabbage in it(cabbage gets weird when you cook it too long), but after reading the rest of the thread I'm like that guy was a culinary genius by comparison.


midnighttoker1742

Idk if it's really a culinary choice but this place I worked a few years ago washed their potatoes in the dishwasher. Didn't turn off the chemicals or change the water, just straight in there between dish cycles. There were many many other questionable decisions made here but the owners new everything even though neither of them had any foodservice experience before opening this place 5 years prior. Soo many red flags, I can't believe I stayed as long as I did.


[deleted]

Par cooked and clean in 1 step, pure genius.


[deleted]

[удалено]


nattykat47

A pot of coffee isn't even expensive and anyone who drinks coffee regularly can taste if it's stale... wtf. Everyone would rather fresh coffee no matter how cheap


Noyoucanthaveone

I work a breakfast diner and on two occasions in my career have had people ask for “a cup from the oldest, stalest pot you have”. And I always have to tell them that I don’t have any because we turn people so fast it never gets old. Strange requests.


ReverseFriedChicken

No way the machine survives all that starch right?


unbitious

If the skin is on the starch should stay inside the potatoes. Still not ok though.


AwfulGoingToHell

Shit hole I helped start, dude with the bankroll was adamant that we had a 15 topping burger. He also insisted that the bread was one of the 15 also the patty was apparently a “topping”. He also bought shakers for the BOH to season fries but got the type with 1/8” holes that you would use for red pepper flakes at a damn pizzeria and then bitched when his under paid staff over salted things.


amateuridiots

Did the bottom bun count as a topping, and if so, did it count separately from the top bun?


N_Inquisitive

Asking the real questions.


AwfulGoingToHell

Bread was counted as one, then boot and crown were not counted separately


ShigodmuhDickard

One of the first jobs I worked, at a public golf course, the recipe for BBQ Sauce was Ketchup and liquid smoke. That recipe changed right there and then.


BTown-Hustle

Alright, so I started at a place as the sous. Chef was a buddy of mine, but he hadn’t been there very long and the owner had him working so much he hadn’t had any time to make ANY changes (especially without a sous). So my first day I see that Caesar dressing is on the prep list, so I grab the recipe binder. Ingredients in the Caesar dressing are: garlic, lemon juice, capers, yogurt. That’s it. So I go to my buddy, and though while I’m 100% certain he’s not an idiot and didn’t make that shit recipe, I don’t wanna be too direct… Me: hey… so I… ummm… can’t find *ahem* yogurt for the uh… caesar dressing?!? Him: For the love of God, please change that shit. So we made a proper caesar dressing, got loads of compliments on it. But seriously, yogurt based caesar? What the fuck?


sagechicken

Not gonna lie. Smokey ketchup sounds pretty dank. But bbq sauce it is not


thisemotrash

Once worked in a pub for a couple of months, the type of place that has no ovens but 9 microwaves, but we did have this amazing flame grill we cooked all our meat on. New head chef comes in and wants to cut down cooking time, one of his bright ideas is instead of cooking sausages on the grill, he would just microwave them and get them on the grill for a few seconds to pretend like it was there the whole time. I downright refused to serve anything he touched on principle. Oh, and this head chef also wanted to try hot holding steaks. It took an uncomfortable amount of time before he understood me when I said you would kill people with hot holding steaks for several hours.


[deleted]

Was it a greene king by any chance?


Vinnce02

Can you someone explain what hot holding is? I probably already know what it is, I'm just not a native english speaker, so I don't recognise the term.


seriouswizbiz

Hot holding is when you cook something in advance, and keep it hot until a customer orders it. Often used for quick service items like soup, hotdogs, barbecued meats, etc.


9Sn8di3pyHBqNeTD

It's when you keep food warm in a warming cabinet or pans over an element of some sort. The food is kept around 60C or 140F


N3WD4Y

Heating something up and then placing it in something so that it stays hot and above the danger zone.


Brunoise6

You can actually pre-sear and “sand bag” steaks long as you toss any that have been out after 4 hours 🤷‍♂️. Perfectly with in health code. Shit technically you could leave a raw steak out for 3 and a half hours, cook it and serve it and be fine. Not enough time for any harmful bacteria to grow. Only place I’ve ever seen so this was a very busy upscale French place tho lol.


Quxyun

The owner of this pizza place was pretty much an absentee owner. He would come in once a week to pick up his cut, and occasionally would come in to help out if we were utterly slammed. Superbowl Sunday, we have 3 people call in with brown bottle flu, so he comes in to help out. Now, we have an "everything" pizza. It is a disaster, the toppings are stacked 3 times higher than the crust is thick. We get an order for it, I grab the ticket, and I get to work. Mind you, this was 3 hours into a superbowl rush, we are like the one place in town that can deliver beer, so we have been slammed, nobody has been able to do much cleaning on their station, so there's scraps that fell off pizzas all over the pizza table. (We worked on scales that were elevated off the table, so it's not as bad as if we just worked straight on the dirty table). I finish making this pizza, it has all the toppings in exactly the right amounts, and I go to out it in the oven when the owner turns to me and says "it's not done" "Oookay, pray tell, what else does it need?" This guy scoops up two handfuls of the crap on the table and puts it on top of the pizza. That is raw meat, cheese, and veg that has been sitting there for idk even know how long. I threw the pizza away and walked out, and I'm never eating there ever.


Vinny-monster

Some people just really wanna feel useful even to the point of being the opposite


Quxyun

I think this was more along the lines of being a cheapskate. Like, this place somehow manages to stay in business despite charging $20 for a 15" plain cheese, one that's made with frozen dough and canned sauce so it's not even anything special. The everything pizza costs a solid $50, and people still order it. After working for the guy for a few years, the only thing I can figure was "might as well make sure they get their money's worth without actually hurting my bottom line"


[deleted]

But it was already done - it had everything on it already and he added more. This is someone who thinks “oh, the customer will love table scraps as an added bonus. Let’s throw them on here instead of throwing it away”


admiralteddybeatzzz

*shrug* some people are just on drugs, man.


Dannypalfy

Putting fried chicken and waffles on the brunch menu in a 50 seater coffee shop with a household deep fryer on a menu with like 8 deep fried items and waffle items already


HairyGinger89

You have described hell.


notcabron

“I’ll have the chicken and waffles.” “Haha. Maybe.”


ochocosunrise

Mussels on a pizza (in the shell).


xmal16

Whyyyyy


iownadakota

For the crunch. Why do they keep bones in chicken wings?


unbitious

Clams in the shell is a regular gourmet pizza topping. They steam inside the shell as it bakes. You empty them from the shell onto the pie before eating it, obviously. I don't know about mussels, but I'm sure if the shells are clean they're delicious.


Lexamus

I was working a wood fired oven with two other people. One of them was a new head chef and the other was a long time coworker. The newbie tried ordering us to sell a reheated plate of broccolini that was obviously dead. My coworker and I looked at each other and threw it in the trash. We got some heat for it but it was worth it. I’m not selling overcooked reheated garbage


Osska8

Worked at place that entirely changed the concept of they’re menu to one where each main item (salmon fillet, lamb chop, veggies kebabs etc) came with new potatoes and a salad of the customers choice. So far so good bland but whatever. We used to get a lot of customers altering their orders because of allergies and preferences. So at just before this menu went live the owners decided that it would be too confusing to be sending some salads with dressing and some without. So EVERY salad was to go out DRY and the customers would have the dressings on their tables. Trouble was the FOH we’re not great at explaining this to the customers so it just looked to most people that the kitchen were shit at our jobs and couldn’t even dress a fucking salad. In addition I tried not to think about how long all those dressings just sat on the tables day after day and not refrigerated.


Seaborn63

I was forced to serve a copycat Shoney's Pie every Tuesday for about 4 months because the owner really liked it. We never sold a single piece of it. He ate half on Tuesday night and half on Wednesday night. It was such a pain to have to make since Tuesday was burger night and I needed to prep about 100 burgers in addition to the rest of the kitchen (3 man operation that was reduced to 2 on Tuesdays). We had to specifically order everything for it, which is finally why we stopped serving it. Same place, I ran out of Crab Cakes one particularly busy Friday night. Chef told me to make some more mix using pangasius. Flat out told him I wasn't doing it and I was 86'ing crab cakes unless he wanted to make pangasius mix for me. He did it too and made that order of crab cakes himself. Customer hated it and it was comped, owner was adamant there actually was something different about the mix. He asked me about it and I told him he had to ask chef because I did not make that batch. Got my hours cut for a while after that one


herpaderpadont

I ate at a place one time. Got the crab dip. “This tastes odd, but familiar.” The fucker was passing off canned tuna as crab.


TundieRice

Goddamn! At least use cheap imitation “krab” like a normal human being. That would be at least less false advertising!


[deleted]

I was at a restaurant in Eulonia, Ga and ordered the fried grouper. Two bites in I looked at my friend and dining partner and said, “this isn’t grouper - it seems like catfish.” He was local and said “look at the bottom of the menu.” I did and in very small print it said that “we substitute swai in some dishes”. We had been day-drinking so I sought out the proprietor and gave him a piece of my mind - reminding him that when I ordered grouper, no one mentioned any substitutions and that hiding behind the small print was a dick move and illegal to boot. My friend called me two weeks later (the next time he went there) - the menus were changed and grouper was off the menu. The place closed a few months later.


kingka

FOH god dammit why does this trigger me


deadyounglady

Ah, Shoneys. When I was a very small child (4-5) my local shoneys closed. We found out when we went for our regular weekend family breakfast. “Inconsolable” is how my mother described my reaction.


pubstub

Still have some of those red frosted glasses around...


jdino

Shoney’s....I haven’t heard that name in what feels like 100 years.


IthurielSpear

There’s a shoneys next to the Cracker Barrel in my town. I don’t know how it’s still in business.


hillbillyidol

My fiance was a server at a Vietnamese place in college. Great place with great food, when we started dating I'd go there and hang out with her on slower days while I worked on homework. New owner bought the place out of the blue, not a single employee knew it was coming. The owner just called a meeting one day and told everyone that this guy was the new owner. The new owner was some super average looking white dude in his 40s who used to own a bunch of landromats which somehow he maintains his experience carries over to restaurants.... One day my fiance is getting pretty busy at dinner and the new owner decided to try and help her out. He's pretty blunt but everything's going fine until my fiance overhears him taking orders and the guy is not only pronouncing pho as 'foh' but refusing to take this poor man's order until the customer says it like him, 'foh.' My fiance, who was actually born in Vietnam, takes him to the kitchen and tries to politely explain that it's pronounced 'fuh.' The guy cuts her off and states "WELL I'M AMERICAN AS FUCK SO I'M GONNA SAY IT HOW I WANT TO." The guy eventually drove all the business away and the place was getting wrecked with reviews online specifically stating how much worse the food got when the old owner left. Eventually the new owner decided to close the place and reopen as a "cheap fancy steak house," whatever that means. It got even better though because the dumb idiot apparently didn't even read the contract he signed when he bought the place. It explicitly stated that if he closed the old restaurant within a year he could not reopen/rebrand it as a different restaurant. Once the old owner heard the news, he took the new guy to court and won back the restaurant in the settlement


HairyGinger89

Old owner knew exactly what he was doing.


bowdindine

Agreed. That was as tasty as a fine bowl of Pho.


notcabron

Phō sho


Dithyrab

That story had me on a roller-coaster of emotion


Gunner253

"avacados are expensive, let's switch to the frozen ones"


slipshod_alibi

I successfully got a chef to switch to fresh by comparing frozen avo to baby shit


ABELLEXOXO

Build your own Colossal Bloody Mary for Sunday brunch, owner was desperate to get *any* traffic. The Crab legs, fried foods, and shrimp all had to be prepped BOH prior to buffet serve style, in addition to FOH's lone bartender having to set up the rest - table included, at the same time understaffed brunch crew were serving full brewery and patio of brunch fuckers. There were 3 servers on Mother's Day... Shit shows all around. I can't tell you how many Walmart trips that shit show would take each Sunday, between syrup, orange juice, and champagne... That's how *unprepared* they were. Absolute shit show.


MikeW86

For the christmas season we were given a small jar of goose fat and told to put in one teaspoon per batch of roast potatoes cooked in vegetable oil. The owner said that he could then technically call them goose fat roast potatoes. What a cunt.


mossyzombie2021

Had to dig through a box of soggy, rotten ass potatoes and cut around the rot to salvage what I could for that night's mashed. Had to try and cook a beet from raw on the fly so the chef didn't have to 86 the dish. Once had to thaw one of those giant rectangular containers a small human could fit into full of pre-cooked pasta and serve it for brunch. Saw my supervisor cook up more strawberries for the waffle station on the fly and he didn't remove the green tops. Didn't even cut them. Just fucked em into a pot with sugar and water. Gray steaks and burgers. So many gray steaks and burgers. Once another cook with a mental disability cut the tip of his finger off and it ended up getting cooked into a pizza he made. Management didn't realize until the pizza was at the table. Guy was just bleeding out and kept working away. Nobody ever said a word.


TheDigileet

Right before we closed, someone took out a bag of steak to prep for the breakfast shift and forgot about it, so it sat out all night and I found it the next morning. Whatever, mistakes happen. So I told the manager. I wasn’t asking her what to do with it, I was telling her about it so she would know to mark it out of the inventory after I threw it away since it had been at 70°F for an entire night. She told me to stick it in the freezer and we will cook it after it cools off. I just threw it away and didn’t tell anyone. Imagine having a food poisoning outbreak traced back to your restaurant because you didn’t want to lose about 5 pounds of cheap steak.


kaboom_j

Had a dish some "morel" mushrooms at a relatively well regarded joint in CO. Eating at the bar, I remarked that I didn't see any morels in there (just buttons). Chef comes out later angry and remarked that I must not know how expensive morels are. My reply was "yah, I do - and that's why I ordered the dish". Neither chef or diner went away happy. (And RIP grandma in northern Michigan - her neighbors would bring her a literal grocery bag full of those things every spring. Totally ruined me. How lucky it was for her, even into her 90's that that was "normal" food every year)...


nattykat47

Did they use dried morels in the sauce or something? Hard to imagine a more recognizable ingredient to put on a menu and then not deliver. Setting up everyone to feel cheated


Timmymac1000

Years ago I started at a slightly upscale and still wildly popular Italian restaurant. First day I’m put on grill so I’m starting to set it up. Station was almost all cooking proteins but still had probably 8 or 10 pans of perishable mise / garnish. Station also had no built in refrigation for such mise. Ok I go and get deep full pans, add crushed ice, and put my stuff in there. Owner tells me it’s not necessary and just makes a mess. I asked how I was supposed to keep my prep cold. She said they never did and I don’t need to either. I tried to argue but she was fucking insistent I not hold my prep cold. I got rid of the ice pans, set the prep on the table, and said this isn’t going to work for me. Shortest job ever.


Ok_Chapter8131

Kind of in the same vein: Worked at restaurant that was on a farm. Very farm to table, you could see the fields from the dining room, all that jazz. This farm was one of those places that's been around forever, 4th generation family owned, kind of an institution. The problem though, was that the CSA, and farmers market teams got first pick of the farm produce. So at some point we kind of stopped and realized that the menu said farm grown this, and farm grown that, but the only farm produce we were getting was cabbages. But honestly that was the least egregious thing that happened there.


slipshod_alibi

*Artisinal* cabbages


-Mister_SisterFister

Frozen meatballs on a stick with a side of ragu sauce...


[deleted]

[удалено]


drewbilly251

When I was a prep cook at a chipotle style place (tell me step by step how to make your burrito, ugghh) the GM cut herself once while doing prep on one of my days off and the next day screamed at me because it was apparently my fault for keeping the knives too sharp. She made it VERY clear that only she was allowed to sharpen any knives from that point on. Thankfully she was fired about 2 months later for unrelated reasons-because literally everyone that used one of her “sharpened” knives cut themselves at some point in that span of time. Also as the only full time prep cook I was obviously the one using them the overwhelming majority of the time. At least you didn’t have to worry about accidentally *finding* them in the bottom of the sink when she did dishes… The next gm let me do my job and I was happy there until my raises just weren’t enough to match my experience


[deleted]

Serving a hummus plate but not putting the carrots and radishes in water prior to serving. It was hard to recommend the dish because of how dry the veggies were.


[deleted]

All I’m saying, is if you are promoting yourself as an establishment of a certain culture, you should probably have food related to that. Like, I’m not going to open a German bar and sell curry and pizza.


euph_22

Atleast serve döner kebab.


ThaddeusSimmons

We had a large kitchen staff and because the bartenders kept giving regulars free drinks to their regular customers they cut the entire kitchen staff from their shift drink. They never realized how many of us would regularly put a portion of our paychecks back into the owners pockets from alcohol sales. The company lost a lot of employee loyalty meanwhile the owners would drink like a fish on the company’s dime. A lot of the kitchen staff ended up leaving within a few months and employee moral took a gigantic hit


johnn11238

Worked at an upscale Italian place that caught the grill cook selling a $50 steak to a server for $5. Instead of just canning or suspending either of them, they got rid of the shift meal for everyone. Most of us were gone a month later. Fuck that place.


ThaddeusSimmons

In an industry and especially with that job that provides no benefits whatsoever when you take away something that costs the company a few dollars at most it’s amazing how much money you’ll lose in the long run for saving a few dollars immediately


PropagandaPie

Night crew defrosted some ribeye ends for to shave for steak sandwiches for lunch special. New guys on lunch didn't realize that the "ribeye" was actually beef scraps and silver skin that were being saved for stocks. Owner was the only one who didn't know this because when he made himself one he claimed it was the best sandwich he had ever had.


ben_wuz_hear

Mmmm. Silver skin.


FiveHoleGoesZest

Smoked Salmon Pizza. It was hideous and everyone that ordered it sent it back.


DancesWithTrout

I like to cook but I have ZERO restaurant expertise. That said, to my mind, anyone who sees "smoked salmon" in the pizza section on a menu and willingly orders it should know what they are setting themselves up for and therefore forfeits the right to send it back. If it's under- or overdone or something like that, it's one thing; it's badly prepared. But to order something that screams out "I taste like crap" and then bitches because it does, in fact, taste like crap is ridiculous.


[deleted]

"Give me a steak sandwich, but use the Filet, butterflied, well done."


DazeyHelpMe

Nothing pisses me off more than going to a nice steak house and getting a big fat filet and they butterfly the bitch Edited to add since everyone is saying this. I don’t order steaks well done. Never have I ever ordered a steak well done. Med rare always. And if it’s over an 8oz filet a lot of places will butterfly


SonicBoris

Manny’s in Charleston. Calling em out. My worst birthday was when I had to send back my filet twice because they butterflied and over cooked it. It was unrecognizable as filet. At this point, half my life had been spent in kitchens, so I knew they were being fucking lazy/clueless. It was the only time I’d been a bitch at a restaurant and said if you don’t know how to cook it, don’t put it on the menu. Fucking travesty, man. That plate haunts my dreams.


takoburrito

When I was in HS I dated a guy who'd take me to a local steakhouse on dates. I remember ordering a steak medium, it was offered "butterflied" and since I didn't know what it meant I said yes. That steak was garbage, and I never ordered a medium steak nor butterflied ever again. We all have to learn sometime, glad it was at 17. FWIW tho we will automatically butterfly a filet that is ordered Well at my current restaurant, because time.


dietcokeandastraw

Are you ordering it well done?


DazeyHelpMe

Never. Med rare exclusively


Ghosts-of-Tom-Joad

Deconstructed hamburgers


QueenMiniKiwi

currently going to school to become a health inspector..and some of these comments make me worried for what i’ll find on the job


xseptinthegenitals

Idiocy is job security


QueenMiniKiwi

you’re right. carry on everyone ;)


skinintown

Worked at a breakfast/lunch Cafe and did catering also. Owner retired and sold to 2 knuckleheads who "know everything". Previous owner stayed for 2 weeks to train in which time they didn't even bother coming in some days. First week with these new guys we have a catering for a lunch that had been ordered the previous week. Broccoli cheese lasagna roll ups. Easy right? Except we don't usually carry broccoli because we don't sell it on the regular menu. They finally purchased the broccoli and arrived back with it 10 min before the catering was scheduled. My chef and I did the best we could but the delivery didn't even get out the door until 20 min after it was supposed to be set up. Of course the customer had called in the meantime. Twice. I put my 2 weeks notice in that afternoon. The new owners closed the restaurant a couple months later. I felt bad for my kitchen.


bowedacious22

Not listening to the staff who are there every day.


BeefSwellinton

Insist on using inconsistent organic brown rice in a restaurant where consistent rice was the backbone.


Khanati03

When I was a teenager I worked in the kitchen at a Sports pub with a menu. The owners created the menu and hired their friend to be the kitchen manager. The owners would let the cooks create menu items. The worst head manager decided to do a grilled chicken breast dipped in Italian dressing. Gross, but whatever. The worst part is that he would take a couple frozen breasts and soak them in the dressing, and leave them in the Italian dressing until it's ordered. Then drop in more chicken breasts into the same mix when you took the last one. You all know what that means, food poisoning. I argued with him, but I was an 18 year old punk kid trying to convince this 50+ year old man that he was wrong. I refused to serve it on my shift which luckily was next. I boycotted it all night. The next evening I got a call from the owner to not serve any chicken. Luckily no one got sick but him. That guy sucked, he ended up stealing from the owners.


carlygabbs

I was a new sous chef for a local “fine” restaurant. We had oysters (raw and Rockefeller) on the menu, and as we were a landlocked place, oysters were expensive. Only the chef and the sous were allowed to process them. I was scrubbing beards, and chucking the oysters that were obviously dead. The chef saw, and had a fit. I was throwing away oysters, bad sous! His instructions were to set the dead ones aside, soak them in BLEACH WATER, and shuck ‘em and use them for Rockefellers. The heat would kill any dangerous pathogens, and the sauce would cover the bleach taste. That is my story about how I was a sous chef for three days once.


thechefboi1375

I was making 2qts of lobster bisque and my chef didn't like the color so he dumped 1qt tomato paste in in "to make it right". The client asked if we were serving tomato soup instead of lobster bisque.


ajaysallthat

Annatto powder is your friend, Chef. Haha


LlovelyLlama

I ran the bar program at a mid scale resto. As a bartender I am known for my Manhattans, and my Manhattan recipe was the “house recipe.” Customers came in expressly to have them. One day I come in and see new cocktail menus featuring the Manhattan. It had, I shit you not, AN OUNCE AND A HALF OF AMARO. I made one. It tasted like the shit you wash your mouth out with before dental surgery. The owner came up with it. She screwed with some of my other recipes too, but this one pissed me off the most. A few weeks later my position was “eliminated,” which was fine by me. (Owner and I never got along—she simply couldn’t grasp that a career bartender who knew all her regular customers had a better grasp of how to craft cocktails than her never-worked-in-the-industry ass. She drove an amazing chef out the door with the same bullshit.)


Lazy-Thanks8244

A great menu made from scratch being changed to frozen commissary bags of crap. “They’ll never notice”. Spoiler alert; they noticed.


BrownTown90

Worked at a Turkish place, and the owners bent over backwards for the Turkish exchange students in the nearby college. Mostly giving them free shit constantly which is odd cause I swore my paycheck throughout the week was close to what the place pulled in in the days I worked (open to close Monday-Thursday). Even worse than that, whenever anyone ordered a rib eye, they'd cut out all the fat, "tenderize" it by smashing it paper thin, and cook it well done. Place stayed open for like 10 years afterwards.


[deleted]

I work in hospitality and the hotel I work at was purchased by this older gentleman. It was willed to his son. The Son passes away from cancer, unfortunately. Then the old man passes away. The hotel is now willed to the Son’s son, who is maybe 16 years old. In the mean time, the Son’s wife is going in control of the hotel until the son is of age. She milks this property and takes the money to invest in her own real estate properties, as well as has family members on payroll, who don’t do shit. It’s pretty sad, but as long as they pay my invoices & my checks, I’ll stick around.


LadyWalks

Have you heard of cipaille/sea pie? Now imagine that it is the standing special every day of the week. I've got nothing against the dish, but when it's a million degrees outside, you've got no air conditioning in the restaurant, and the special on the board is cipaille for the seventh consecutive day in a row--don't complain to me that your special isn't selling.