We get fewer gross food stories than you might imagine here at Consumerist, and this one made us cringe. Reader Richard saw a maintenance person scrubbing down some ceiling tiles while standing on a food prep counter… that was in use. Yeah. Ew.
Went to Ihop yesterday, here is the feed back I just sent them through their website.
We went to this location on my birthday. After ordering my wife (sitting across from me was staring into the food prep counter area) asked me “What’s he doing?” I looked, an employee was standing on a ladder scrubbing the acoustic ceiling tiles! I turned back to my wife, who then said “I don’t think I can eat here.” The waitress walked by and asked the person cleaning the ceiling over warming counter/pass through to step down off the counter (he had moved to standing on the counter as he was cleaning) she then brought our food down from the counter above and set it right where he had been standing! The hostess/manager walked into the prep area at time time.
My wife and I got up saying no way would we eat there. The manager who we believe had already been alerted to our conversation by my wife cried out “He wasn’t cleaning!” to which my wife told the manager “Don’t lie to us! We watched him scrubbing it and spraying cleaner over our food and the counter!” The manager then told the cleaning person to move to the other end of the food prep counter to clean the ceiling there! It’s only 20 feet at most and more likely 15 or less so he still would have been endangering dropping dirt, dust, mold, mildew etc. into the food product in addition to all the open bins built into the counter he had doubtless already contaminated.
The manager volunteered to remake our food. I told the manager we would never be eating in her restaurant again. We walked up to the register as we were having this discussion and ask for them to let us pay for our teas so we could leave to which they replied not to worry about it.
I have seen disgusting conditions before, but for the restaurant to create them itself and the manager to outright try to LIE to us was inexcusable! If I hadn’t been so shocked at the time I should have used my wife’s phone to videotape the action and share it with the world! I certainly hope you take a long hard look at that location and the staff employed there.
Richard soon wrote back and shared a handwritten note that the IHOP’s General Manager sent in response to his complaint.
It’s a really nice, really honest response.
As severely stupid as the manager’s mistake was, if we received an apology letter like that, we might actually eat there again. The general manager was obviously as horrified as Richard was!
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Hand-Written Note FTW! That shows real time and concern than something typed.
@snclfe: my thoughts exactly. saying “i woulda said something if i worked there” – you were a CUSTOMER, with probably more right to bitch than an employee – thats a load of crap. (sorry) sounds like a screen door punk, i say.
@ldnyc: No.
I was once treated to the pleasure of having a McDonalds employee duck down under my table and begin scraping away chewing gum from literally between my legs. Fine if you’re a Govenor type, a little unsettling when your trying to eat.
me either. There is supposed to be someone that has taken a food safety class at every restaraunt (I just can’t spell that word) when my daughter worked at a popular pizza place with a red roof on it…nobody there had a food safety certificate. She was the first to get one, because she needed it for the culinary degree she was working on. It’s amazing how little thought is given to food prep. I do have to say when my son worked at McDonalds he said they were very clean, however whenever I went there he always made my food so I’d be even more comfortable. This was when it was locally owned. It’s now a corporate store and it sucks..Nobody speaks English (even as a second language it seems) and they don’t seem to realize what special orders mean, and haven’t figured out why the fryers have timers on them. The fries are barely cooked…I’ll take BK over McD anyday@jeff303:
i will not eat at IHOP, the big surprise here is that cleaning was going on in an IHOP. i must say though, the general manager did a good job, and he should look for a job in a better restaurant, his talents are being wasted at IHOP.
Last time I was in a Subway (8-10 years ago), just when I get to the counter, they call over the obviously retarded dude mopping the floor to make my sandwich. Without gloves or washing his hands, the dude smashes the bread flat, drags his dull knife through it, then slowly peels the stuck, flattened halves apart. I wish I had walked out, but you can’t complain about a retarded dude without the PC police scheduling you for re-education camp, so I completed the order, paid and enjoyed a dissatisfying lunch of chips and soda.
Subway…eat gross.
I ate at an IHOP in Pigeon Forge in January, and it was delicious. Maybe the crud on the bottom of shoes is a secret ingredient?
When I used to work in food service, they’d occasionally make us stay all night, to scrub walls and ceilings. While the place was closed, of course! Methinks the store manager was trying to save on the overtime…
saw something very similar at the food court in a local mall. the lights that are above the food display/warming trays (the lights for illuminating the signs) were REALLY dirty, covered in dangling grime and dirt and junk. So i witnessed a staff guy set up a ladder, climb up, and proceed to use some sort of brush/vaccuum/blower thing to clean off the lights, DIRECTLY above the food below. the food employees were simply standing to the side and watching. gross
@ldnyc: seriously! maybe the wait was too long at applebee’s?
@ninabi:
Man, why’d you have to ruin the delicious honey biscuits for me? Now when I go back to visit I’ll make sure to never have those again.
I was coaxed into going with a group of friends to a Dennys in Columbia, SC on NYE about 6 years ago (one of the only places open) and there was a roach on the wall that was at least 3.5 inches long. We called the manager over and he was like, ‘Yeah, it’s not really that big though…’ We were like ‘WHAT??? It’s a roach, it doesn’t matter how big it is!’
He really, really didn’t care. We just left without paying, it was disgusting.
@sirwired:
I love Waffle House and miss them dearly (none here in SD). Yeah, it’s probably not all that healthy, considering the insides of most look worse than a truck stop bathroom, but those goddamn hash browns and texas melts are way way too good to pass on. And the people are usually really cool.
I was in an IHOP once and had the pleasure of sitting at a table directly across from where a retarded lady and her “handler” were sitting. At one point during their dinner, the handler went off to the bathroom and the retard was sitting there all by herself. That was when she decided she was going to just start drinking directly from one of the syrup containers. It was one of the funniest things I ever saw. Fortunately the waitress had the decency to pour out the unused syrup and send the container back to the kitchen to be washed and sanitized.
@wiretapstudios – I still remember a story my mom told me. First day of school – she and her friends/neighbors went out to breakfast to celebrate. This was a tradition they started. One year, they went to a local diner. Their breakfasts came and one of the women took her first piece of toast to put jam on it. There was a cockroach – guts smeared into the buttered piece of bread. She ran for the bathroom to throw up. The manager came over and told them they were making a big deal out of a minor incident.
They walked out with the manager chasing after them yelling that they needed to pay the bill.
My hats off to the IHOP district manager for being professional.
A long time ago I was a busboy at two different somewhat expensive restaurants in Brooklyn, NY. My, the things I’ve seen. There was the kitchen-wide roach infestation that almost led to one place being temporarily closed. There was the time a waiter dropped a steak on the floor and accidentally stepped on it before an assistant chef washed it off, put it back in the broiler for a minute and then served it all over again. The bread on the tables was cut up at the filthy busboy station by busboys who had been handling dirty dishes all day long. I saw a waiter cut a birthday cake in the kitchen while dropping ashes from his cigarette all over it and just flicking the ashes off with his hand. Etc.
I still eat out a lot. I just try not to think about that stuff.
Note: A lot of times it is the management who is at fault for ordering things cleaned at ridiculous times. I’m a teenager and do basic maintenance work at a very upscale grocery chain…one time, management made me dust these (indoor) metal awnings and remove old staples from underneath them, as customers were sitting under at the coffee shop or waiting in like for hoagies to me made. Not as disguising as the story, but usually management are not the sharpest tools in the shed either.
the GM seems legitimately sorry, and the hand written letter is much better than an email, as it is all to easy to send off a form letter
“Dear [first name] [last name],
I am terribly sorry to hear about [bad customer experience], and I assure you we are taking it very seriously”
I’m also glad they caught it, as it would’ve been worse if they didn’t notice and ate contaminated food.
@Brad2723: Wow Brad, you’re kind of an asshole. I hope one of your children turns out to be a “retard”; then YOU can be their “handler”. See how funny you think it is then, douche.
It’s possible Brad would learn a lesson then, but it would be tragic for that child to be stuck with Brad as a parent. Sorry, “handler”.
@Antediluvian: I hate when fast food places are understaffed and the cashier, who handles the money, also put the fries and sandwich in your bag. Usually she has gloves on too, the better to call attention to the germs being shared.
When I worked at a resturant, there was always one guy who’d forget to take off his apron before he went to the bathroom. Ugh, let’s share the airborne fecal matter! I wouldn’t let anyone in my kitchen leave before they’d taken off their apron and gloves.
@el_smurfo: I remember at Subway, they had left out a sign that said “Always use the least amount of Tomato/Lettuce/Peppers/Etc. Until the customer requests more. Do not ask them”
I used to work for IHOP when I was 18. Long story short: Run by extremely rude people from another country. Didn’t even tell me my hourly wage. I had to work from 10pm-6am as a dishwasher, never got a break and after they eventually replaced me, it took more than a month to finally get a check. This was somewhere outside of Houston, Texas. God, I hope that place got shut down.