People who've worked in food jobs - did it change what you eat?

Posted by luvbulge@reddit | AskUK | View on Reddit | 37 comments

Bit of a random one, but I've always wondered this.

If you've worked in places like restaurants, bakeries, supermarkets, food production, etc... was there anything you learned that made you stop eating certain things?

Not looking to name and shame specific places, just more the general stuff you only really notice once you're in the role.

e.g:

things being labelled in a way that isn't 100% accurate

shortcuts or substitutions

hygiene corners being cut

or just items staff would never order themselves

Basically, what did working there ruin for you (if anything)?

Curious to hear the behind-the-scenes stuff most of us don't see.

Spill the beans! 🫘

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speedboat_jacket46@reddit

I will never eat from a supermarket bakery.

Used to work in Sainsbury’s and on multiple occasions I found our bakery items swarming with fruit flies.

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West_Yorkshire@reddit

Ditto for me, and Asda, but with rats. And them being everywhere.

We've been on code red for years now.

Both black and brown rats. They have gang wars in the warehouse and outside.

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AllThatIHaveDone@reddit

I worked in Sainsbury's and will never use the tongs in any supermarket because of watching kids stick them in their mouths for the sugar.

Birds (like robins) also would fly in and eat the pastries, and the managers dgaf. Unless they crapped on the bread, it wasn't removed.

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rybnickifull@reddit

Yep, before I worked in kitchens I used to have a fairly balanced diet, while I worked in them I learned to accept eating any old shite because I no longer had time to properly look after myself.

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lonesome_okapi_314@reddit

I only order something off the specials if it’s a high end restaurant: if it is a local joint they are doing the specials to get rid of excess produce before it spoils beyond selling

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blue_rizla@reddit

McDonald’s.

Nope.

Food safety was fully protocol-ised, nobody spat in the burgers or anything like that. It was exactly what it was supposed to be.

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Worked there 30 years ago, it was spotless then and probably more so now. I still remember a fight that erupted when a night shift worker used the veggie fry vat to cook chicken nuggets. It was night shift cleaners, there was no customers instore and still the whole shift was appalled that the veggie vat had been contaminated. Whatever else you say about McDonalds, they’ve always taken cleanliness and contamination seriously

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naynaeve@reddit

I have heard different things about vegetarian food from McDonald staff. Some said vegetarian food was completely separated from meat. Others said the equipment and filters are contaminated with meat. I don’t know who to believe.

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Traditional_Band2323@reddit

I worked there, agreed, nobody would have time to do that, the timings for making Big Macs was very stressful.

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No_Candle2537@reddit

Prawn crackers.

I'm willing to accept this is likely uncommon, but I worked at a place that put unfinished ones back in the big box for the next customer.

Never trusting them again.

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sparhawks7@reddit

Drinks not food, but I never order iced tea at coffee shops any more, not because there’s anything wrong with them but because where I worked we sold ‘peach iced tea’ and other flavours that were just flavoured syrup topped up with water for like £5. No tea or anything involved. Waste of money

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Buddy-Matt@reddit

In my yoof I did a lot of crappy agency "warehouse" jobs to make a stack of cash to spend on beer when back at Uni.

One of these jobs was at a local pasta factory. You dont see it as often these days (or I've developed a mental block to seeing them on tje shelves) but the sort of pasta these guys were producing was those little tubs full of pasta and mayo, or pasta and sauce. Found in or near the delicatessen.

Anyway, such was the demand for supermarket premade cold pasta salad that this place ran like balls 24/7. Until Sunday. Now, I can't remember if it was every Sunday, or once every x weeks/month, but the point is they literally didn't stop until they had 1 shutdown day to do the cleaning.

This is where I enter the picture.

Armed with steel toecapped white wellies, hair net teabag style disposable white suit, a group of us agencynlotnwere sent in to do the deep clean.

It. Was. Grim.

Mounds of yellow hardened mayo where it had dripped and been left alone. Grease and more mayo, not to mention dried and suspect looking pasta and cheese everywhere. Caked into macinery, smeered on the walls, encrusted on pipes.

Absolutely fucking rank.

I doubt any of it was actively against food regs at the time, and the worse offenders on the spillages were away from the main food production areas. But I've never touched a store bought pasta salad since.

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RunsWithGlueSticks@reddit

I worked in restaurants for about 5 years when I was younger, and it was honestly fine. Messing with people's food wasn't tolerated and we had good hygiene standards.

I realise that doesn't make for a good story, so I'll share my friend's:

I know someone who refuses to eat cranberry sauce. He worked as a teen at the big name cranberry brand in New England, and says they flood whatever the area is with water to bring the cranberries up, and there were always loads of frogs in there as well. I've forgotten what the implication was or if he's saying we're also eating frogs with the cranberry mush. Either way, it hasn't put me off cranberry sauce.

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Traditional_Band2323@reddit

I used to work at MacDonalds in 1990’s. It was really clean, excellent hygiene standards. However, none of us would eat the breakfast muffins. The butter used was a small metal tub of liquid with congealed butter around the edges and liquid in the middle. A twisted pastry brush dipped in this and flicked in each muffin. The scrambled eggs would come in a plastic bottle poured and cooked.

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crampsfanuk@reddit

I used to help make ribena. The fruit was usually covered in earwigs. Hasn't put me off funnily enough.

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Asher-D@reddit

I've worked in supermarkets and an ice cream shop and no, there's nothing nasty I've come across. Instruments are cleaned properly between use where I worked and any food fallen on the floor was thrown away, any food that had gone off was thrown away and I always saw people properly wash their hands after using the toilet. As long as the people in charge take health and safety properly, there shouldn't be any issues.

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darklinkuk@reddit

I worked in a supermarket cafe for legal reasons I'll call it toscos and the manager spilled and entire large box of frozen sausages on the wet and frankly dirty kitchen floor and casually puts them all back in the box....

I stopped eating at work from that point

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AllThatIHaveDone@reddit

I would never eat from a supermarket salad bar. Fortunately, they're largely gone now, though. I worked in one when I was 17, and the things that I saw put me off food where the public serve themselves for life. I also can't eat mayonnaise because I had to make up the ranch salad and the catering tubs repulsed me.

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Thestolenone@reddit

My sister was working in a restaurant once and someone sent a steak back because it wasn't cooked to their liking. The chef threw it on the floor stamped on it and sent it back out. The person ate it.

I knew someone who worked in a Cow and Gate baby food factory and said they would never give it to a baby after that.

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Party-Werewolf-4888@reddit

Pretty much everyone i knew growing up did at least a few shifts in a local food prep place that supplied supermarkets and brands like heinz with the veg that goes into prepped veg packs and tinned soup/ready meals etc. It was almost a right of passage to do the summer there as a first job.

Anyway, none of those people now eat prepped veg packs or heinz soup because of it. It was gross.

(I am going back 25+ years so standards may have changed, but I still wont risk it).

When I went to uni I made a friend from Bath who seemed to have a similar experience in a factory that made the cheese seasoning for cheese and onion crisps. I havent eaten cheese & onion crisps since learning about it.

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CharlemagneKidding@reddit

Rite of passage*

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Bec21-21@reddit

I worked for a food manufacturer. Packaged foods generally have extremely high hygiene standards.

I won’t ever eat precut fruit or precut salad/veg that won’t be cooked before eating. It’s a breeding ground for bacteria. In a pinch I’ll eat precut pineapple because the acidity helps to minimize food borne illnesses. Won’t touch precut melon with a barge poke!

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luvbulge@reddit (OP)

Damn, I might need to start rethinking them meal deal sides.. 🫣

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Spicymargx@reddit

When I was a teenager I worked at McDonald’s. It is so so clean. It made me notice how dirty some other places are, especially KFC and Subway. Really puts me off them.

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combabulated@reddit

No but my father worked in a strawberry jam plant and from his stories I’ve never eaten strawberry jam. And I’m old.

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Thestolenone@reddit

My mother worked in a jam factory, it was great. They found out she was intelligent and gave her a job in the lab. One of the things they did was invent new flavours and she would bring home loads of jars of weird things like lime and coconut marmalade and rejects like pineapple jam with massive chunks of pineapple in. She didn't have an issue with eating stuff from there so it can't have been bad.

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luvbulge@reddit (OP)

Oh, I'm curious to know more now!

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DoftheD@reddit

I will never eat a curly fry again

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luvbulge@reddit (OP)

Care to explain why? 😅

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idontlikemondays321@reddit

Anything lower than a 5 star hygiene rating. It’s surprisingly easy to get 5 stars. 4 stars suggests somethings amiss. Anything lower than 4 is probably a shit hole behind the scenes.

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Spiritual_Smell4744@reddit

My ex wife was an environmental health team leader who signed the star ratings on display in the windows. She was always surprised when people wouldn't eat at a place with a rating below a certain level. For her it didn't really make that much difference.

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ThrowRAkitty13@reddit

Yeah, I worked at a cake shop and ended up eating a lot of cake.

One thing we did was not label if things were GF or vegan because it would put customers off ordering in they saw the label, so sometimes always good to ask a small shop if they have anything to meet your dietary requirements, you might be surprised.

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chez2202@reddit

I worked in food jobs part time in university many years ago and all of the places I worked in were great.

A friend of mine worked in a factory which makes ready meals for a large, well known supermarket chain and said he would never eat them or allow his children to eat them.

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Behold_SV@reddit

Worked on meat factory and can tell the difference of premium cooked meat slices and cheap ones. Still love eating pastrami.

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