The food service industry can be a messy and disgusting business on the kitchen side of things. This could be chalked up to just being the nature of dealing with food. After all, it’s organic material that breaks down over time and can attract all sorts of pests and animals who, like members of our own species, are just trying to fill their bellies.
This includes not only bugs and rodents, but microscopic bacterial organisms. And although fast food establishments are not known to be first-class dining experiences, there is one area they excel in: Cleanliness. In fact, Organic Authority stated that “upscale restaurants had up to 12,000 the number of bacteria colonies as fast food restaurants and an average of 132 times the amount.”
But that doesn’t mean you should be licking the door handles of your local KFC anytime soon, however, as fast-food workers revealed in a classic viral Reddit post, even chains that follow strict sanitation standards have encountered some gnarly situations regarding cleanliness. One that stood out for many viewers was a McDonald’s employee who responded that McCafe machines hold a gross secret that customers should be aware of.
The post in question went viral around 10 years ago on the site’s r/AskReddit sub, when a user by @ohisthename asked, “Fast food workers of Reddit, what should we NOT order at your restaurant? Why not?”
A TikTok account dedicated to sharing Reddit Stories (@webaddieshere) compiled some of the responses in a series of screenshots posted on May 14. it quickly went viral garnering 2 million views as of Sunday.
Fast-food workers spill the tea
One Starbucks employee hopped on to describe a gripe they had with customers that had nothing to do with the cleanliness of an establishment, but rather the frustration with a non-existent “secret menu”—just know what the drink contains and ask the employee to make it that way, as they won’t know what a “captain crunch frappuccino” is.
However, another food service worker said folks should stay away from two items no matter what: Lemons and ice as they are “by far the most disgusting things you can get.”
A bartender also advised against eating “the olives on the bar” which another user referred to as “the flu distribution bowl.”
A Subway employee said that the packaged tuna that used to come into the store formerly contained labeling that specifically indicated the tuna fish “didn’t contain dolphin or turtles in the meat [but] then that labeled suddenly disappeared in 2012.”
A Jack in the Box worker urged Redditors in their post to refrain from ordering milkshakes there, writing that workers “do not clean the mixer very well.”
A Panera worker warned folks to stay away from the mac and cheese, claiming it comes in a bag and is then simply microwaved.Anyone grossed out by frozen pasta at Panera must have never ate tv dinners as a kid 🤷♀️
Probably the most detailed response in the post, however, came from a McDonald’s employee who expressed why ordering anything from a McCafe machine was a bad idea.
They said that specialized brushes are needed to clean them out (brushes they never had) and nearly every single store they’ve been to has coffee grounds caking the inside of its inner walls. Presumably, these grounds were there for a very, very long time. What makes matters worse is that only “specialized” workers can come in and clean this part of the coffee machine, which sounds a lot like the business’ ice cream machine scandal.
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The worker went on to say that they were so alarmed by the consistent lack of cleanliness they encountered with these machines that they ultimately just denied customers’ requests for anything that would come out of the McCafe machine. They said that they couldn’t, in good conscience, serve guests offerings from the apparatus and would simply lie to them that they were in a scheduled self-cleaning mode so they wouldn’t get a McCafe as part of their order.
TikTok viewers react
In the comments section of the Reddit Stories TikTok account, viewers were split on these “secrets.’
“Anyone grossed out by frozen pasta at Panera must have never ate tv dinners as a kid,” one wrote.
Another wrote, “I will always eat Subway tuna; I don’t care what’s in it, it’s so good.”
The Daily Dot has reached out to McDonald’s, Little Caesar’s, Starbucks, KFC, Sonic, Jack in the Box, and Subway via email along with Reddtiors @ohisthename and @envirometh via Reddit direct message for further comment.
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