You’d think a manager would be the one encouraging workers to follow the rules, not break them.Restaurants are known to cut some corners here and there, from sometimes reusing the bread rolls one table didn’t eat to skimping on ingredients to giving smaller portions.
But what this manager decided to do, doesn’t really make any sense—aside from the fact that they don’t have to put in the effort to further train their cooking staff.
In a TikTok with nearly 200,000 views, restaurant worker Dom (@matchafanboy) reveals the unethical thing his boss makes him do and wanted to know if other food service workers had experienced something similar.
“What’s the weirdest thing a company has trained you to do in the past? And I’m not talking about normal stuff like, ‘We used to close five minutes early like we’re crazy.’ I’m talking about stuff that even when you were being trained for it, you were like, ‘Oh, that’s gotta be illegal,’” Dom says.
The TikToker explains that he used to work at a fancy restaurant chain and was hired to train the to-go order workers before the new location opened up.
As a side note, Dom adds that he never really got why people would get a meal to-go from a spot with $45 plates. “It’s one of those restaurants where you want to sit down and enjoy the experience,” he says.
“But people ordered to-go, nonetheless.”
Even though all of the training was done prior to the grand opening, the kitchen “could not get their sh*t together.” They would consistently make to-go orders an hour early, so by the time the customer got their food, excited for their fancy meal, they’d look down into the clear to-go container and be disgusted by what they saw.
Soggy burger buns, congealed sauces, and cold meat.
“What the hell is that? That’s been sitting under the hot lamp for an hour,” Dom recalls.
Plus, there was a no-remakes policy, so to-go customers were often left unhappy. Instead of retraining the kitchen, “which makes the most sense,” according to Dom, the regional manager in charge of 12 locations has a simple and rather devious solution.
“Just say ‘perfect timing’ when they come in the door, and we’re gonna replace the clear lid with a lid you can’t see through,” the regional manager allegedly said. “So that’ll give them the illusion that their food is fresh, just cooked, so they won’t check.”
Screaming in frustration and shock, Dom pointed out that they work at a restaurant, so the food is supposed to be good, not a soggy, cold mess.
“Why was that the solution?!” Dom says, exasperated, in the clip.
Now, if left out for too long, food can pose a serious health risk even if it doesn’t look, taste, or smell spoiled. While food poisoning usually goes away within days to weeks, it can cause nausea, fever, vomiting, stomach pains, dehydration, and/or diarrhea, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
Given this, you’ll generally want to stick to the two-hour rule for leaving food out at room temperature. As you can probably guess, the two-hour rule dictates that food should be refrigerated within two hours of being left out to avoid it going bad or growing unwanted bacteria, the Food and Drug Administration warns.
If the area the food is kept in is above 90° F (like on a hot summer day or at a barbecue), that two-hour time frame gets cut in half.
@matchafanboy they also had a “no remakes” policy so you can guess how that went
♬ original sound – dom
People in the comments section shared their own sketchy work instructions.
“I worked at a gas station in college. The high school wrestling coach would regularly buy beer for students. I was told to stay in my lane by my boss and the cops. Small towns are wild,” a person recounted.
“They trained us to use tip jar money to balance the till at the end of the day and to just throw out the pieces of ice with cockroaches in them. it was a locally owned business,” another shared.
“I worked in a warehouse that did equipment and decor rentals and whenever we had to get something on the top shelf we used to stand on the forks of the forklift and go up and on to the racking,” a further commenter wrote.
The Daily Dot reached out to Dom for comment via Instagram direct message.
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