What Is the Worst Restaurant Experience You Ever Had?

A Facebook question asked, “What Is the Worst Restaurant Experience You Ever Had?”

People spewed horror stories. Terrible service, disgusting food, rats, roaches… It all made me want to Lysol my own kitchen and then have dinner at home.

Growing up in this tourist town, both daughters waitressed as teenagers and told us horror stories about the kitchens in some of our favorite spots. We still go to them anyway. I’ve managed to block the images from my mind. It’s just the way many kitchens are, I tell myself.

All in all, what I don’t know can’t necessarily hurt me…until I do know it, especially if it is an image which can’t be erased.

That’s how it was with one place back in my bachelor days.

I worked a graveyard shift at the Defense Intelligence Agency. A computer operator working with an IBM 360-65 mainframe that took up more floor space than two basketball courts and had less power than a cheap cellphone does today.

Being DIA though, the place was not easy to get in and out of.
Arlington Hall Station was home to NSA and DIA, and very secure.

When I drove up to the front gate at night, the guards stopped me to check the pass on my front bumper and the ID on a chain around my neck. That one they hit with a hand-held ultraviolet light to make sure it was legit.

If security was satisfied, the gate lifted. Once parked in my assigned spot, cameras on tall metal poles turned their heads to follow me as I walked up to the entrance into the first perimeter of a 12 foot metal fence topped with concertina wire. That’s where a stationary camera greeted me and I said into the speaker: “Haller, DS5B2”

A narrow 20 foot corridor lead me to the front door. There sat a guard behind thick glass. He checked my badge again with the ultraviolet light and looked up “Haller,DS5B2” to see that I was on the access list for that evening.

Once inside, the unfriendly halls were lined with unlabeled, locked doors that ushered me down a long hallway. There, at another blank door,I pushed a red button and stood in front of an overhead camera and waved. On the inside, the guard had to recognize me in order for him to buzz the door open as I entered a small room with another locked door on the far side. If the guard saw that it was really just me and everything was OK, he reached under his desk and buzzed the far door.

Almost inside, standing in a dark hall, I faced a huge steel vault door like you see on bank vaults, only much bigger. A cipher box mounted on the wall had four numbered keys for me to enter the code I was given the day before; it changed every day.

A huge hiss as air blew out, 20 tons of steel slowly opened and air pressure equalized on both sides.

Once we were in, we were in for the night. We didn’t want to leave and have to go through that security gauntlet again until our shift was over.

So in the middle of the night, we always elected one guy to make a food run for all of us.

Jack-In-The-Box was the closest 24 hour place around, Jack-In-The-Box it was. Every work-night we repeated the same routine. A few times when I was the lucky courier, I picked up our orders at the drive through window from a guy who was always there. He was the only person working at 3am. Cook, cashier and food lover.

Yup, he was a food lover alright, but not in a good way

In the middle of the night on our graveyard shift, one of the guys read a news article in the Washington Post. Sitting up straight he blurted: “Oh Shit, Listen to this!” “Area Jack-In-The-Box closed. Night Shift Employee Caught Masturbating on Food!”

That particular employee had worked there for about 6 months, almost exactly the same time that we had been buying food from him every night. There was reference to “Local military” shops that ran 24-7 and needed to be fed! What a great service Jack-In-The box was providing!

Someone had complained. They identified a smell in the special sauce that caused them to dissect their food. Two appropriately named Jumbo Jacks.

Newly installed kitchen surveillance cameras caught him adding his own secret ingredient to the special sauce.

The terms "special sauce" and "food porn" would never be the same.

After that, all the guys concentrated on outlets for our boredom other than going out for food.

That's when we talked the girl Airman, an Airwoman? into ditching her panties one night for a sit-down formal portrait after climbing up onto the giant copy machine that spit out briefings for the Joint-Chiefs-of-Staff each following day. I think of that particular run of copies as “Pixilation’s For Peace” … it was during the Vietnam war years and with enough distance, if you had long arms, background dots morphed into mans best friend.

All upper brain activity in the guys ceased for the day. No war efforts were discussed.

The Joint Chiefs probably could have heard the chants of “No more war, no more war…” outside the Pentagon, if their brains still worked, but they didn’t.

Anyway, all of my crew started bringing their lunches and stopped going out for fast food altogether.

One guy on our graveyard shift who had always defended Jack-In-The-box “Special Sauce” as being the best burger and taco sauce he had ever tasted, never lived it down.

With great effort, he finally got himself a transfer. Guess he couldn't take the heat.