When people go out for a bite to eat, they might not always get what they bargained for. These diners share their absolute most stomach-churning experiences, and only, like, half of them contain cockroaches.
An Outing For Burgers Ends In The Emergency Room
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“My husband and I ate at a very popular place that serves sandwiches and drinks. We ordered a house salad and after I took my first bite I started bleeding out of my mouth. There were shards of glass in the salad. The waitress said someone broke a glass near the salad making station and did not dump it all out like they were supposed to. She freaked out and asked me not to tell management. I couldn’t even talk, I was busy mopping up blood and spitting glass out. My husband screams at her to get management and the manager comes running over and profusely apologizes. We go to ER and they clean out my mouth. I had so many cuts and had to be on antibiotics. The restaurant paid the ER bill and a settlement so we wouldn’t sue.”
“I Complained To The Manager And All They Did Was Offer A Free Soda”
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“I ordered a lemonade at a Vietnamese restaurant, the drink came out with a spoon for mixing it. I pulled out the spoon to find (what seemed to be) a baby roach melted to the back of the spoon, probably from getting steamed in the dishwasher. I told the server what I saw, he said ‘oh’ and took it back. When he brought me another one I checked the spoon again. It was the same spoon and he just scraped off HALF the roach. I complained to the manager and all they did was offer a free soda.”
One Pizza Place, Two Injuries
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“I was nine years old at a pizza place with my dad. The server walks up with our meal balancing the pizza tray above her hand, does an elegant turn at the table, and the pizza slides off into my lap. Splat. ‘Ouch!’ I exclaim. It’s fresh from the oven. A commotion follows as the wait staff realizes a little kid has gotten burned. The female servers escort me to the ladies’ room and offer a greasy ointment while blisters well up on my legs and arm. While we were in the ladies’ room a busboy goes to work on the mess with a mop. Most of the staff is in a panic afraid that my father will sue. When I return the confusion is even worse: one of the servers is lying on her back on the floor. The busboy hadn’t put up a wet floor warning sign so the next server who left the kitchen had slid and fallen hard. She was trying to stay still–which was the smart thing to do when there’s a chance of injury–until the busboy returned, grabbed her by the arm, and tried to force her to her feet. At that point, dad nods at the door and we leave. We didn’t sue, attitudes were different in the seventies. Ointment and cold water were enough to take care of the blisters and dad wasn’t the type to drag me to the ER as a pretext to lawyer up.”
A Wet Floor Sign Is NOT Enough
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“I was at Cracker Barrel with my family a few months ago and the kid at the table next to us just randomly pukes his guts out onto the floor, right in the middle of the restaurant. You would think this is a sanitation and health hazard and would be immediately cleaned up, but instead, we had to try to continue with our meals with a fresh pile of regurgitated chicken fried steak sitting three feet from us for the next 30 MINUTES. A manager finally came over, slapped a ‘wet floor’ sign over it, shrugged, and walked away. Our waitress would literally have to step around the pile of puke to ask us if everything tasted ok. It didn’t.”
“Worm Free Is The Way To Be”
“I went to century city mall THRILLED a place advertised they had vegan salmon. I’ve tried vegan beef, chicken, etc., but never knew I could now have a salmon substitute! The chef seemed confused when I ordered it, but it was on the menu. He then handed me a weird, floppy pink thing. It was great. Tasted almost like real salmon! Turned out it was real salmon, but raw. I contracted the first case of hookworms Los Angeles has had in years, so rare that my doctor informed me it’d take 2 weeks to receive a special shipment of medicine. I don’t know how you’d feel if you knew living worms were growing inside your belly by an inch a day, and pulling them out when they didn’t pass all at once, but 2 weeks was not acceptable to me. I googled the medicine, found its active ingredient to be the exact same as in dog dewormer, and bought 3 boxes at Petsmart, as worm free is the way to be.”
Um, That’s Not How You Clean Up Number Two…
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“So my family and I went to a Ruby Tuesday inside our local mall. We are walking to our table after speaking with the hostess and I just get this overwhelming smell of poop. I stop and look down and see that I had stepped in poop – inside of a restaurant, inside of a mall. So we realize this had to be from some baby diaper, which is bad enough. Except then my mom talks to the manager and is like, ‘How is there poop in your restaurant, this is disgusting.’ They begin to apologize profusely and say they are cleaning it up immediately. We turn around and an employee is ‘sweeping’ it up with a broom. Not picking it up, not mopping it up, SWEEPING it with a dry broom that is basically smearing poop all over the floor and the broom. Needless to say, we got out of there and have never gone back.”
How Does One Uncook A Pizza?
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“I ordered a buffalo chicken pizza from a place in my town. Nothing fancy or huge, close to a medium at a chain place like Pizza Hut, easily a meal for one person, which is why I got it. I bite into the first slice and somethings off, but the buffalo sauce is strong enough I can’t figure out what really as everything just tastes like spiciness. Then I dive into the second slice and realize I’ve just bitten into…goo, basically. I set the slice down and spit out the piece I had been chewing to realize that I was eating uncooked pizza. Well, partially cooked. The sauce was hot, the cheese was melted, the chicken was cooked…but the pizza dough itself was raw. I started pawing at the rest of the pizza, ripping it apart with my hands, and it was just straight uncooked dough, like ‘stringy in my hands, sticking to my fingers’ raw dough. I was pissed, and fearful that since I had already eaten a slice that I was going to get sick from eating raw, uncooked dough, so I slammed the box shut and drove back to the store. I stormed in, slapped the box on the counter and asked for a manager, who proceeded to tell me that I had done something to the pizza and was lying to him. I said ‘Are you kidding me right now?’ when he said it and the few people in the store were all alternating staring at me, the raw pizza and the manager. He continued to argue with me that I had messed with the pizza myself, refusing to believe that the pizza was uncooked and refusing to give me either a refund or a cooked pizza. Fed up I dumped the raw pizza on the floor, which made a nice splat sound and while I felt bad about it after the fact because some underpaid worker had to clean it up, I did it because I knew the raw, mushy, dough would stick to the linoleum tile like glue and maybe prove to someone that hey, this dough really was raw.”
These People Were Attacked When An Employee Was Fired
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“In high school and college, my friends and I would hang out and eat at a diner in my hometown all the time. The breakfast food was decent and cheap and the staff was very chill and joked around with us. I was in there one summer home from college with my best friend and my girlfriend. I ordered eggs and bacon and such. A few minutes later, we hear a disturbance in the kitchen and someone comes out and storms out the front door. Curious, but not worrisome really, because it is a low budget diner. A little while later, our food comes out and my girlfriend is having a little bit of asthma. It’s uncommon for her, but not unheard of. I take my first bite of eggs and they’re spicy. Really spicy. I mention this to my friends and they’re both agreeing with me. My eyes start to water and my girlfriend starts coughing. So do the people at the next table and all through the diner. Somebody gets up and goes outside as the coughing gets worse and within two minutes there’s a calm but blurry-eyed exodus into the parking lot. My girlfriend uses her inhaler, one of the four or so times in the 5 years we dated, and we mill around in the parking lot by my car, wondering what had just happened. We start to hear from the crowd that the guy who stormed out had just gotten fired, and people were slowly figuring out that he had pepper sprayed an air vent before he left. My girlfriend was still having trouble breathing, so we were the first to just give up and leave.”
The Bug In The Sandwich Was Only The Beginning, The Manager’s Reaction Is When The Horror Began
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“I was having lunch at with one of my clients and I bit into my spinach and hummus sandwich and got this really off-putting taste, so I looked down and there’s half of a huge, disgusting looking bug sticking out. It was seriously so gross looking. I, discreetly as I could, spit it out into my napkin but I looked so disgusted that my client knew something was wrong, so I told him and when the waitress came back she asked what was wrong so I told her. She apologized and brought the sandwich back inside, and suddenly the owner comes stomping out all huffy and starts yelling at us, looking at my client and saying, ‘I know people like you try to get free food all the time, I’m not falling for this, you planted this, I don’t want people like you here,’ (he’s black, not sure if that’s what she was referring to but I assume so). We were just shocked, she made such a scene and we weren’t even asking for anything free. He just calmly but loudly stated that we were going to go somewhere else without bugs in the spinach, I threw some money on the table, and we left. I looked back and everyone in there was disgustedly pushing away their plates. She made it soo much worse by making such a scene. I still can’t eat spinach, I keep expecting a bug tucked away between the leaves.”
He Got Free Pizza For Life, But Hasn’t Eaten Here Since
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“As a poor college student, I ordered a pizza from a chain, let’s call them Daddy Jim’s. I ordered a pepperoni pizza and it was supposed to take 30 minutes or so to be delivered. It finally showed up after an hour and some change (maybe my punishment for not walking the half mile to the store) so I was very hungry. I paid the guy, threw the box on the table and got to work. I took a bite and thought there was a weird scent but couldn’t place it. I took another bite and had some delicious pepperoni. Then another bite—oh my gosh I’m bleeding and in a lot of pain. I manage to spit the food out but can feel something still in my mouth. I reach in and discover a thumbtack stuck into my gums. I look at the rest of the slice and find another one. Somehow thumbtacks—and yes, I literally mean multiple on that slice and on the rest of the pizza—had gotten into the cheese or something and then baked. Melted plastic was the weird smell. I called the store, spoke to an employee, then a manager called me, then a district manager, etc. They comped my meal and then gave me pizza for life. I’ve never eaten from them again.”
“I Still Can’t Eat Goat Cheese Because Of This”
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“I worked at a pizza place that served one single pizza with goat cheese and not even that much; 1/4 cup on a large pizza. No one ever orders this pizza. I was full-time and I probably made it 10 times in 2 years. So, in order to buy the goat cheese it would be sent in a 1lb bag and it would go moldy so fast. My boss would get me to pick out the moldy bits and serve the ‘okay’ bits to the customers. I still can’t eat goat cheese because of this and it’s been 6 years.”
“I Was Like ‘Eh, Whatever,’ Until I Couldn’t Chew Through It…”
Ollyy/Shutterstock
“When I was about 10 at a Friendly’s, I got an ice cream sundae, bit into it and felt something chewy but was like ‘eh, whatever.’ Until I still couldn’t chew through it. So I spit it out and found it was somebody’s dirty fake nail.”
He Thought What He Felt Was His Wife’s Shoe Under The Table, But It Was So Much Worse
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“I was at a restaurant with my wife and mom. It was storming out really bad. My wife was in heels and I was wearing shorts. I thought she crossed her legs toward me and scraped my shin with her heel. No, it was a rat – crawling up my bare leg! I jumped out of my seat, and the rat, wet, fluffy and honestly pretty cute perched up on my chair. The restaurant emptied out. The manager chased the rat around trying to catch it in a bucket. The funniest part is a lady freaked and stood on top of the booth with a fork to stab the rat if it approached. I got a gift card to the restaurant for my trouble. They didn’t comp my meal. That place is no longer in business.”
Sushi, With A Side Of Roach
“We would occasionally go to this Asian buffet because they had surprisingly good sushi. I go to get some sushi and there is a cockroach chilling on the ice that’s surrounding the plates of sushi. Um…what do I do…I go to our table and tell my husband what I saw and he looks over at the sushi…right as the ‘chef’ takes the tongs that customers are to use, picks up the ice cube with the roach on it, throws it away and PUTS THE TONGS BACK FOR CUSTOMERS TO USE.”
Employees MUST Wash Hands
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“Met my uncle to eat at a Denny’s with our family one Christmas (it was the only thing that was open). Our server gave us our food, but I needed to use the restroom. Got up, went to the restroom, and he was there. Thought nothing of it. Was finished and walked up to the sink right behind him. He walked past it. Then brought us the second half of our orders moments later. I’ve never eaten at a Denny’s since.”
“I Just Stood There In Shock That He Kept Going”
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“I went to Subway once in a tiny little arcade in town. I ordered my food and as he’s putting lettuce in the sub, a little cockroach crawled out of my sub and back into the salad bar where it had obviously just came from. The guy hesitates for a second and then keeps making the sub. He adds the rest of the veggies while I stand there just in shock that he kept going, so he asks me what sauces I want. So I just said ‘I saw that,’ expecting an apology to follow. Except he didn’t apologize, just blankly stared at me and said ‘Saw what?’ So I explained that I saw a roach crawl out of the middle of my footlong meatball on flatbread and saw him notice and keep making it anyway, to which he said; ‘Oh, well, do you want me to make you another one?’ In a tone that came across as just kind of annoyed. So I said yes, got him to go through the whole process all over again, and then when he asked what sauces I wanted I just said, ‘Actually, I don’t want it, I’m going to go somewhere else.’ To which he replied, ‘Yeah, good call.’
Reported them to the city council food safety authority and never went there again.
They Tried To Remain Positive, But The Hair Broke The Camel’s Back
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“Some years ago on my birthday, I had a group of my friends join me in Miami. We parked and walked around the city, mostly in South Beach, and just enjoyed the night. Eventually, people got hungry and asked me where were eating. We passed by a bunch of nice places but everywhere seems pretty packed and I just want something cheap and quick. ‘Oh look, that place is mostly empty.’ The Food Factory. Ok, that’s already a whole bunch of red flags, but we ate there anyway.
So we walk in, and the host/waiter tells us to sit wherever, hands us the napkins, utensils, and menus and says ‘Here, pass these around.’ We’re not snobs in any way, but this is a decent looking restaurant in a really nice neighborhood, surrounded by a bunch of really nice restaurants, so the waiter’s etiquette seems off. We order our drinks and wait patiently as we discuss how strange it is this place is nearly completely empty while every other place is packed. We get our drinks, none of them go to the right person, no big deal. We order our food, but the waiter snapped twice when questions were asked about things on the menu. Ok, server, hopefully the food will make up for it. We get our food, really bland. Two bites in, I noticed half of my food is connected to a giant strand of hair. I tell the waiter about it and he accused me of planting the hair. I didn’t have long hair, nor any way to cook a strand of hair into my food, but he felt the need to blame me anyway. On top of this, my friends are all underwhelmed or just disgusted by their own food at this point. I try to remain positive. I get a new dish and as I do, my friend pulls out a strand of hair from their food, and look, there’s a different colored strand of hair in my food this time. So, we’re all done. We try telling the waiter and he walks away from us. Buddy of mine who was a waiter himself and another bud approached him and told him this is totally unacceptable. The guy told my friend he has no experience in a big city and doesn’t know how hard it is. My friend worked in a place which was regularly packed. The guy ended his insulting barrage with ‘Just pay and get out of here.’ So we left without paying.”
“Even As A Young And Gastrically Tolerant Man, I’m Not Eating That”
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“I went for lunch with some buddies from work to a Chinese buffet I hadn’t been to before. My companions had been and warned me beforehand that the best thing about the place was that it was cheap. Okay, how bad could it be? The water glasses and utensils were greasy like someone had messily eaten a whole bag of kettle chips before setting the table. Yuck, but I got some reasonably clean ones and soldiered on. Go up to the buffet and there’s the source of the grease; each tray of different hot foods was like a grease bucket with some food-like items floating around. Okay, I’m not eating that. Even as a young and gastrically tolerant man, no. But I didn’t want to make a scene with my friends so I went over to the small American-style salad bar to get lunch. The lettuce bin was squirming with cockroaches! Like 15 or 20 of ’em milling around in there. Went back to the table and said, ‘No way,’ and I was out the door on a magic carpet of queasy. The place closed a few weeks later.”
When Confronted, The Server And Manager Played Dumb
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“I ordered enchiladas at a now-closed Mexican restaurant. It’s a fairly safe thing to get since it’s almost impossible to mess them up, or so I thought. I get the plate and look at it and I find a wadded up tissue stuck in the rice. I ask the server to ‘come check my plate and see if you notice anything odd.’ He’s stumped, so he calls his manager who doesn’t see it either. I literally have to point to the literal garbage that is on my plate. All I got was an audible ‘Hmmmmm.’ I walked out. The waiter chased me out to my vehicle, demanding that I pay for the entree. ‘Sure, go inside and call the police, I’ll wait.’ He backed down.”
Poor Table Manners
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“The cooks at a Chinese restaurant were all eating at the only other occupied table and one guy carefully spread his napkin open on the table, plugged one nostril and very forcefully expelled the contents of the other nostril onto the napkin. Then did the other side, folded up the napkin carefully and continued the meal.”
The Roaches Weren’t The Worst Part
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“As an electrician all my life I got sent to a lot of odd calls. One time I got sent in the evening to an upscale Chinese buffet restaurant, if there is such a thing, near the Houston Galleria, which is kinda swanky. The call was due to one of their heating tables losing power and was a faulty plug that needed to be replaced. The place horrified me. It wasn’t a set-out buffet, but you would order what you wanted and they would bring it out to you and then you could order more or different stuff as you went along and they would fill the order in the kitchen and bring it out to you. They had a buffet table in the kitchen with all the essentials like fried rice, noodle, etc. and it was covered in roaches. They would scoop rice out and then flick away the roaches before taking it out to the patrons. I did report them to the health department as I felt I had to but I did so anonymously as I didn’t want a business client to be reported by the business I worked for if ya understand. They got shut down within a year for keeping meat in a broken cooler or basically keeping meat at room temperature after a lot of complaints of sick patrons.”
Bird Brain
“I went to a McDonalds around 10 am with an ex. We got our order and then sat to eat our burgers. Suddenly a pigeon enters the place, crashes with a table and dies on the floor. The problem is that we were too hungry to care and kept eating. None of the employees did anything either.”
A Girl And Her Mom Ran For The Bathroom…But They Were Too Late
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“A little girl and her mom came running by my table rushing to the bathroom. She was obviously sick and about to lose it. Right as she’s passing our table she loses it, vomiting into her hands, she was doing her best to contain it, but it wasn’t enough. Some sprayed out the sides and onto me and my face and our table… Luckily, it was before our food was served, but it didn’t matter. Me and my girlfriend had completely lost our appetite at that point.”
The Flood Wasn’t So Bad, But What The Flood Brought With It…
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“I was on spring break in the Bahamas and eating at a hotel restaurant with a large outside patio. There was a sudden strong rainstorm, which wasn’t so bad since we were under cover. However, all the water going into the drain caused a massive herd of cockroaches to flood out of the drain and onto the patio. I remember quickly putting my feet up and I think we ran away from our table until the cockroach flood dissipated. Kind of changes the atmosphere.”
It Was NOT Ice In The Drink
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“When I was younger, going to Chili’s was a treat. My parents told me I could get anything I wanted. I decided I wanted their cherry slushie and a pizza. When my slushie arrived, I noticed there were large chunks of ice that didn’t seem to get crunched by the blender. Oh well, who cares. Actually… it’s getting really hard to chew this ice with my teeth… and this ice isn’t melting… I pull it out of my mouth to see that it’s GLASS. The drink that I thought was filled with ice was filled with GLASS. I knew my parents would freak that their child just consumed a bunch of glass so I told them calmly, no big deal. Well, they did freak out. They let us leave without paying in hopes their loss that evening would be cheaper than what my parents would cost them if we sued. We didn’t sue, we just never went back.”
“A Few Minutes In, One Girl Notices Her Salad Moving…”
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“Worst food wise was Old Chicago. Went there with some friends and we ordered, got our food and started eating. A few minutes in, one girl notices her salad moving. She moved the leaves with her fork and uncovered a giant caterpillar. Told the waitress and she said it happens a lot because they come in on the lettuce or something. They didn’t make her pay for part of her meal. I haven’t been back since.”
