Food
Top 10 Grossest Things Fast Food Employees Have Done to Your Food
Donald Trump, the President of the United States, reportedly loves McDonald’s because he’s a bit OCD when it comes to his food and he likes the consistency of the food as well as the fact that it’s pre-made. This way people are unable to either poison or spit in his food. Like most things Trump thinks or says, he’s not really correct about the food being pre-made. Sure, a lot of the time, especially when it’s busy, the food will have been made before you ordered it based on the expectation that people will buy X-amount of Big Macs, but when it’s not busy your food is made when the order comes through and thus there’s a chance that if you’re rude to the cashier, or a famous person, that they might do something to your food. This article is proof of that as we’re bringing the Top 10 most disgusting things fast food workers have done to food! Sorry, Mr. President
10. Wendy’s Employee Deep Throats Frosty Machine
Now that Dave Thomas is dead, Wendy’s is mostly most well known for it’s Frosty’s. The super thick and delicious frozen treat is so good that it offsets the weird feeling you get while eating a square-shaped hamburger. Wendy’s is aware of this and used that fact, combined with the other fact that McDonald’s’ ice cream/shake machine is broken more often than not, to troll McDonald’s with a savage Tweet back in 2017. So, it’s hard to blame this now former Wendy’s employee who posted a video of himself eating a vanilla Frosty straight from the machine (and giving himself the world’s worst ice cream headache). The video went viral and Wendy’s promptly fired him while using the Tweet announcing that fact to also announce that they were “reinforcing proper procedures” with employees. So not only did he get fired he also forced a meeting on every Wendy’s employee, savage, indeed.
9. Taco Bell Employee Licks Shells
It was theorized that the above entry (#10) was a response to this “prank” as they both occurred in the same month back in 2013. This offense happened at a Taco Bell in Ridgecrest, California and almost tore the internet apart as people questioned whether it was a joke or real and whether even if it was a joke it warranted discipline for the employee or whether people were overreacting and needed to just relax. The problem here was that people weren’t aware of the context, which was sanctioned by the company and asked it’s employees to share pictures of themselves “enjoying a first bite” of their Taco Bell product of choice. Regardless, it wasn’t a good look for Taco Bell, which was in the middle of a lot of PR nightmares earlier this decade. So, they suspended the employee instead of firing him, as he was participating in the contest by licking shells that were going to be thrown away anyway. It makes this list because of the uproar, the conversation(s) it started and also the copycats it birthed. It’s safe to say he won the contest, then, right?
8. Taco Bell Employee Pees on Nachos
The number 9 entry on this list mentioned that Taco Bell was in the midst of PR nightmares at the time and one of the main reasons that that nightmare existed was thanks to a former employee named Cameron Jankowski. Jankowski worked at the Fort Wayne, Indiana Taco Bell and was participating in what may be the trashiest Twitter contest of all-time. Hunter Moore, who was the owner of a revenge porn website, basically asked his 108k (at the time, let’s hope it’s less now that revenge porn is illegal) to participate in what he called “#pissolympics” and because if you followed Moore you were sort of a scumbag, Jankowski decided that he’d urinate on the food that the restaurant that employed him made while at work and on the floor of his employer. The image went viral and he was first suspended then fired for the “prank”, however, he did win the contest so at least he’s got that going for him.
7. Burger King Employee Outed by 4Chan
This is the first entry on this list that was responsible for the firing of more than one employee, as Burger King ended up firing three employees over this “Prank” that was posted to the website 4Chan, which is an anonymous message board that is notorious for essentially being the darkest place on the internet. In the post, the user showed himself stomping on bins of lettuce in a post titled “This is the lettuce you eat at Burger King”. Surprisingly, members of 4Chan were so appalled by the image that they used the GPS data that’s attached to every cell phone picture to figure out the location of the Burger King in the photo, which ended up being in Cleveland, Ohio. The members first contacted the local media in Cleveland and went a step beyond that by figuring out the phone number and thus name and address of the employee in the photo. The entire investigation took 15 minutes, and the shift manager at the Burger King in question said that the person in the picture was a long time employee and that he and the shift managers on duty at the time were both let go.
6. Different Restaurant. Same Licking Incident.
You’d think that after all the negative press and effects on one’s employment status that people that work at fast food restaurants would stop posting images of themselves doing things like the following online, especially when they’re doing the exact same thing that caused an uproar in the past. However, in the day and age where people feel validation from the number of clicks/likes/attention they get online, perhaps they just can’t help themselves. Regardless of the “Why?” behind it, there was another incident of a fast food employee posting a picture of himself licking the food that they serve. In this instance, the taco shells were replaced with mashed potatoes and Taco Bell was replaced with KFC. The KFC in Johnson City, Tennessee, immediately fired the employee and said that the potatoes weren’t served to customers. Ironically, KFC is owned by the same company (Yum! Brands) that owns Taco Bell, so perhaps they need to look at their hiring policies to avoid bringing in people that seem to want to lick things and maybe those people can get a gig licking stamps at the post office?
5. McDonald’s Worker Spits in Customer’s Drinks
In April 2012, a South Carolina McDonald’s joined the list of fast food restaurants that were dealing with PR disasters that seemed to peak in and around 2012-2013 (see the rest of this list). In this instance, an employee at a restaurant in Greenville County actually didn’t post a video or picture online but rather was seen on surveillance video spitting in two different customers’ cups of iced tea. The employee should probably go to the doctor, as the reason that they were caught was that when the customers opened up their drinks to add sugar, they both noticed phlegm in the drink and immediately contacting the police. The employee was fired and it turned out that they were fed up with people bringing their sweet teas back because they weren’t “sweet enough”. Unlike other instances on this list McDonald’s corporate didn’t release a statement, however, the owner of the franchised McDonald’s asked that people “not to reach conclusions until all the facts come out”. The facts included phlegm, so, maybe he should’ve chosen his words more wisely.
4. Domino’s Up His Nose…
One of the earliest instances of a video of a fast food employee going viral happened in April of 2009. An employee of Domino’s, before they branded themselves and remade all of their stores to be fancier (just to add to how gross this really is), filmed his soon to be former co-worker putting cheese up his nose, blowing mucous on a sandwich and putting a sponge meant for washing dishes “between his buttocks”. As is typical, the employees stated that the food (and hopefully the sponge) was immediately thrown away and not served to anyone, but because of the obvious bad look for the company, both were fired. The entire restaurant ended up getting “re-staffed” and the franchise owner was also given a strict talking to about company culture and went as far as to post an apology from the President (and soon to be CEO) of the company on YouTube. Looking back, four years later, a Domino’s spokesperson did say that the video did nothing to hurt their sales or global brand, and that they had an increase in sales in 2009 (as compared to 2008), so perhaps it’s true, any press is good press.
3. Burger King Bath
Burger King is best known for its flame-broiled burgers like the Whopper, so it makes sense that the employees that work hour after hour, day after day, may sometimes need to cool off after spending their day taming that flame. That’s the best rationalization I can come up with for the fact that an employee at the Xenia, Ohio Burger King, who was at least self-aware enough to refer to himself as “Mr. Unstable” in the video, got completely naked and took a bubble bath in one of the sinks used to clean the cooking utensils used to make those flame broiled masterpieces. Burger King stated that they had sanitized the sink and “disposed of all other kitchen tools and utensils that were used in the incident”. A good rule of thumb is that if you think that your employer will refer to what you’re about to do as “the incident”, perhaps don’t do it.
2. A Subway PR Disaster Not Connected to Jared
Subway used rose from second-rate sandwich fast food place to the number one fast food restaurant in the world (at least in terms of locations, as there’s almost double the amount of Subway’s in the United States as McDonald’s) thanks to its marketing plan that focused on how healthy it was as compared to other fast food options. The face of that campaign was Jared Fogle, who lost hundreds of pounds eating at Subway and ended up being a complete monster of a human being. Not to be undone, a couple of “Sandwich Artists” from the Columbus, Ohio Subway (or at least one of the Subway’s in Columbus) were fired for rubbing their genitals on bread, making bread that looked like penises and peeing in water bottles and freezing them. They posted their exploits to Instagram with titles like “Today I froze my pee” and “My name is @ianjett and I will be your sandwich artist today”, which clearly was a PR disaster for a company that really didn’t need additional branding issues, considering. Huffington Post spot with Mr. Jett, who claimed that the images were taken at home, not at work and were a “joke”. The person who reported the images to Subway said; “I saw the frozen piss picture and thought, ‘What is this guy doing?’” the tipster said. “Then came the penis picture. They’re stupid enough for doing this in the first place, but then to post it to the world? It was a dumb move.” Indubitably.
1. The OG Fast Food Disaster
There’s a scene in the classic film, Super Troopers, in which a couple of fast food workers spit in one of the Trooper’s sandwiches (among other things). Broken Lizard, the fellas behind Super Troopers may have had inspiration from the first documented incident of a fast food employee defiling the food they’re paid to make. This incident happened way back in 1990 at a Jack in the Box in Phoenix, Arizona. Reportedly, one of the employees at Jack in the Box, George Juan Kuehme (whose full name is reported like he assassinated a world leader) blew his nose into the burgers of two police officers who came through the drive-thru. Kuehme was employed for less than a week at the Phoenix, Restaurant when the incident happened and was noticed by one of the officers. Officer Gary Underhill had taken three bites from his sandwich when he noticed “something wrong”. Beyond that, another worker had overheard Kuehme say “That’s what the cop gets” after serving the burgers. The incident was the first of it’s kind and pre-dated the internet (at least as we know it) and was so detrimental to Jack in the Box’s brand that they stopped advertising on radio and TV in the Phoenix area, mostly because of all of the “jokes on local radio stations”. Beyond Kuehme, a second unidentified employee was fired over the incident (perhaps he blew his nose from the grassy knoll?) and Jack in the Box contributed $2,000 to a police fund as well.