Everyone knows chain restaurant food is not good for you.

And working in the service industry is even worse.

In this story, a bartender shines a lot on some pretty dark nutritional info.

Let’s get the skinny on these fatty foods.

Describe the food? You got it boss.

Many moons ago, I worked at a restaurant that is part of a national chain named after a fruit and an insect.

Hmm, mysterious…

I had put in my two weeks notice after finding a better position elsewhere, and we were about to slightly tweak our menu and so were having mandatory staff meetings to acquaint ourselves with the new food.

The only time that we could schedule these meetings was in the morning, prior to the restaurant opening, so that all the staff could attend.

As a closing bartender who would sometimes be there until 2 or 3AM cleaning up, I did not relish having to turn around and go back to work just for an hour long untipped (earning just minimum wage) meeting on less than 6 hours of sleep.

Sounds like a real bummer of a summer.

Since I was on my way out the door and would not be employed by them when the new menu actually started, I asked my boss if I actually had to come to these meetings.

He told me, “If you want to work your remaining scheduled shifts you do.”

Being a college student who lived paycheck to paycheck, I could not afford to lose out on a week and a half wages, so I sucked it up and went.

Ah, to be young and broke.

Part of the roll out was a booklet we were supposed to fill out about the menu items, which included the prompt: “How would you describe this dish?”

Presumably you are supposed to come up with clever tantalizing romanticizations of the items.

Stuff like, “It’s a quarter pound of Angus beef, smothered by melted cheese and tender onions!”

But there were no specifics about what you could or should not write.

Yeah, probably wanted a love story to a cheeseburger. Something tells me that’s not what OP did.

Cue malicious compliance.

I sat slightly out of my manager’s line of sight and looked up the nutritional values of the menu items from our corporate website on my phone.

I filled my notebook out as follows:

“The classic bacon cheeseburger has 1320 calories, 140% of your daily saturated fat (28 grams) and 124% of your daily sodium (2860mg).”

“The BS mushroom swiss burger has 1580 calories, 155% of daily recommended saturated fat (31 grams), and 126% of your recommended sodium (3100mg).”

“The quesadilla burger has 1580 calories, 190% of your daily saturated fat (38 grams), and 191% of your daily recommended sodium intake (3470mg)” etc.

Staggering stats, if you think about it.

The next day my boss called me into the office to discuss my booklet. He asked, “Are these the real nutritional facts numbers?”

I replied, “You’re the manager, you should know, but yes. I pulled them right off the company website.”

He said something along the lines of, “God that’s disgusting! I should be looking for a new job too. We shouldn’t be selling this crap.”

Ha! What a turn of events.

I worked the end of my shifts, and then came back as a customer a week or two later.

I proceeded to order a pitcher of the strongest beer we had on tap for myself, and then loudly played “trivia” with some of the bar regulars who were my buddies, asking them the same nutritional facts about the food.

The bartender (my former coworker who was a stuck up girl) kept giving me dirty looks, but she couldn’t say anything to me, since I wasn’t the loudest one in the group, and we weren’t discussing anything vulgar.

Well, nobody goes to a burger joint to get health food, but still, those numbers could give you a heart attack in more ways than one.

How will the commenters weigh in?

This person says, it’s always fun to give the finger on your way out of a crappy job.

Someone else says, give the people what they want… even if it’s bad for them.

One user hopes for a happy ending between manager and bartender.

Another waiter at the fruit/insect establishment has a funny gag to share.

Someone else says, duh that food is unhealthy!

Fast facts about fast food?

It’s not healthy.

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.