What happens to your food when you complain

Have you ever joked that the chef is probably stomping on your returned meal before sending it back to you? Photo / Getty

Warning: You my be put off making complaints about meals after reading what some hospitality staff do to the dishes of dissatisfied customers.

People who work in the food industry have taken to Q&A website Quora to reveal the revenge they've witnessed being taken on customers who have spoken up about a bad dining experience.

According to one Quora user, who worked for a "very popular burger chain" that mainly employed teenagers aged 15 to 18, "complaining to a teenager is the wrong thing to do".

Here is the list of stomach-churning customer service he has witnessed:

1. Daddy long legs spider seared into a burger
2. Different types of body hair being purposely added to food
3. Sneezing then wiping the nose with a bun (then calling it a Bacon Double Sneeze Burger).
4. Many different forms of spit and phlegm being combined with the "corrected" order
5. Wiping butt and/or armpits with food items
6. Toilet trouble - after one customer defecated on the bathroom floor and a worker was sent to clean it up, it was later revealed that his cleaning implement of choice was the nugget scoop

Another woman confessed to serving a customer caffeinated instead of decaff coffee "because it was the end of the shift and I didn't want to get the machine dirty again".

Others referred to a Sydney family who planned legal action after allegedly being served icecream containing human excrement following a complaint.

One user said while they had never witnessed customers' food being tampered with, fellow staff would often play tricks on each other.

According to this part time chef: "I had some one sneak salt in my coffee, Tabasco on my ice cream, got served a fried battered dishrag (fresh) as a Schnitzel etc. But NEVER have I've seen a customer get spit in their food (the most common myth)".

For a former McDonald's employee, they shared how they had occasionally given a customer the exact burger back they had complained about.

And if you've ever made the joke that the chef is probably stomping on your returned meal before sending it back to you, user Cassie Moffat has witnessed such action first hand.

"Someone sent their steak back for not being cooked enough and the chef threw it on the ground, stomped on it with his boot you know really mushing it into the ground.

"Then he picked it up with the tongs and cooked it for one or two more minutes and sent it back, and customer [sic[ ate it unawares."

- nzherald.co.nz