Did you ever work at a fast-food place?

Not really a surprise, but . . .

I did to earn some extra money, and it was about as well as could be expected.

I worked at an A&W when I was in college in the early '70s. Fun fact: The burgers, which were advertised as "100% beef", actually had pork spleens as the second ingredient listed on the contents label (which of course the customers never saw.)

No, but lots of guys jacked in my box.

During high school in the late 70s I worked at Burger King. I was part of the closing shift (9pm to midnight) where my job was to break down the broiler's conveyor system and put all the pieces in a highly toxic chemical bath to soak overnight, then clean the milkshake machines and deep fryers. Made $1.35 an hour. Good times.

My co worker never washed his hands after wiping and this is how he prepared food.

I worked as a cook at Ponderosa. All of their "steaks" came from Australia. We always joked it was Kangaroo meat. To this day I will never, not ever use a "salad bar" you do not want to know.

Tell us R7. I want to know.

Wendy’s. Mid-‘80s. I remember being a closer during the summer after I graduated from high school before I went away to college in the fall. Used to take a lot of food home, would make myself a double w/ cheese and bacon, lg fries, frosty, hot apple dumpling. It was great.

All I can say is they would use the on sold beef patties in the chilli, which makes sense. Everything was rigorously timed, etc. Can’t say anything bad about them.

Del Taco and KFC.

Del Taco made the meat and beans onsite and fresh, it didn't come in a bag and slapped into a pan to be warmed up. I thought the food was delicious. Sometimes we'd "accidentally" make a mistake on a burrito order, which would then become ours to eat during break time. It was a fun job for awhile until we got a new manager - he was an asshole.

As this was back in 1986, I couldn't say what they do now (in terms of meat/beans preparation).

I worked at Panera. We were supposed to check the temperature of each item on the sandwich/salad line but that was too much work so we just wrote down a fake temperatures. If you've ever gotten food poisoning after eating there, now you know why.

I worked in fast food during the 80s. So most all of this doesn't apply today. But I worked at both McDonald's and Wendy's. And I was surprised that, at the time, McDonald's food was more 'real' in many ways. McDonald's used real butter during breakfasts, while Wendy's used Margarine. McDonald's cracked the eggs and scrambled them to order. Wendy's cracked eggs into a huge bucket and scrambled them, and at the end of the day, it went the walk-in, to be used the next day. That bucket was disgusting. Also, at the time, McDonald's shakes had like 6-8 ingredients (milk, cream, sugar, eggs, flavorings, and a preservative or two). The ingredient list on the Wendy's Frosty was three inches of tiny print.

Not EVERYTHING was that way, for sure, but it surprised me that ANYTHING was more real, fresh, or natural at McDonalds compared to Wendy's.

McDonald’s, early 90s. I was lucky to work in a clean, low volume store. Aside from burning the crap out of myself on McRib sauce one day, it wasn’t a bad place for a high school job. You do learn time management!

Also, the Big Mac and Filet sauce were in canisters you’d load into a gun. Sometimes if friends would come through the drive thru, we’d shoot tartar sauce all over their cars.

It really was all kids working there. At 22 I felt way to old to be there.

[quote]Aside from burning the crap out of myself on McRib sauce one day

Thank you for your service.

When you work with Grandma.

I worked at a Nathans in High School. If you dropped a hot dog or burned it you were supposed to put it in a bucket next to the griddle. But if your bucket had too many bad hot dogs you might get fired, so many hot dogs that should have been in the bucket stayed on the griddle.

[quote] Del Taco made the meat and beans onsite and fresh

Huh? They made the meat at the store? What does that even mean? Was there a slaughterhouse in the back room?

R17 or off the floor and back on the griddle

I received high school credit by working at Taco Bell.

Was it like an internship in restaurant management, R20?

[quote]Was it like an internship in restaurant management, [R20]?

It was a requirement for his memberships in Future Lunch Ladies of America.

r8 Let's just say the sneeze guard is not really protecting you. Some guys would fuck with the bar if they had to fill it, like spitting in the vegs and pasta and mixing it up because they hated doing it. We were supposed to clean out the soft serve machines nightly...no one ever did as far as I know. If we had a big bag of lettuce that was...questionable we were told to dump a bunch of ice into a sink and make a big ice water bath to bring the lettuce "back to life>" rather than throw it out. One time I saw a kid just dunk his hand in the ranch dressing lick his hand clean and dunk it back in. His mom just yanked him away. I was going to change it out but people just kept using it.

We R23. Back in the 90s, a popular local Chinese buffet was shut down after being reported to authorities. Food was tested and at least four different bodily fluids were found. Mmmmm.

R18, I’m not the Del Taco poster, and I don’t think Del Taco slaughters on-site… however, in the late 1980s I worked in a bank. A Fuddruckers opened in the same shopping center and they DID butcher on-site. Guys would come all the time wearing white aprons covered in fresh cow blood.

Btw, I believe it was called Mother Fuddruckers at the time.

R21 No. it was a work study program for kids who habitually skipped school. A student in this program only would only have to attend school half the day, then go to work somewhere. They taught us valuable skills like filling out job applications and balancing a checkbook. I also accrued a lot of experience that would remain a foundation for my future work ethic. I also learned how to smoke weed, and indirectly invented the Nacho Cheese Chalupa.

I worked at almost all of them - when I left college and came out to my parents, it was a few rough years. Sometimes I quit a job because the managers were hateful assholes, sometimes they'd fire me (twice because I was gay, once because I called in sick when I was puking blood).

KFC was actually way more hygienic than I would have thought. The chicken came frozen but we breaded and seasoned it there. Taco Bell was the same. We were a very clean well run location. Everything came frozen and in a bag, and we didn't fry or deep fry anything, it was all boiled in bags.

One of the Arby's I worked at was owned by a cheap old couple who owned a number of restaurants as well as some hotels in town. Anyway, we could only keep sandwiches under the lights for 2 hours by Arby's regulations, but the old cheap bitch would come through, find sandwiches we threw in the trash, and tell us to wrap them in new wrappers and put them back out for sale.

Rax had the nicest managers. They would always give me free food and coupons, which was nice.

I walked out of a BK job on day 3 because the manager tripped me and then said, "Oh, we have a clumsy faggot on our staff." Never did get that paycheck.

[quote] Also, the Big Mac and Filet sauce were in canisters you’d load into a gun.

Had the same kind of gun at Taco Bell, for the sour cream. Many jokes and more than a few double entendres were uttered regarding that cream-filled gun, how far it could shoot, etc.