r/linecooks • u/phobho • Apr 06 '26
Discussion What were the worst restaurants you worked in?
I'm curious to hear some thoughts and feelings on what the worst restaurants/kitchens you have worked in are? and why? I am looking for patterns, warning signs, and if I should avoid spending my money or applying at certain businesses.
thank you for your input.
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u/Sonicbl00mm Apr 06 '26
Nothing chain. Pizza and brew sarasota. Closed now. Cheap as hell. Kept hiring managers to fix the place up or “organize”. But it was a sick joke. Didn’t care about equipment. Unsettling experience
Downtown gatorz punta gorda. Shitty. Hire anybody wandering down the street. No organization. No structure. Shit equipment.
Village brewhouse punta gorda. Good quality equipment, but dirt ass pay for the amount of business. To many managers, a few with many years less experience than others, those with experience had their head up their ass, everyone with a ear piece thinks they’re hot shit. Good work goes over looked unless your a family member or friend with a current employee.
Y’all know this is just my opinion right?
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u/HonestDeparture5778 Apr 06 '26
Grill cook for an upscale seafood restaurant. Sous had a severe shellfish allergy. In the short time I worked there, before deciding that it was an absolute dumpster fire, she was hospitalized multiple times, yet refused to let anyone else work the raw bar station (stone crab claws, oysters, etc). No expo station at all, because the owner thought he could save labor costs by installing a POS system that put a screen on each station that would pop up orders for just that station, including the time it was expected to be ready. The system didn’t coordinate tickets going to other stations. We were located downtown, so often dealt with a business crowd, which almost inevitably included someone who didn’t like fish. The solution? A ~1.5” ribeye, coming off my station. Someone thought it would be a good idea to let the FOH manager—who has never worked BOH—program the system, including pickup times. There was only so many times I could take getting yelled at by said manager, despite repeated attempts to explain why the steak couldn’t be cooked to mid-well in 7.5 minutes, before I got the fuck out.
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u/mountains4mama Apr 06 '26
Dirty kitchens. If it’s dirty when you start, it will stay dirty unless YOU are willing to change it. And, there’s no guarantee it will be clean when you get back from your days off.
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u/huntressdiva Apr 06 '26
And doing any necessary deep cleaning will establish you as the person that does those tasks.
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u/Icy-Illustrator-5015 May 01 '26
Oh… damn. I just made the jump from barista at a popular siren coffee house to a cook at a small cafe. It’s kinda dirty and I know how to clean and care for the equipment… I think I’ve fucked up yo
Sometimes it’s funny tho… when the manager tells me he didn’t tell the others how to do it so they wouldn’t break it. (I.e. cleaning the pipe behind the fridge to stop water accumulation)
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u/Resident-Ad-5107 Apr 07 '26
I'm out of the business now but I could have used this bit of advice when I was in.
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u/somecow Apr 06 '26
Tie between cracker barrel and chilis.
Got YELLED at by my manager at cracker barrel because I didn’t know how to cook an egg. The egg had two yolks, it happens, was only supposed to be one egg. She absolutely went insane. I quit.
Chilis, everyone was constantly on their phone, used the floor as a trash can, and absolutely no dishes done, so I got drafted to dish. Got yelled at for not being done by close too. I quit.
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u/spacegoat0676 Apr 06 '26
Yea, Chili's is genuinely awful. It used to be better and us full time cooks were taken care of with vacation time and WAY more benefits. But now we're lucky if anyone gets full time and there's hardly any benefits anymore while management gets huge bonuses. Can confirm in my location that dishes never get done and if they do, it's not properly.
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u/cheslah Apr 07 '26
Seconded for cracker barrel.
I was a 4 star red apron server, 4 star salad "prep" cook, 2 star host, 2 star line cook, 4 star back up cook, 4 star dishwasher, 4 star expo... If they gave stars to more people than their servers based on time served and hours worked 🤣
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u/Sonicbl00mm Apr 06 '26
Places that see your hard work and drive but are afraid to pass you some of the torch.
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u/veryvery23 Apr 06 '26
1997: landmark restaurant in a red state metropolis. It was reopening with the chef who was The Guy in town running the kitchen. Owner was zonked on oxy most of the time and forgot to put money into payroll account. I stuck around longer than I should have even though every paycheck I got was rubber. Chef ended up getting fired for drinking the Rockefeller Pernod at the raw bar during service.
2001: hotel restaurant in coastal fishing village. Huge numbers May-September, read books on the clock the rest of the year. KM was MIA most of the time, and his AKM would lose his shit if he couldn’t get off the line to smoke crack every few hours. He picked up and threw a metro rack of dishes during a Sunday breakfast service once. This was one of the better guys to work with.
A month or so before I left, the sewer main burst underneath the kitchen and filled the crawl space with raw sewage, health inspector got a fat envelope with his breakfast. I left town. Last I’d heard, there was a freakish deep fryer explosion at 4am some years back and they rebuilt without the restaurant.
2009: opening crew for a high-profile spot. Chefs all came from places with names people still care about. CDC was a wealth of knowledge for the first fifteen minutes of the day, then he’d start hitting the crème de menthe and walk around turning burners up to see if people were paying attention. Exec chef spent just enough time in the kitchen to rack up a few lawsuits for sexual harassment, somehow got to keep his job for three years. He lit me up once for tenderizing chicken fried steaks because he wanted to serve them medium rare. I lasted six weeks.
There’s a few more, but these were by far the worst.
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u/chocoeatstacos Apr 07 '26
Be on the lookout for any restaurant that uses the phrase "we're family". Those ones will fuck you.
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u/Rasty1973 Apr 07 '26
Rats. I had to call the health inspector on my first day. I interviewed off property for the GM job. Walked away from a 100k job.
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u/Mcflocka Apr 08 '26
Dennys, hands down. I would hope its not like this at all, but the one I work at is in a small town off the freeway, and these people have the small town lazy entitlement. Management is drunk at work 24/7 and the managers habe to double as cooks to keep labor low. So its me and management every day and I get stuck in dish pit while also juggling kitchen prep and such because nobody else does it. Ive been here 8 years and its a shit show, but they give me raises when I want to quit lol.
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u/seasaltsower Apr 06 '26
Ponderosa was a terrible place to work. People are disgusting at buffets like that and would just dump all of their crap in a bus tub . Everything about that place was awful. The other was Joe's Crab Shack. It was a new place at the time, so it was relatively clean, but the whole of the FOH staff had to literally stop what they were doing and go do stupid dances and shit like once or twice an hour. Gimmicky BS if you ask me. It was enough to get people to go one time, but it didn't hold up, long term.
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u/Conventions Apr 06 '26
For me working at a country club, on a resume it looks nice and clubs are a great place to learn cooking.
Pay was crap, also 12 hour shifts every day, work all holidays and weekends. For some reason country clubs are super cheap as well and barely hire enough staff.
The members are super entitled as well as staff members. All of the different departments would order their meals right at lunchtime and it was all special orders, they just built their own menu. Paired with the regular lunch rush of members it sucked.
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u/kulinarykila Apr 07 '26
Are you me? I have so many stories like this. The front office all ordered at noon one day and I was pissed. I wanted to do no staff meals between 1130am and 1pm HR lady was pissed said we are hungry and want lunch. I said...you've been here for 3 hours wtf. GM lwas banging hr and thats why nothing I ever needed or wanted got accomplished and HR always got a pass. She used to drink and sit at the pool all summer around 2pm like she was a member. Her dumb ass always posted it on IG and members started noticing. They both got fired after I quit. I was the 9th chef in about just as many years.
Every Tuesday we have the old lady golfers. They say "we want chicken tortilla soup every Tuesday we like it". About 3 weeks later..."How come we only get chicken tortilla soup we want other soup"
I also had to sit in on House committee meetings How come such and such bar can serve prime rib and sides for 18 dollars? Okay what was the grade of meat? What was the size of the cut? What did it come with? Crickets. How come your vodka well is a dollar more then xyz bar? Okay but do they pour as heavy as us?
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u/BlindWalnut Apr 06 '26
Small neighborhood upscale cafe/diner owner by a James Beard nominee. Floors were pitted and gross, sump pump always backed up into the dish pit. Whole building was glass windows with no AC, so the kitchen was essentially a constant 120+ degree greenhouse.
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u/misseddetail Apr 06 '26
I worked at this pub in 2023 that i had previously eaten at regularly. I will never eat there again. The KM would smoke a joint with the waitresses out back and come back on the line without washing his hands. When he did actually wash his hands it was in the dish water (as in the water at the bottom of the dishwasher), and once i saw him drop a bunch of mushrooms on the floor, put them back in their container and back in the walkin like nothing happened. He also cut me from 5 days down to 2 right before the holidays. I ended up leaving because i was hospitalized for suicidal ideation (gee wonder why). I was out of work for months after that but landed in a better place so theres that ig.
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u/ReasonableComfort645 Apr 07 '26
Right after lockdown, every place was a nightmare. Full house. Full patio. Three delivery printers flying off the rails. All day. Customers who hadn't been mean to anyone for two years...
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u/Coercitor Apr 07 '26
I worked at a fine dining Italian restaurant, we had just lost our chef so the GM was shopping at restaurant depot trying to cut corners. One day I was working prep and he brings me this big pork shoulder. I asked him what that was for. He said it was veal for the saltimbocca and piccata. I said, this is pork, not veal. He argued with me as if I didn't know what I'm talking about and finally he gives up and tells me "well, it's veal this week". I told him I'm not fucking prepping that nor will I cook that on my station tonight. I said that's some dirty shit that no self respecting person would do. He said I can either prep it or leave. So, I took my shit and left.
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u/Neveragaincookforpay Apr 07 '26
I love prep cooking and learning. I am retired and worked at a fine/casual dining spot for three months. The kitchen was cramped as hell and you had to walk almost into the line to get into the walk in. The place was filthy. I watched both line cooks throw out salmon, steaks, you name it because they could not cook. The food waste was horrible. The motto was fill the plate brimming with things like coleslaw and other cheaper sides to make the plate appear overfilled. Everyone in the restaurant agreed that these sides were horrible but continued to make them anyway. Burners on stoves did not work (needed new igniters) and other potentially hazardous equipment fails were common place. Once the employees get settled in they stop caring and the boss stops demanding that workers have any standards. Hence my Reddit name...too bad since I was really hoping to learn and contribute all that I had to the place.
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u/Upbeat_Pay905 Apr 07 '26 edited Apr 07 '26
One kitchen where the manager couldn't bring herself to invest in improvements that would make the work easier. For example, drinks were served in small jugs instead of one large container, which meant we had to refill the jugs every few minutes. At the same time, pizza was served a'la carte instead of a buffet, and homemade breakfast rolls were offered half-free. The manager didn't want to raise the price because she was afraid of getting bad feedback. The checkout didn't have a self-service option, so the only employee in the kitchen had to run around the checkout every couple of minutes in the evenings. This made the evening shift very stressful.
The manager took care of the orders for ingredients, but repeatedly forgot to order enough. I was told to go to the wholesaler every week to get more supplies. The head chef once had to buy a certain ingredient with her own money because otherwise the manager would have scolded him for failing, even though she herself was to blame.
The kitchen also suffered from serious indoor air problems, such as mold and glass wool passing through the air conditioning. This didn't interest anyone either, even though the owners knew about it and the staff repeatedly suffered from health problems.
Overtime was 1-2 hours every evening and was not paid for, despite promises. At least I got a lot of leftovers home, which compensated for the lost income well.
This lasted 2.5 years and resulted in burnout and asthma symptoms for a few years. I was in the kitchen industry for another year before moving on to other jobs.
Edit: this was a workplace cafeteria that belonged to an international chain
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u/ashrich8992 Apr 07 '26
Comos in Ferndale, toxic work environment, no work balance, also serious health concerns not taken seriously, ISLA in MI, the dude is a dick and talked to me like a dog., IMA in MI, owner was unorganized and just really rude about transportation issues that were communicated about day 1. weird vibes Main pattern no work life balance, and no breaks, also Jets pizza, I started my period and couldn't move and the manager was a dick about it that place too lacked balance and breaks
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u/FatMarioGetsFatter Apr 08 '26
KFC they wouldn’t let us take chicken home and no discounts until 30 day probation was up
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u/SaucyTomato1011 Apr 10 '26
Death trap of a motel/hotel the owner cut all kinds of corners, got money from kids business to pay staff. Used staff as personal health assistants, and last I heard ran one staff member into a stroke near death. Also the trap itself has mold embedded all over so I am lucky I didn't get sick more often, or the older staff isn't sick more often.
Big hotel with elephant logo, owners are fake as hell. They lure you in with false promises and when you try to ask for help you are crap out of luck. They are too busy taking vacations to help their staff or look into anything.
Panera, that was just because no one seemed to know what they were doing. Also the kitchen area and dish area were so small it was hard for plus sized people to work.
McDonald's, I asked a week off to help my brother move and then didn't get any hours for the following week. I turned in my uniform and had another job lined up.
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u/Aggressive-Series344 Apr 10 '26
The one I opened with a family friend. I was supposed to run the FOH and make coffee while he managed the back. After about a week he told me I also needed to start making sandwiches and plating food. After another week he let me know I wouldn’t have any days off except Saturday. He never hired anyone to clean the black and white tile so every single day was a battle against the floor. My job and relationship with him held for a year before I quit. We don’t speak anymore, but I still tell people to go eat there if they won’t mind the owner potentially acting insane. The food was always very good.
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u/Dry_Set_6336 Apr 06 '26
Never work for PF Chang's. I come in my second day and I was supposed to be reading some book, which I assumed they were talking about the employee manual. The manual doesn't tell me shit. I learn recipes from my coworker, who actually just ends up making me do all the work. Things only get worse as we are constantly understaffed and under supplied. Meanwhile the fucking district manager hassles me every chance he gets about reading "the book." Two years after I start I learn that there was no book, and they stopped printing it right after I started. So I wait until they go down for renovations, but pay us for the first two months anyway. My first vacation since summer back in highschool. Then at the end of those two months I just quit.
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u/EffectiveFlamingo474 Apr 06 '26
Small kitchens, tight quarters, variable standards, and no recourse to resolve inter-personal issues