The Most Revolting Things Buffet Workers Have Seen Diners Do

Most of us have enjoyed the spoils of buffet dining, but there's always that voice at the back of your mind that says things might not be as they seem. The problem with giving people free reign to serve their own food is ... people. As anyone who works at a buffet will contest, there are some gross things happening in plain sight that may put you off eating at these kinds of establishments again.

We scoured the internet to find tales from employees at buffet restaurants talking about their horror stories. From going straight in with their hands to combining foods that shouldn't be combined, there's all kinds of nasty stuff going on. And some folks are even messing with the food intentionally. It's enough to put you off your dinner, and a real wake up call for anyone who just tries not to think about the things that can happen while you're not looking.

People make all kinds of mistakes eating at buffets, but perhaps the real mistake is deciding to go there in the first place. Even if you enjoy the food, you probably won't like what people have been doing to it. These are the most revolting things buffet workers have seen diners do. It'll likely make you think twice before dining at a buffet restaurant in the future.

Many of the nasty things that people do at buffets affect their fellow diners, but sometimes they're more of an issue for the staff. People in the service industry work hard and are often underpaid, so the last thing they need is diners making extra work for them. But, one worker saw customers scraping off their plates between trips up to the buffet — right onto the floor.

According to one Reddit user, when working bussing tables at an all-you-can-eat country buffet in South Carolina, they came across a large group of people who were cleaning their plates right onto the floor next to their chairs when they were done with what they were eating and wanted to go up again and fill another plate. "So next to each chair, there was a 6 inch to 18 inch pile of chicken bones, crab legs, mashed potatoes, remnants of baked potatoes," they wrote.

There's just so much wrong with this. First off, what is that instinct? If someone has scraps and wants to clear their plate, why would they choose to do that on the floor. Wild! There's bound to be a bin somewhere or, if in doubt, they could ask one of the employees. It's also super disrespectful, making so much extra work for the staff. It's one thing for workers to have to scrape scraps off plates in the kitchen, but forcing them to pick food up off the ground and mop the floor is totally different. Finally, it's just disgusting and unhygienic.

One of the most obvious etiquette rules at a buffet is to use tongs and other utensils, not hands, to pick up food. Or so we thought. After reading through hundreds of anecdotes from buffet workers, people picking up food from the buffet with their hands seems to be way more of a widespread issue than we ever imagined.

On a Reddit thread asking about buffet workers experiences, one person discussed some extreme misuse of the ranch dressing. "I saw a man use his hand instead of the spoon to get ranch dressing on his plate," the user noted. "He then proceeded to lick his hand clean, and then go for a second scoop." Wow. Just, wow.

That takes the concept of buffet customers using their hands to serve food to a whole new level, but even people just picking up rolls or corn cobs with their hands is gross enough. They probably think that they won't touch anything else, just the item they're putting on their own plate, but that's usually not how it goes down. They'll end up getting their mitts on other food while they're at it and who knows where their hands have been.

So, when you're eating at a buffet, it's not unlikely that some customer or other has touched at least one thing on your plate. Just hope they haven't used their bare hands to ladle sauces. That's a vision that will haunt you.

It's too bad when people have poor instincts and make weird, and revolting, decisions about how to behave at a buffet. But, usually, it's a case of thoughtlessness and folks not considering how their actions will impact others. That said, there are people who intentionally mess with the food.

One buffet worker said on Reddit that a "middle aged woman put a spoonful of Cajun rice in the peach cobbler then walked away like she had just achieved the greatest victory." There's no denying that this kind of behavior is intentional. Some people just want to mess things up and watch the world burn. And that sucks for the person who will go on to find rice in their cobbler or the worker who has to clean up the mess.

But, consider this. If these people who mess things up on purpose are out there, what else are they doing? Putting rice in a cobbler is low-key gross, but there are sure to be far more disgusting things that people are doing that they never get caught for, or where the stories haven't made it online. That's certainly food for thought next time you walk into a buffet restaurant. There's just no way of knowing what another customer has been up to, and that's tough to think about.

The chocolate fountain might be one of the reasons why Golden Corral has survived when other buffet chains have gone under. Sure, there may be other buffets that have chocolate fountains, but it's something the chain is known for and that brings people in. But, you might want to think twice about dessert when you hear about the things that can end up in it.

According to one former buffet staff member, they often spent half their shift watching over the chocolate fountain to keep customers in line. People would stick their fingers in it, along with non-food items. And it wasn't just kids at fault. "I distinctly remember one woman with a cast on her arm who came up and started to dip some strawberries into the fountain," they wrote. "Next thing I know, she manages to stick most of her cast under the fountain so that the thing is basically coated with chocolate."

She could have told a staff member about the mistake, so they could clean and refresh the fountain. But, no. She simply walked back to her table and left the next unsuspecting customer to eat the germs from her cast. Staff members say it's a common occurrence for people to stick their hands or face in the fountain. When they spot it, it gets emptied and cleaned, but how many times would that have gone unnoticed?

Kids just aren't trustworthy at buffet restaurants. It's not really their fault; most children don't have the same standards as adults and probably wouldn't think twice about eating food that someone else had touched. They haven't yet gained the empathy to understand why other people might think that's gross, which is why parents and caregivers should closely supervise them at this kind of restaurant. We're sure buffet workers have seen some awful things, but this particular incident involved a kid and some ice cream toppings.

"I watched a kid at the ice cream / dessert area casually having a conversation with another kid, while his hand was fully in the bowl of sprinkles, doing what I would describe as massaging the sprinkles the entire time," said a Reddit user in a thread about the revolting things buffet workers have seen. And kids aren't known for having the cleanest hands, either.

This is just one example, but we're sure children have touched many things on the buffet line. Who knows, they might even have licked some of them. So, if you needed another reason not to eat from a buffet joint, this has got to be high up on the list.

It might not affect you directly, but one thing you can be sure some of your fellow buffet diners are doing is making their own disgusting combinations of food. Sure, there are some unusual food combos you'd never guess are delicious, such as peanut butter and pickles or vanilla ice cream and balsamic vinegar. But, there are others that are truly left of field and are likely to put you off your own meal if you catch a glimpse.

One Redditor describes witnessing a particularly awful combination while working at their school's all-you-can-eat buffet in the cafeteria. One footballer from a rival school was eating there and, at first, loaded up his plate with watermelon — very reasonable — but then headed over to the condiments and picked up a jar of mayonnaise. "I watched, half amazed and half horrified, as he ate what looked like half a watermelon and half a jar of mayo in one sitting," the former cafeteria worker wrote. "It was honestly one of the most bizarre and impressive things I've ever seen."

And, we're sure that's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to odd food pairings. Each to their own, of course, but it's still off-putting, nonetheless.

Here's a bizarre tale that we've only heard of in one place. At a lunch buffet in the Austrian Alps, people were routinely using batter as a sauce. This seems like a mistake that one person might make, but in a bizarre series of events, it just kept happening again and again.

The story comes from a cook who shared it on Reddit. At their restaurant, there was a pancake and waffle station as part of the buffet. The employees stood at the station making waffles and pancakes fresh to order, while the diners helped themselves to toppings and sauces. On the table was a container of batter, ready to cook, alongside sauces and toppings. Everything on the table was labeled, including the batter, to avoid confusion. But the cook was baffled by the fact that people kept pouring batter over their plates of food, thinking it was sauce.

The cook tried telling people it wasn't sauce. This didn't work. Some people even still insisted that it was vanilla sauce. They tried putting up signs, in multiple languages. They tried taking the ladle out of the customers hands and pointing them to the sauce. People still poured on the batter. Stranger yet, people were pouring it all over savory food, not just their dessert. It's not clear exactly what was going on there, but maybe it's best not to get too deep into buffet psychology.

Good buffet restaurants have sneeze guards, which are plastic panels positioned to help stop folks sneezing, coughing, and heavy breathing over the buffet food. In fact, a lack of sneeze guards is one of the signs you're at a subpar buffet. But, even with sneeze guards, there's always someone who manages to get around those guards and sneeze right on the communal food.

Buffet workers have seen people lean under the sneeze guard and sneeze right on the food. It's unclear whether this is intentional or accidental, but either way, it's enough to put people off eating at buffets altogether. Including, or perhaps especially, the workers. There's also the fact that some kids are short enough to have their faces under the sneeze guards, and they're not known for their thoughtful buffet behavior, so it's not too much of a leap to assume there are little ones sneezing over buffet food left, right, and center.

There was a time after things started opening back up after the COVID-19 lockdowns when people were particularly careful about hygiene. But that seems to be long forgotten now, and folks aren't all that careful where they sneeze, which is bad news for buffets everywhere.

There are some buffet hacks that will help you get your money's worth, but that doesn't mean you can sample food and put it right back if you don't like it. To most people, that might seem obvious. It's not a selection of samples to try. You decide what you want, put it on your plate, and then you're stuck with it. Nobody can force you to eat it, but you certainly shouldn't take a bite and put it back. But, what's common sense to most people isn't always that to everyone.

According to a buffet worker on Reddit, they've witnessed people pick things up with their fingers, take a bite of them, and then put them right back on the buffet line. We're not even sure where to start with this one, as it seems inexplicable. If it wasn't bad enough that someone might pick something up with their hands and put it right back, to also take a bite from it is shocking. We don't want to know what's going through the heads of the people who think that it's okay to do this. It's absolutely baffling. And, while you'd probably notice if someone had taken a bite out of a piece of food and know to avoid it (or walk out of the buffet in response) someone could conceivably take a nibble too small to identify. Chilling business.

If there's a container of salad dressing on a buffet line, we'd bet that somebody has dipped something directly in it. This kind of behavior has been witnessed by employees at buffet restaurants. It's gross, but it's honestly unsurprising, given the even more unhinged things people do at buffets. And, there are even more revolting things diners do with this condiment.

"I've seen such horrors that you cannot truly comprehend," said one dramatic buffet worker on Reddit. They explained, they've seen people dip cookies in ranch, put Jell-O in ranch, and even drink cups full of ranch dressing as though it were soda. Add that to the earlier story of a man scooping ranch out of the container with his hand, and you have a pretty compelling reason to avoid it.

Not only is it a cross-contamination nightmare when people dip things directly into dressings, but it's also just gross. Some people really need to have a word with themselves and consider their actions before they hit up a buffet restaurant.

It's easy to go over the top at a buffet. You're presented with all this food and you're allowed to pick whatever you like, so it's natural that your eyes might be bigger than your stomach. It's good practice to be mindful of this and load your plate conservatively at first to avoid food waste. You can go up for more at most buffets, but you can't put it back. Or, you shouldn't at least. Still, buffet works have seen people putting their leftovers back where they got them from.

In a Reddit thread asking people who work in buffets to share their gross stories, one employee spoke of seeing customers attempt to put their leftovers back. We can only assume that staff stop people that they see do this, but there are bound to be folks who just haven't been caught. It might seem like a weird move. Nobody likes wasting food, but most wouldn't go to this extreme. But, the answer might be based around the way some buffets work. To avoid people wasting piles of food, there are buffet restaurants that charge extra for anything that goes uneaten. In these cases, people may attempt to put food back or squirrel it away, but really they just need to cough up the extra cash and not load their plate so full next time.