Buffet Workers Tell Us About The Biggest Display of Gluttony They've Ever Witnessed

#1

Most AYCE buffets here in Canada, specifically put time limits on how long you can stay and charge for each service. So if you were there for lunch, you can't stay for dinner unless you want to pay the dinner price and wait around for 30 minutes. That said, I've seen my share of 400+ pounders at Mandarin/Imperial Buffet King, etc. I remember seeing this one guy, sit by himself and just demolish an insane amount of food, two plates at a time, it was like how strongman competitors eat, except not clean and he wasn't building muscle afterwards.

maldio

#2

I was at the buffet at The Bellagio in Las Vegas.

An extremely obese man was sitting at a table by himself and not eating.

Until the kitchen staff refilled the the rack of creme brulee. The obese guy immediately got up, grabbed a tray and proceeded to take every single bowl in the rack. Once back at his table, he ate one after another like he was a vacuum. I am guessing he consumed at least 50 of them in less than five minutes.

Davare

#3

I had the honor of sitting across the table from a friend who pulled this one. First he went up and got a huge plate of crab legs and a bowl of clarified butter. Then made a second trip for prime rib. 2 huge slices. He sat there and cracked all the crab legs into the bowl of butter. Then dumped it onto the first piece of prime rib, slapped the second piece on top and ate the first breadless sandwich I had ever seen.

Dwalshwm

#4

There was a chicken you carved bits off yourself at this one buffet, when they brought a fresh chicken out my friend picked up the whole chicken and put it on his plate.

The manager came out and told him if he didn't eat the entire chicken he'd be billed for it. It took around 2 hours but my friend walked out triumphantly after leaving a chicken skeleton on his plate.

Dr_McKay

#5

Worked in a family owned Midwestern buffet. Biggest display is a toss up. We had people that would put a few sugar packets into soda. Because that's what Coke needs is more sugar. The worst part was they would often complain first "Excuse me, I think there's something wrong with your Coke machine, its not sweet". Sure I'll check it. Working fine, oh okay just pour a bunch of sugar in that soda that's what you need. The other thing was the people, typically very obese women 40+, that would shit themselves and not even have the decency to leave. Either they were so accustomed to sharting themselves that they didn't notice, or their gluttony over ruled any self respect they had so they could get one more plate. I'm not sure which is worse.

brirober

#6

Endless Shrimp at Red Lobster is always a lovely time. One guy comes in to my particular restaurant every year--the infamous "scampi guy"--and eats nothing but shrimp scampi. He then drinks the leftover butter that it's cooked in, and stacks the dishes up to count. He won't let you to take them away, they're his lovely, buttery trophy.

I'd be willing to bet that you can hear his arteries popping shut from the lobby.

atonofbuns

#7

Not as good as some of these stories, but I work at a pizza place that has a lunch buffet every day and a dinner buffet 2 days of the week.

Wednesdays we put out boneless "popcorn chicken" honey bbq wings on the buffet and oh my god, it's like people inhale entire pans of it. They're basically the wings that are too small/not meaty enough to serve to customers who pay for boneless wings, so we save them and use them on buffet on Wednesday. What sucks is we used to have to save only one bucket for the buffet, and employees could eat the rest throughout the week. But for the past month, there have been people coming into the buffet ONLY to get platefuls of wings, so now we have to save all the pieces for buffet. We usually end up with about 3-4 buckets of popcorn chicken per week... and now they're for buffet only.

We put chocolate chip cookies on the buffet (about 2 dozen at a time) and there have been a few times where people will just take half the cookies at once, for a table of 2. One time there was an older lady in line, and a little girl behind her. Older lady sees the little girl obviously waiting for the cookies, and still takes all 6 or whatever was left with her. Then asked me if there were more coming out. The little girl looked like she was about to cry. Luckily I already had some more in the oven, so when they came out, I purposely brought a plate with several cookies on it to the little girl's table and said something loudly like, "I saw you didn't get to grab any cookies, so I brought you some nice fresh ones!"

I then waited until a bunch of other people were at the buffet before I set the rest of the cookies down, then told the older woman that I brought more out. By the time she got up there, cookies were gone again. Cue death glares from older lady, and a complaint about us not keeping the buffet stocked. I was like, "Sorry, we are making new ones again. Those cookies are really popular! People just grab them all up!" in my very best cheerful tone.

Recently a group of 4 came in, average size, all older people - 2 women, 2 men - and I started trying to time throwing pizzas in so I could get them out fresh right after they went up to the buffet. They would all go up together and just demolish all 5 of the pizzas on there. Wiped out the dessert pizza on me later too (it was full - 12 slices - then BAM gone), and asked for more.

Another time, a slightly overweight, middle age couple came in, stayed for 2 hours, and they ate about 6 pizzas by themselves. My manager asked me the next day why I put in so many pizzas when there were only 2 tables (3 total people - there was a bad snowstorm that night). They just kept eating...

I get asked about once a week (always by elderly people) if they can take a few slices to go. Or they wrap like 4 cookies in a napkin. Yeah, I see you. Those fucking cookies...

NotebookScribbles

#8

Chinese tourists in gambling cities go truly Olympic on casino buffets. It doesn't even make me mad; it borders on the superhuman, how much food a tour bus parked in Reno will put away. I'm certain that at least one species of crab has gone completely extinct because of the seafood buffet at the Atlantis meeting with twenty camera-toting slot junkies from Hong Kong.

No disrespect intended towards Chinese tourists, of course. They're a very important gear in the ever-turning machinery of the gambling community.

DamnFineHat

#9

I worked in at an all you can eat Japanese place. They had waiters (including me) to run the food, but the sushi was displayed buffet style (weird construction i know). This woman decided it was appropriate to take literally all the sushi (4 trays) back to her table and stuffing it in her face with a fork and tomato sauce. Her husband looked too afraid to say anything about it.

This was the same woman that went off at me because 'her tea was too hot' and if I 'could get an ice cube to cool it down'.

Don't miss that place.

theslippinjimmy

#10

Not a buffet but...

I worked at a few Red Lobsters. The worst display I've ever seen was a massive (and I mean muscle, not fat) samoan guy came in during "all you can eat shrimp" back when the price was close to $20. This guy ordered a refill of scampi shrimp before he had even finished his first plate and then order 49 more for what was an industry record at the time. 50 refills...

IIRC This was also before they switched to the smaller "sand dollar" plate. These were the original large oval plates that contained 12 shrimp instead of 7.

707RiverRat