30 Wendy's Secrets As Revealed By A Former Employee

I'll never forget the first time I saw a Wendy's. I'd just moved to California, and my dad pointed out the famous sign as we drove to our new apartment. We went to Wendy's for breakfast the next morning, and my mind was blown. I'd never seen a stack of pancakes that big before in my life! Shortly after I started college, I decided to work at the restaurant to fund my studies. Within days, that glorious childhood memory was in tatters. As soon as I realized how the food was really cooked, I couldn't bring myself to eat a bite - despite having an employee discount.

Now I've been free from Wendy's for a few years, I've decided it's time to spill the beans on one of America's best-loved fast-food giants. It's not all bad though. If you're willing to look past what I tell you about how the food's made, then you can discover how to get the most out of your Wendy's trip... But the worst thing about working at Wendy's was the customers. Amazingly, some people expect a five-star culinary service when visiting a fast food restaurant! That, coupled with the horrors I've mentioned, wasn't worth the low wage. I've got no idea how I managed to stick it out for three years...

[post_page_title]What You Should Never Order[/post_page_title]

I used to love Wendy's chili until I discovered what it was made from. Whenever we eat meat, we live in the hope that it's freshly cooked. However, what you're eating at Wendy's isn't what it appears to be. This is the one item on the menu I wouldn't eat even if you paid me...

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The chili served at Wendy's isn't made from freshly cooked mincemeat. It's actually old hamburgers from the day before that were burnt on the grill. The burgers are binned, chopped up, and turned into chili. I'm not sure what the implications of this area from a health and safety standpoint, but it certainly isn't appetizing...

[post_page_title]There's Something Else Wrong With The Chili[/post_page_title]

If the fact that you're eating old, burnt meat isn't enough to put you off of Wendy's chili, then this probably will. I majored in science at college and did a little bit of digging when I saw the exact ingredients list for their chili. What I discovered was truly sickening...

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The moment I discovered what the chili was made from, I realized how sandy it tasted and decided to do some investigating of my own. When I actually checked the ingredients list, I saw that the chili sauce contained silicon dioxide. A food additive that acts as a preservative which is also found in substances like sand. Yuck!

[post_page_title]This Is When You Shouldn't Visit Wendy's[/post_page_title]

Don't get me wrong, the chili is definitely the worst item on the menu, and the fast-food giant does serve some food that I'd say is edible, even if I'd never want to eat it again. However, if you're wanting to increase your chances of having an enjoyable visit to Wendy's, this is when you shouldn't visit...

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Please don't visit Wendy's just before it's due to close. We're trying to clean up the kitchen and looking forward to going home. If you turn up late, it's more than likely you'll get served reheated food. It's honestly the worst time to come in terms of quality. We will serve you whatever is leftover, and it's more than likely that it's been lying around for hours...

[post_page_title]Where You'll Get Served Faster[/post_page_title]

Wendy's might be a fast-food restaurant, but when we're busy it can be difficult to get all of our orders out in a timely fashion. So instead of getting annoyed at your underpaid servers, this is what you should do if you can't stand to wait for your food for longer than a few minutes...

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Drive-thru is a lot faster than coming into the store for food. My friend worked in McDonald's, and he said it's also the case there as well. Our managers tell us to priorities drive-thru orders so you're always guaranteed to get your food a lot quicker if you take your car to Wendy's!

[post_page_title]The Employee Discount[/post_page_title]

Whilst the time that I spent working at Wendy's put me off the restaurant's food for life, if you're a massive fan of the fast-food giant, and aren't going to be swayed in your love of their food, then maybe you should consider becoming an employee because the discount is particularly generous...

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Employees at Wendy's get 50% off the food. So if you aren't put off the food by working there, it's a real bonus. My friend told me that they only get a 25% discount. That's not the only thing that Wendy's has over McDonald's either...

[post_page_title]How Clean The Kitchens Really Are[/post_page_title]

We've all heard the stories about fast food restaurants having disgusting kitchens, and Wendy's has its share of rumors spread about it over the years. However, this picture is an accurate representation of what a Wendy's kitchen really looks like...

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Wendy's kitchens are spotlessly clean. Whilst there's some questionable reheating being done and chopping up of burnt food, you can at least take comfort in the knowledge that it's being prepared in an extremely clean kitchen!

[post_page_title]A Common Customer Mistake[/post_page_title]

It's no secret that Wendy's isn't as popular as McDonald's. However, a lot of customers make a very silly mistake that not only drives their servers insane but will prompt them to mercilessly make fun of you once you've got your food...

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Please don't try to order McDonald's food at Wendy's. We don't serve you McNuggets. Did you get lost when you were deciding what fast food restaurant you wanted to eat at?! A colleague of mine once sneezed in fries and didn't replace them before he served them because the customer had asked if we sold Big Macs...

[post_page_title]How Badly Underpaid Employees Are[/post_page_title]

You might be thinking that the employees at Wendy's should stop complaining and just accept people's confusion between the restaurant and McDonalds, however, when you find out what they're paid, you'll understand why they're so easily annoyed by customers...

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Staff at Wendy's earn a mere $7.25 an hour. Whereas in other fast-food chains people are paid a lot more. McDonald's pays its cashiers $10 an hour. I stayed in the job so long because I made friends at my store (on reflection, even that wasn't worth it), but there's no doubt I was underpaid...

[post_page_title]Employees Steal Food[/post_page_title]

Not everyone who works in Wendy's is a college student. For most of the employees, the fast-food chain is their career, and, when you're busting your gut for hardly any cash, there's one thing that you won't feel any guilt about doing...

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Wendy's employees happily steal food from the restaurant. You might think they're wrong, but when you're horribly underpaid and have an overbearing manager breathing down your neck your entire shift, you can see why employees would engage in this little act of rebellion...

[post_page_title]There's A Drug Problem[/post_page_title]

This isn't something that I did whilst I worked in Wendy's, but I knew a lot of employees who were happy to do it. I didn't judge them because I knew how stressed out they were working for the fast-food giant, but this illegal substance has been known to end up in the food...

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A lot of employees at Wendy's can't get through their shift without smoking weed. It's so bad that a customer once complained to the restaurant after their young kid found marijuana in their fries. The managers know that their employees are high too, but turn a blind eye to it!

[post_page_title]How Fresh The Fries Really Are[/post_page_title]

We all know what it's like to buy some fries and think that they taste funny. Until I worked in Wendy's, I brushed it off and told myself that it was a figment of my overactive imagination. Then I found out how fresh the fries the restaurant sells really are...

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"It's not old until it's sold." That's the catchphrase my manager used when talking about the fries we were selling. We'd never throw away fries, no matter how long they'd been simmering in the pan for. People often ate fries that had been in there for hours if they came into the store later in the day...

[post_page_title]The Maggots[/post_page_title]

This is easily one of the worst things that I ever saw when I worked at the restaurant. Remember I said that the chili was made from old burgers? Well, sometimes the burgers were really old - anything up to a week. Because of this, there have been some disturbing discoveries in the chili...

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Yeah, don't worry. I wasn't going to subject you to that. Occasionally, people end up unknowingly eating chili with maggots in it. It's one of the reasons why you couldn't pay me to eat the chili from Wendy's. Burgers that have been cooked and kept to chop up at a later date are a prime target for flies...

[post_page_title]Employee Games[/post_page_title]

When you work in a highly pressurized environment like Wendy's - with managers constantly telling you to work harder and customers complaining every five minutes - you have to do something to keep yourself going. So the employees have invented a number of hilarious games...

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When I worked at Wendy's, my colleagues and I would regularly have water fights when our manager's back was turned. Some employees like to have deep-frying competitions where they'd bring in all sorts of foods just to see what they'd taste like after they'd been deep-fried. I once ate a deep-fried Hershey's bar!

[post_page_title]The Meat Is Frozen[/post_page_title]

You might think that when you order a burger from a fast-food chain that you're eating meat that's fresh, however, you couldn't be further from the truth. The reality of how fast-food restaurants keep their meat is disgusting...

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All of the meat that's sold in Wendy's stores is frozen, not fresh. It's frozen so that it can be stored for longer, which make sense for the restaurant chain, but no sense when it comes to providing its customers with a supposedly delicious meal...

[post_page_title]The Secret Menu[/post_page_title]

Just like a lot of other fast-food restaurants, there's a secret menu at Wendy's too. It contains some really impressive things if you're looking to have a heart attack at an early age. This was a particularly popular item on the secret menu...

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The burger pictured above is known as the meat cube, and it's easy to see why. There were a lot of items on the secret menu that we used to cook for regular customers we liked. This included the barnyard burger (which is massive) and the quadruple baconator...

[post_page_title]One Of The Largest Orders[/post_page_title]

When you're rushed off your feet in a fast-food restaurant, there's nothing worse than a customer coming in and making a particularly large and elaborate order. But it happens all of the time. However, this was the worst that I ever received...

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Someone came into my busy store and ordered 25 packs of eight-piece chicken nuggets, eight berry almond salads (full-sized), four apple-pecan salads (half-sized), and over 30 boxes of large fries. I almost died on the spot. What's worse is that she complained about how long it took for me to make this monster order. Please don't be like this woman in Wendy's - especially if it's busy!

[post_page_title]The Cheese Is Left Lying Around[/post_page_title]

Unlike the burgers, the cheese in Wendy's isn't frozen. That might sound like an improvement, but when you find out what happens to it after it's been cooked, you'll be wishing you'd ordered a burger without any cheese...

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Because the cheese isn't frozen, it's often left lying around for a long time before it's cooked. You can only imagine what that does to the cheese in a hot kitchen. Us employees used to refer to it as being "tampered cheese"...

[post_page_title]The Cheap Chicken[/post_page_title]

If you go to Wendy's, and you're in the mood for some chicken, order one of the more expensive items on the menu like the chicken sandwich. Then you'll get what you're paying for. Otherwise, the "chicken" that you're eating won't be what you think it is...

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The chicken in Wendy's is mechanically separated. So that big lump of pink goo is exactly what it looks like before it's molded into whatever cheap fast food item you desire. Sometimes you really do get what you pay for...

[post_page_title]If You Look Like This, You'll Get Extra Food[/post_page_title]

One of the few perks of the job is that us Wendy's employees can subtly flirt with hot customers. How? Well, when you're a server in a fast-food restaurant there's only one way that you can flirt with someone that you think is cute...

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We'll give you extra food if we think you're cute. So if you notice some extra nuggets in your box, or a large fries when you've only ordered a medium, then you might want to ask for you Wendy's server's number. It's a sure sign that they've got the hots for you!

[post_page_title]Employee Hygiene[/post_page_title]

Even though Wendy's managers can be overbearing, the only thing they really care about is making sure that customers get served quickly. Whilst the kitchen itself is spotless, the personal hygiene of some of the people I worked with was extremely questionable...

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A lot of servers in Wendy's don't wash their hands anywhere near as often as they should. I once worked with a guy who bragged about the fact that he never washed his hands and got away with it. Now you can really understand why my opinion of the restaurant I'd loved as a kid changed so rapidly when I worked there!

[post_page_title]Medium Is A Large[/post_page_title]

Sometimes, when you rock up to a Wendy's, or any fast-food giant for that matter, and you're offered the chance to upgrade from a medium to the large soda, the answer is an immediate yes - if you're thirsty enough. But you could be wasting your money.

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Yup. In a lot of fast food franchises, they can get away with charging more for a medium drink if it's got more ounces in it. So it's typically the size of what would otherwise be a standard large, according to research conducted by Duke University. The more you know, eh?

[post_page_title]Your Soda Could Be Dirtier Than A Toilet[/post_page_title]

On the subject of soda, there are also some seriously questionable hygiene practices going on at fast-food giants, and I'm not just talking about Wendy's.

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This is because, as any former employee will attest, cleaning ice machines can be nigh on impossible at times. Unbelievably, a 12-year-old investigated it as part of an award-winning science project and discovered the water is 70% dirtier than toilet water. So you might want to give that soda a miss...

[post_page_title]The Coffee Cups Could Be Making You Sad[/post_page_title]

It's no secret that the styrofoam cups used by most fast-food chains including Wendy's are bad for the environment, but a lesser-known fact is that they're also bad for your health. Seriously.

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This is because they can secrete a substance called styrene. It's toxic and it's known to cause depression and a loss of concentration. However, it's worth noting that it's more likely to be secreted by the cups when they contain highly acidic substances like coffee.

[post_page_title]What The Nuggets Go Through[/post_page_title]

Nuggets are a staple of just about every self-respecting fast-food giant, even if McDonald's is their most famous creator. And because they're cheap, they all tend to be produced in the same problematic way: with mechanically separated meat.

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Reddit user DFunkatron, who claims to be a former McDonald's employee, wrote: " […] I accidentally left a whole bag of about 100 chicken nuggets out on a counter for way too long. They melted. Into a pool of liquid. I never understood why. But they were completely indiscernible as being the nuggets I once knew."

[post_page_title]Your Food Is Surprisingly Old[/post_page_title]

Sure, fast food isn't the healthiest grub on the planet, that's no secret, but one thing which most burger-loving patrons don't know is that it's also surprisingly old.

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Well, depending on where you're eating. This was something brought to light by photographer Sally Davies, who places fast food in jars to see how quickly it deteriorates. When she did it with food from McDonald's, it still looked edible five months later... That's a lot of preservatives.