Are these the worst restaurant experiences ever?

From witnessing waiters sneeze in their food to spotting bugs in the drinks fountain, dining out isn't always a pleasant experience. Photo / Getty

When it comes to hospitality, it doesn't take much to ensure customers have an enjoyable dining experience.

But it seems many servers and business owners haven't quite hit the mark in terms of etiquette, manners and general hygiene.

Here, a number of furious diners have shared their most awful restaurant experiences - from witnessing waiters sneeze in their food to spotting bugs in the drinks fountain.

"Was eating at a Chinese restaurant where you order rice by the bowl. From the angle I was sitting I saw the waiters taking half uneaten bowls of rice and dumping them back into the rice cooker," a concerned customer wrote on Reddit.

Another fed-up diner confronted staff when he found a small fly in his fried egg.

"It was all fried and crispy. I wasn't even that bothered, I'm not a confrontational person. I didn't even want a whole new meal, I just wanted a new egg," he explained.

"The waitress came back from the kitchen and said that the chef was insisting it was a bit of 'herb' that he uses in his cooking. You could see the legs and wings. They were so insistent that I could see it wasn't worth arguing."

Others found all kinds of things in their food - from glass to parts of a mix package baked into brownies.

One customer was horrified when she saw bug parts fall out of a soda fountain and into her cup when the nozzle came off.

"I told a worker and they just screwed the nozzle back on when they thought I wasn't looking. Who knows what else they weren't cleaning," she wrote.

Another customer found a bunch of eaten chicken wing bones at the bottom of his appetiser basket.

"They just dropped a new piece of paper over them and filled it up with onion rings. Pointed it out to the manager, declined to get my app for free and walked out," he said.

In another bizarre case, a customer was told by an ice cream parlour staff member that they couldn't have sprinkles on their soft serve cone.

"The guy at the counter told me he couldn't put sprinkles on the soft serve. This made no sense to me so I asked him to do it anyway," they recalled.

"He still refused, so I asked to see the manager. The manager told me it was physically impossible to put sprinkles on soft serve ice cream. I left and never came back."