Halloween Horror Stories
With Halloween right around the corner, we can’t seem to get enough of the grotesque. Inspired by Buzzfeed’s round-up of customer and restaurant focused-horror stories, we asked a few of our members and friends some of their most gruesome or terrifying restaurant stories. These are the tales they had to share.
Everybody was..
“Prep Cook and Dishwasher got into a full on Kung Fu style throw-down that resulted in the immediate termination of both and 3 weeks of hell waiting to replace them. Not only did I have to break up the fight, I washed dishes for three weeks after, and had to re-watch the security footage 100 times with HR and Directors to make sure we had grounds for their firing.” – Chef Rob
Outbreak Casper
“At this local restaurant chain, two people reported food poisoning after eating and were tested at a hospital. As is often the case with these potential break outs, the Board of Health got involved and had to work to get all employees tested to confirm the outbreak’s origin. After having the entire staff provide a stool sample and go through other testing, we later find out the “outbreak” was never found in any of the employees, so no cause was ever determined. Talk about a stressful and invasive process for no result!” – Mark, General Manager
The fire
“I used to work at this upscale French restaurant in NY that had turned one of its old walk-ins into a garbage room to make more space. One day, I’m finishing up some paperwork and one of the cooks comes up to me and is like, ‘Hey, chef, I think you need to check out what’s happening in the garbage room—something’s not right.’ I told him I’d be there in a minute and went back to what I was doing. Then, 5 minutes later he comes back frantic, ‘Chef, I really think you should come take look…it’s starting to smell like smoke in there.’ Now, I’m really alert and follow him to the garbage room, open the door, and next thing I know the room erupts into fire! I immediately see that there’s a drum of used oil next to where the flame is shooting from and run to the back to hit the electric kill switch on the entire restaurant. In the middle of service. It was an eventful day to say the least.” – Chef Nicholas
The (Water) Purge
“I was opening on a holiday weekend. There was no hot water in the place. I go to the riser room and see our massive hot water heater had a massive crack in the basin and there was water flowing out the bottom EVERYWHERE. I finally got a hold of someone who could help me and they wouldn’t have a water heater that large and able to install for 2 days. We had to basically shut the restaurant down on one of the busiest days of the year because we had no hot water to wash dishes or hands.” – Ashley, General Manager
Over-Charged sponsored by SIB
One of the most outrageous vendor billing errors we’ve seen for restaurants was outside of the kitchen. A laundry vendor was charging a chain of restaurants for ruining 280 towels per month. In actuality, the restaurant was ruining fewer than 10 towels per month.
Double Double Boil and Trouble
“I was the GM for a Brew Pub that made its own beer on site. The brewers were very excited to create their very first batch of pumpkin beer. They went to the local farm and bought sugar pumpkins, came up with a great name …they were ready to make it happen. You could smell the pumpkin cooking away… the pub smelled amazing! There was a group ofbusiness men in having lunch and they were all standing at the glass wall watching the brewing process happen when BOOM! The cooking pumpkin concoction blew up right in their faces! They ran screaming out of the pub …the brewers went out to bring them back in covered in pumpkin….they wanted nothing to do with us! The police and fire department showed up …the brewery looked like a crime scene. It took 2 days to clean and sanitize the brewery but that didn’t stop the brewers….they went back to the drawing board and created the best pumpkin beer I have ever tasted. “ – Heather, General Manager
NoWhere is Safe
“I was managing at a high end seafood restaurant. One of the bus boys came to me and said that I need to go to the men’s room right away. Being a female, I was like “yeah, that’s not happening.” He was VERY insistent. I went and someone had crapped all over the stalls, the walls and the floor. There was POOP everywhere. To this day, I still don’t know where/who/how that can happen. Being the fantastic restaurant manager I was, I sent one of the line cooks in armed head to tow with plastic and armed bleach. I might have authorized a pay raise for that guy. Haha. That was a bad day on the job. – Ashley, Restaurant Manager
Looking for more “horror” stories? Explore more here 
