You can never be totally sure how clean a kitchen is, unless it’s your own. And this one looks really McSgusting.
A McDonald’s employee from Laplace, Louisiana lost his job earlier this month after tweeting unsavory photos of his workplace, he told HuffPost.
Nick, who asked to be identified only by his first name, first posted a photo of a “drip tray” he says is from his restaurant’s ice cream machine.
Nick posted another photo to show the icky item wasn’t from the grill’s grease trap, which is a typically messy spot in fast-food kitchens.
He followed with more lowlights from his establishment, including goo-covered floors...
... and made headlines from Teen Vogue to Cosmopolitan when his image of the ice cream drip tray went viral.
“Obviously, we never get chunks of gunk in our ice cream,” noted FoodBeast, “but you never want to see photos like that coming out of a restaurant.”
Nick says scenes like these were the norm at the store location where he began work in March. Managers are supposed to clean the ice cream drip tray, he said, but he never saw his manager do it. And he says the photos of the floor were taken before the restaurant’s maintenance worker quit.
“Sometimes my coworkers would drop the food and put it back on the bun,” Nick told HuffPost. “I’ve seen it happen several times.”
Of course, this doesn’t reflect conditions at all McDonald’s restaurants, and we’ve seen gross photos come out of restaurants from fast-food to famous landmarks. Just last week, video of rodents inside a Texas Chipotle went viral. But as Teen Vogue pointed out, the photos are a reminder that sometimes kitchens aren’t as sanitary as we’d like to think. And isolated or not, the incident will certainly make us think twice before our next bite on the town.
It also provided the opportunity for some classic food service trash talk.
The dirty drip tray at Nick’s restaurant is not a reflection of company standards, a McDonald’s spokeswoman told HuffPost in a statement.
“We are committed to running great restaurants that provide our customers with high quality food, service and a clean environment,” the statement reads. “This is a part of our soft serve equipment that does not come into contact with any food and is required to undergo regular and timely cleaning.”
Louisiana Department of Health records show two McDonald’s in Laplace. The most recent health inspections in online records, from 2015, show one location had three “critical corrected” infractions, including cross-contamination of raw and ready-to-eat food, improper storage of toxic chemicals and unclean surfaces and utensils.
Nick wouldn’t say which location employed him. He was fired for posting the photos, he said, but he’s okay with it.
“I feel like I did nothing wrong,” he said. “I sacrificed my job to show people what they’re really eating.”
This story has been updated with a comment from McDonald’s.
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