Share your stories of working in the food service industry.

I was washing dishes one day, and my friend Jonathon is mixing something up that has pine nuts in it. He's flipping pine nuts at me. I'm not in a good mood, I say "hey dude, chill!" He's like "okay". 15 seconds later a pine nut lands in my EAR. I turn to look at him, ready to throw a huge metal pan at his nads or something, but when I saw the look on his face (jaw-dropped, half-smile, half-scared, entirely disbelief) I could do nothing but laugh HYSTERICALLY. I mean shit, he got the pine nut in my EAR, now could I be mad at skillz like that?

It was there I met the woman with whom I spent the next 23 years. (And this is sounding like the start of a very dull novel.)

I worked at Subway for a year at age 16. Those stores are designed so that only 2 people can run it. Those 2 people normally being 2 teenagers. Whatever you do don't get the tuna or the seafood salad. It's just nasty. We have to put a huge jug of mayonaisse in it that comes out of the tub in one piece and mix it with our hands. We used to throw the seafood around because it bounced.

i worked at the Olive Garden for a year in HS too. One day during the summer, they needed someone to be saladgirl. So i volunteered since all I had to do was stand in the kitchen and make a salad whenever someone needed one. I had really long hair, so I had to wear a hairnet. Nonetheless, a hair got into a salad and the server came back complaining. So I took the hair and made another salad. Except that the hair stuck to the glove and went back into the same people's salad. they were so pissed, as was the server. I just kept saying "I'm wearing a harinet!" although it was so obviously my hair.

BTW, is the 3 second rule/ 10 second rule universal. You know where if you drop a piece of food you can pick it up and use it as long as you do it within 3 or 10 seconds. I can't remember if I actually learned this or if someone made it up.

I worked at a steakhouse after that and like Whopper Trev, the cook here used to stick the entire steak down his pants and do a little "my dick is touching your steak" dance.

I'm never eating out again.

Even though they give you money?

The one non-chain outfit I worked at was great. It was the only restaurant on a local lake, and management had free reign to do whatever it pleased, as long as the place turned a profit. So we had jacked up liquor prices ($8 for a margarita with $.50 of alcohol, f'rinstance), and this allowed the employees to drink as much as they wanted on the clock. You could drink as much as you want as long as you were functioning. They cut back a bit when one waitress had to be fired for flashing the entire bar (proud of her new nipple rings) on a Wednesday night. But not much.

That place was all sorts of gross, though. By the end of a Saturday night, the kitchen floor was coated in this weird greasy sludge. The restaurant sits on the lake, so that might have messed up drainage.

If you live in Texas, don't eat at any restaurant located on Joe Pool Lake.

We had my manager's permission to charge for extra drinks on parties where one person was picking up the tab and then void them - free money.

The restaurant experience seems universal for people who stuck with it. Work, drink, sleep, work, drink, sleep.

Lots of people talk about their heydey back at Burger King getting high in the back or whatever, but I was a very prudish worker and I would never participate. Of course, I got to cover the front (I worked at a Taco Bell)...one night taking all orders, making all food & everything while the manager and his droogies jerked off to some self-made porn downstairs. The manager later got busted for making kiddy porn. Man, I hated that asshole. I still eat at Taco Bell, though...

It was our band's last public performance. I left for college the next month.

Though not necessarily in that order.

Nothing starts a shift off like three Mini-thins or a Yellow Jacket.

I'm not sure what to attribute it to, but in the time I waited tables, I lost a good 50 pounds (230-180). A combination of legal speed, not eating normally, and running around a lot, I guess.

I once worked at a cafe, with pizza and sandwiches and beer and wine and it was mostly solid middle/upper middle class clientele in a coastal resort area.

One day some guy came in an I proceeded to take his order. We were slamming that day. He had to wait a while to order, so he was in a pissy mood. I put on my friendly face and asked if I could help him. He, being the prick-like, said he wanted a pastrami sandwich in a condescending kind of way. I thought nothing of it, as it is common.

I asked what his name was.

He was like, "Why you wanna know that?"

I said, "So I can call out your name and you can come and pick up your order."

He mumbled, "Donald."

I personally rang up his order and made the sandwich. It was a pastrami on rye. A nice sandwich. He paid me without saying a thing and waited for it.

I called his name, "Donald", and he came up to the counter to pick it up.

I said, "Enjoy."

Donald sneered, avoiding eye contact, and grabbed the sandwich just like a little asshole.

I thought who's this guy? Who the fuck is this Donald?

Sure enough, two minutes later Donald was back. He said the bread wasn't good, even though he had chomped down a couple of big bites. He said he wanted white bread. Even though the menu board stated "PASTRAMI ON RYE -- $6.99"

He even said, "The sandwich sucks. I want you to make me another one."

I said alright in a cool and calm manner. But I had to go in the back to get "white bread." He gave me the plate with the pastrami and walked in the kitchen that customers couldn't see into from the counter. Donald pissed off the wrong motherfucker this time.

I went in the kitchen and one of my buds was the only other one back there washing dishes and sweating profusely. I told him about Donald and he asked what I was gonna do. I told him to look out the door at Donald. He stopped washing dishes and peeped out the door and saw Donald standing there and turned and laughed.

I was already unzipping my pants.

My buddy asked mildly surprised, "What the fuck are you doing?"

I said, "Making Donald's sandwich."

I commenced to make pastrami on white. I took the meat and wiped my ass with it a couple of times. I asked my buddy if he could wring the sweat out of his shirt over the bread. He happily did. I swirled my spit in the mayo and mustard. A fine sandwich.

I went back out to the counter and gave Donald his new sandwich. I told him that I hoped this one was better and of course he was still a prick about it, new white bread and all.

Donald took the plate and pouted out the side of his sour mouth, "What the hell ever." And went back to his seat.

Over the next few minutes, I watched Donald devour a pastrami on white with sweat, saliva, and fecal matter. He ate the whole goddamn thing.

And I smiled the whole time. I'll see you in hell, Donald.

We used to cut up all the time in that kitchen.

One day this guy was superpissed at the owner. So he was spitting on the block of gyro meat as it was turning. When the spit hit the meat it was so hot that it would evaporate almost instantly.

I was laughing at it and the owner walked in the kitchen.

He asked what was so funny.

The spitter turned around and said to the owner,

"That meat sure does sizzle, doesn't it?"

The owner rolled his eyes and walked out of the kitchen.

It damn sure did.

There is no question that we all have involuntarily eaten someone's bodily fluids at some point in time.

I've also had some friends who delivered pizzas who were mugged and one was even shot once delivering pizza. The bullet grazed him. The robber asked for his car keys and he said hell no so he got his dumbass shot. He kept the car keys though.

Pizza delivery can be a strange subculture. A very strange cross-section of culture. I would never do it. I bet 7 out of 10 pizza orders come from stoned people and the delivery guys stay high too.

that's great.

A) ...kept a LOADED gun in the kitchen and, occasionally, when a server or dishwasher or something pissed him off, he would take a sharpee and write their initials on one of the bullets

B) ...made me keep one of the nitrous containers in the dessert area empty so he could do "whip-its" when he was feeling stressed. He similarly stashed a bottle of jaegermeister in his reach-in fridge, a bottle he hit with much regularity.

C) ...would just walk out of the kitchen when it got too busy for him, which was often & early, leaving me and the other youngster kitchen cronies to do some pretty hardcore things (pan-searing tuna, grilling filets & roasting quail, sauteing foie gras, etc.) which we really had no training in whatsoever.

D) ...was actually a very nice guy once the restaurant was closed down and you were all sitting at the bar...at least until he broke out the coke.

We got a big box of stilton in today - on the box it has a big disclaimer "ATTENTION: THIS BOX MAY SMELL FUNKY."

1. I once served a beer to Heath Ledger
2. M Showalter used to come to my coffee shop in Bklyn every day and ask for iced coffee. Such a grumpy bitch he was.
3.Then I got a job at another coffee shop,in Manhattan this time,and guess who is one of my first customers on my first day of work: M. Showalter, of course. He loves his ice coffee with a lot of ice and just a little bit of milk. or is it the other way around?

I used to regularly wait on Brian Johnson of AC/DC. Phenomenal tipper!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2rYDc0flRg

OH MY FUCKING GOD THAT VIDEO IS KILLING ME

"But on second thought. I'll have a scotch on the rocks, heavy on the scotch, easy on the rocks, ha. My joke is funny."
"Your joke is stupid, not a joke, and not funny."

I am sometimes surprised at the intellectual level of some in the service industry. Then again I'm no Einstein and these people may not be either.