12 Ordering Secrets From Former Chain Restaurant Employees

Chain restaurants are great because no matter where you are, you know what you're gonna get. That said...you may not always know what you're gonna get. The nice people at AskReddit had former chain restaurant employees impart the wisdom they learned working behind the counter. With their advice you can perfectly optomize your order. With that in mind, here are: 

1.nofudeb is helping you not get laughed out of an In-N-Out: 

Former In-N-Out employee. Don't order burgers "doggy style." They don't exist and we'll secretly make fun of you.

2. trex_in_spats makes us reconsider ever getting a fountain drink again: 

Worked at Ruby Tuesdays a few years back. One of my coworkers always got soda station cleanup as her sidework . Turns out she never actually cleaned the soda fountain or the nozzles. I literally pulled out a chunk of mold from the machine.

3. cheeseburgerwaffles confirms it: 

I worked at a family owned small chain of restaurants when I was a teen. We were trained very well with cleanliness. Years later I find myself working at a subway and I pulled the soda machine apart at the end of the night my first night as the night manager told me to clean it. I'm midway through cleaning it and she comes over stunned as I "broke" the soda machine. She had no idea all these parts have to come off to properly clean the thing. They'd just run soda water thru and wipe it down.

4. SageOfToads did the math on McNuggets: 

Mcdonalds employees here. With the way the prices are for chicken nuggets, NEVER order a 10 piece or 6 piece.

For whatever reason, the 4 piece chicken nuggets are only $1 while the 6 piece is $3.99. If you pay for two 4 pieces instead of a 6, you'll end up getting more and paying half the price. Similarly, the 10 piece is only 11 cents cheaper than the 20 piece, so you're better off just upgrading. Where i work, the 10 piece is somewhere around $4.89 while the 20 sits at $5.

On a side note, if you like chicken and waffles, make sure to ask for some pancake syrup packets and use them as a dipping sauce for the nuggets. Bone apple tea 👌

5. CeceSweets explains all the weight I gained drinking smoothies: 

Hi I used to work for smoothie king. This isn't really anything specific but do NOT go there because you think it's healthy. All of the smoothies are actually pretty unhealthy for you.

EDIT: here's one of the main reasons why. It's most definitely the sugar. Everything that makes the smoothie taste good most likely has sugar in it. The strawberries are surrounded with a sugary syrup. So are the raspberries, blueberries, and peaches. The juices that we add are a thick syrup idkk why they call it juice because you definitely can't drink it down by itself. Then you add the marketed "raw cane sugar". Just because it has raw in the front doesn't make it NOT sugar. The worst smoothie I see people get is the hulk. I've seen so many people get the hulk for their children but whenever I try to tell them it's like they refuse to believe anything there could possibly be bad for you. LITTLE JIMMY DOES NOT NEED TO BE DRINKING THAT FAT SLUDGE MAM I DONT WANT TO BE RESPONSIBLE FOR HIS HEART EXPLODING. I have every smoothie basically memorized so if any of y'all have specific questions just ask.

6. THUNDER-PUNCH is gonna save you some time on your Pizza Hut order: 

I worked at a Pizza Hut for a while. Most of it is fine, although I wouldn't order wings on a Wednesday unless you are able to deal with a long wait. Their wing street menu gets slammed on that day due to the wing special, and most Pizza Huts don't have enough fryer space to keep up with Wednesday business.

The regular breadsticks are the most likely thing to not be made freshly, because they are ordered in packs of five sticks, but prepped and cooked in pans of ten sticks. Not a big deal during peak hours because we sold so many breadsticks that it didn't matter, but in slower hours it sometimes meant that if there was a 20 minute gap between one order of breadsticks and the next, the second customer got breadsticks that were significantly less tasty. They weren't rock hard or anything, but their fresh breadsticks are great and their 20 minute old breadsticks aren't great.

7. DukeGallows makes us want to order Papa tonight: 

Worked at papa John's. Shitty job but can't hate on them. Every thing is pretty fresh and never frozen just like they advertise. Little secret: if you want more butter, ranch, sauce, whatever just ask for it. The new employee training video tells you to give em all the little things for free bc they'll come back.

8. Sector_Corrupt has convinced us to continue not going to Tim Horton's: 

It's been about a decade since I worked there, but when I worked at Tim Horton's I'd generally recommend avoiding the Iced Capps & the Apple Fritters in the summer.

Iced Capp machine had a bad habit of acquiring fruit flies so we'd occasionally have to clean it out thoroughly to get rid of them. But still, risky.

Apple Fritters seemed to be normal flies favourite thing to land on repeatedly. It was pretty hard to avoid having flies in the summer due to the fact the drive-thru window was in near constant use, so even with our flypapers we still usually had a couple buzzing around, and theylovedthe apple fritter more than any other baked good.

9. ItWasRedThatIRed confirma what we already suspected about Olive Garden:

Olive Garden: The only ingredients not frozen are herbs, peppers, tomatoes, and mushrooms. Even the pasta and bread is shipped frozen. I realize this is standard procedure for most chain restaurants, but Olive Garden advertises itself as being authentic upscale Italian cuisine. It's a lie

10. remymartinia makes us think there's a reason it's not called Dunkin Bagels: 

Dunkin' Donuts. We kept the bagels, croissants, and munchkins (donut holes) for a couple days so they could be stale

We made or had brought in the donuts fresh each day

We always made the breakfast sandwiches fresh: yes, we nuked the egg, but there were no issues

All in all, Dunkin' was pretty good!

11. 100_percent_cheese would not get along with Sonic The Hedgehog:

Dairy Queen here. Nothing's gross it's all fresh and thrown out when the holding time is up, but please stop ordering the chili cheese hot dogs. Yes it's all cooked to temp and thrown away at expiration, but once opened and heated up once, we're allowed to refrigerate and reheat it 3 times. And we always do. And then most of it is wasted anyway.

12. MXAI00D just took the fun out of Shamrock Shakes: 

Not sure if applies to everywhere or just where I worked as a teen but in MC Donald's or maybe any fast food place, avoid the ice cream and milkshakes, the machine that makes it gets cleaned like once every 4 months or 6 where I worked and the hosing gets filled with green fungus, usually they should be replaced but they usually just clean them as much as possible and that's it, they continue serving product under such conditions.

There are more things that I remember from there and from some bar & grill restaurant where I worked but I guess this one is the worst.

from CollegeHumor: Pictures https://ift.tt/2rcpM7N