Bigger doesn't always mean better, and restaurants are certainly no exception. Be careful what you order in chains, employees say.

etphonetrome asked, Chain restaurant workers of Reddit, which meal should we avoid at all costs?

Submissions have been edited for clarity, context, and profanity.

Big Macs, if you don't care about the middle bun, order a McDouble, sub mac sauce and add shredded lettuce, its half the price and you dont pay extra for lettuce or substitutions, and you get pretty much the same amount of food.

Not a real big contribution but when I worked at Applebee's the microwaved Mac and cheese bugged me. Along with pretty much any desserts.

Hi, I used to work for Smoothie King. This isn't really anything specific but do NOT go there because you think it's healthy. All of the smoothies are actually pretty unhealthy for you.

EDIT: here's one of the main reasons why. It's most definitely the sugar. Everything that makes the smoothie taste good most likely has sugar in it. The strawberries are surrounded with a sugary syrup. So are the raspberries, blueberries, and peaches. The juices that we add are a thick syrup idkk why they call it juice because you definitely can't drink it down by itself. Then you add the marketed "raw cane sugar". Just because it has raw in the front doesn't make it NOT sugar. The worst smoothie I see people get is the hulk. I've seen so many people get the hulk for their children but whenever I try to tell them it's like they refuse to believe anything there could possibly be bad for you. LITTLE JIMMY DOES NOT NEED TO BE DRINKING THAT FAT SLUDGE MAM I DONT WANT TO BE RESPONSIBLE FOR HIS HEART EXPLODING. I have every smoothie basically memorized so if any of y'all have specific questions just ask.

I worked at a Pizza Hut for a while. Most of it is fine, although I wouldn't order wings on a Wednesday unless you are able to deal with a long wait. Their wing street menu gets slammed on that day due to the wing special, and most Pizza Huts don't have enough fryer space to keep up with Wednesday business.

The regular breadsticks are the most likely thing to not be made freshly, because they are ordered in packs of five sticks, but prepped and cooked in pans of ten sticks. Not a big deal during peak hours because we sold so many breadsticks that it didn't matter, but in slower hours it sometimes meant that if there was a 20-minute gap between one order of breadsticks and the next, the second customer got breadsticks that were significantly less tasty. They weren't rock hard or anything, but their fresh breadsticks are great and their 20 minute old breadsticks aren't great.

I worked at Denny's for longer than I'd like to admit. I don't know if they still serve it, but never ever ever eat the Fried Cheese Melt. It actually topped the list on a local news network as the worst thing in America that you can put in your body.

For the uninitiated, it's 4 mozzarella cheese sticks with cheese on top and bottom between two pieces of bread. Disgusting.

There is a place called Crave Burger here, I'm not sure how much of a chain it is, but they have whats called the "fatty melt," which is a cheeseburger but instead of normal buns, there is a grilled cheese on top and bottom.

I went there once and they had a pizza burger. Without reading the description I had ordered it - it was literally a personal pan pizza on either side as buns, a hamburger patty in the middle, mozzarella, pepperoni, and a bowl of marinara sauce for dipping.

They also have this f_cking thing.

Your cheesestick sandwhich doesn't seem so bad now.

Olive Garden: The only ingredients not frozen are herbs, peppers, tomatoes, and mushrooms. Even the pasta and bread is shipped frozen. I realize this is standard procedure for most chain restaurants, but Olive Garden advertises itself as being authentic upscale Italian cuisine. It's a lie

I work at Subway and one day my ex-manager was getting out a few platters of sandwiches for a customer, but the platters hadn't been closed/secured correctly so they busted open, spilling sandwiches onto the floor in the back. He said "f_ck it" picked them up without gloves on, put them back on the platter, and gave them to the customer. I died a little inside that day.

Former McD worker here, I got nothing you shouldn't have, but as a consolation, what you SHOULD do, is order a 'Double cheeseburger, sub artisan, sub cheddar'

You will not regret it. Also quarter pounder instead of double cheeseburger works.

I worked at a Japanese casual fast food restaurant that had two locations, but this applies to other places. We had this thing called a Volcano roll and it cost $7.25. A California roll there cost $3.75. The Volcano roll was a Cali roll cut into the shape of a triangle and topped with spicy mayo that has been heated up with about $.10 worth of fish, literally just a few bits. You are much better off ordering a Cali roll and paying $.50 extra for spicy mayo on the side and asking them to heat it up.

I had one really smug guy come in with his date and ordered a couple of rolls like he was a sushi expert, one of which was a volcano roll. When the Volcano roll was served in the restaurant, we would usually put it on top so it looked nice, like a Volcano. When I brought it over he was like, "Oh, I didn't know you guys put the sauce on, I've only gotten it for pick up and the sauce is always on the side. I don't really like it, could you bring me one without it?" I tried not to laugh and said sure. I went back and the sushi chef asked what was wrong. I told him that he didn't like the sauce and want one without it. He laughed and said alright, so he took a Cali roll, cut it up, and put it on the plate. I brought it back to the guy and he was super pumped. Basically, this guy paid $7.25 for a roll that would have cost him $3.75 and me and the sushi chef got to split a free volcano roll. Normally I would have told him about it, but dude was being so arrogant by trying to impress his date with his "sushi knowledge" that I decided not.

So really, you should be careful, look at the ingredients of the rolls that you have, because some of them could be glorified and overpriced California roll

Red Robin - the chicken in both the BBQ and Caesar wraps are pre-cooked and they are microwaved. Substitute it for crispy chicken.

A&W here in Canada. Everything is okay to order actually since we all cook it fresh especially during a rush but if they have a veggie burger ready and it's not a busy location or its during slow times, stay away or ask them to make another one for you fresh (they're obligated to make you one and is usually not a hassle for them). 9/10 times that veggie patty has been sitting there for hours.

Idk how Long John Silver's hasn't been mentioned yet. I worked at 3 different locations during high school. Pretty much everything is fried, we all know that, but the oil is only switched out like once a month and that's only if your manager gives a sh*. So the fries are cooked in the same oil as the fish, chicken, shrimp, hush puppies, and so on. The fish and chicken are scooped up out of the oil and thrown on a rack above the fryers. That rack is just covered in grease and hardly ever cleaned, and even if it is cleaned, it's never good enough; grease gets in the cracks of everything. The floors are absolutely disgusting, and everyone had to buy non-slip shoes seemingly every month. The oil would just eat away at them. The corn on the cob sits in a literal heated sink until someone buys it... you might be getting corn from last week depending on how busy it was. My clothes always smelled terrible after a shift, and my girlfriend hated it if I came over after as well. It would make my hair smell like cat vomit, she said. A shower after a shift was an absolute must.

Just all in all the absolutely messiest, most gross "kitchen" area I've seen in my entire life.

I worked there for maybe a year, and after the first day, I vowed to never eat anything from there. I'm 30 years old and haven't since.

There's nothing really disgusting or poisonous at chipotle, but depending on how busy the store you go to is and what time of day it is, maybe or maybe don't get the steak. It's cooked to be medium rare but after more than 15 minutes on the line, you end up with basically dog food.

The Barbacoa and Carnitas usually for lined periods of time because no one really eats them, and the chips are made with an obscene amount of salt and oil.

Chili's. The Buffalo Ranch sandwich has the sodium content of 17 McDonald's medium fries.

I work at Jimmy Johns and there's a very high standard of cleanliness. Every store gets inspected every few weeks and the motto is to keep the store "hospice clean". That being said, it's really gross that we leave the meat sitting out all day on the prep tables.

Use to work at Subway. What we did was empty bags of tuna into a big bowl. The tuna came in chunks so we broke it up into fine crumbs with gloved hands. Then we dump a bag of mayo and mix it together, again with gloved hands. Then we put it into three containers and cover them with lids. One would go up front if we needed it, the rest would go into the fridge. We also put the date and time it was made on the containers. The only thing I can think of that was kinda gross was that the mayo was kept outside of the fridge so the mayo is always room temperature.

I work at Starbucks so idk if this counts but pretty much everything has more sugar than you think it does. Especially our lightly sweetened chai, the chai syrup comes with less sugar but we end up pumping liquid cane sugar into it anyways.

I work at Dairy Queen and I wouldn't recommend eating anything with the grilled chicken. We microwave it and put it in hot steaming water. Everything else is pretty standard and I would eat it myself.

I seriously doubt anyone will see this, but do NOT order the bread twists at Domino's. They're made using one half of a pan pizza dough, and drizzled with garlic oil and parmesan dust, and will cost about $5.99. Instead, you should order the parmesan bread bites. Those are made from one half of a pan pizza dough and drizzled with garlic oil and parmesan dust, but only cost $2.99