If you have ever wondered which fast-food items you should avoid, you are not alone.
A Reddit user created a thread last month titled “Chain restaurant employees, what should customers not order from your menu?” that prompted responses from current and former fast-food employees advising readers which fast-food items to avoid.
Answers to the question poured in with over 12,000 comments and responses spilling secrets about many fast-food chains ranging from McDonald’s to Chick-fil-A.
Matt_452, a former Burger King employee, advised to avoid grilled chicken and veggie burgers because the items to sit out for an extended amount of time:
Used to work at Burger King. Don’t order grilled chicken or veggie burgers. No one orders them, so they sit for hours (literally) and they become horrible dried out garbage. Also avoid the crispy chicken and fish because they tend to sit around for a while too.
EDIT: Since apparently i’m ruining veggie burgers for people, just ask for it made fresh and don’t come through the drive thru. The only thing BK management cares about is drive thru times. Come in to the store, ask for it (or anything) made fresh and 99% of the time they’ll do it.
A former Bojangles employee, cutigers, revealed that their “famous” tea was made with “4 pounds (literally) of sugar”:
Also the “famous” tea is just regular a** tea bags from a national retailer mixed with 4 pounds (literally) of sugar in a giant vat
An ex-Applebee’s employee, deadpoop69, warned people to steer clear of the Oriental Chicken Salad at the neighborhood establishment:
I used to work at Applebee’s. The Oriental chicken salad dressing is pretty much sugar and chicken fat.
CDC_, a former Cookout employee, cautioned people against ordering the chicken strips:
I worked at cookout, years ago. It’s super clean, actually, and I’ll still eat food from there.
But, I don’t recommend ordering chicken strips. We’d get in a rush, and those f***ers took FOR-EVER to cook. And people would pull them out of the fryers early and just throw them on a tray. People brought them back for being undercooked all the time. Which tells me, lots of people were probably not paying attention and just stuffing them, half raw, into their facehole.
Former Panera Bread employee, Ichorous007, chimed in with a warning about the frozen soups from the sandwich and soup chain:
Worked at Panera bread. The soups come in frozen bags in boxes that say “Institution food” on the side of the box. We would throw them in a hot water cooker that would bring them up to temperature from freezing blocks to near boiling hot bags. Run in the back and fill up the empty pots from the food line. Sometimes we didn’t get to fully thaw out the soup in time and put some cold ones out there often enough. I didn’t mind the soups there so much but this would ruin the illusion for some customers if they knew.
Dunkin’ Donuts employee Oisillion advised against ordering the meat products at the donut and breakfast chain:
I work at Dunkin Donuts. What sucks to make? Hash browns, when they have to be made fresh (any time after noon, pretty much). What should you not order? Any of the meat. It’s not that it’s not preserved or anything, it’s just utterly disgusting. Please don’t eat it. We make donuts, coffee, and bagels. I wouldn’t recommend much else.
Chipotle fans can rest easy knowing that their burrito chain was relatively unscathed in the thread with several Redditors praising their former employer and its food:
kittyjam:
Former Chipotle employee here. Would absolutely eat anything there, any time of the day. I mean, during the slower times like 3-4 pm and after 930 PM, the stuff wasn’t quite as fresh as it would be during a lunch rush, but still really good. During the rush, you are getting it as fresh as can be. You would never eat something at Chipotle that had been sitting for more than an hour. Everything is prepped in the AM for the day, and again in the afternoon for the night shift. That guac you get on your burrito at noon was whole avocado, bunches of cilantro, whole onions, citrus juice and sea salt 5 hours prior.
whistlenosetruckstop:
Chipotle. Pretty much order everything. It’s all good and fresh. We go through a ****load of chicken so if you want your meat cooked less than 5-10 minutes ago I’d go with that but I wouldn’t worry about any of the food we serve. That and we are required to wash your hands and change gloves every hour. Even when we get busy. Always.
Banjohusky95 revealed why you might not want to drink the lemonade from Chick-fil-A any longer:
Worked at Chick-fil-a. When making the lemon juice for the lemonade, your hand sometimes slips when pushing the lemon on the juicer. This causes your hand to sometimes get a nice cut in the juicers netal blades. I don’t know about other Chick-fil-a restruants, but the managers would tell us to not say anything because the juice was too expensive to replace and was okay to drink according to them.
