Confessions of a hospo worker: The tips, tricks and shocking secrets

Ever wondered what really goes on behind the scenes in a cafe, bar or restaurant? Take a look at the startling confessions and secrets you need to know.

There are some things that your local barista, fast food worker or bartender doesn’t want you to know.

Take a look at some of the shocking confessions below from current and former hospitality workers that may surprise you.

Your full cream coffee could be skim

Some baristas might use a different type of milk in your order.

Baristas know time is a commodity, and that means that if they can save time, they will.

And that might mean using skim milk if time calls for it.

“If I’ve already frothed up a whole jug of skim milk and you order a full-cream coffee - sorry, but I’m using the skim I’ve already made up.” a former barista said.

If you’re worried, maybe keep an eye out for what milk your barista is pouring in their jug when making multiple orders.

We hate when you order the last cake

There’s a secret reason why cafe staff hate when you order the last cake or treat in the cabinet.

A lot of the time in cafes and restaurants, leftover cakes, croissants and muffins have to be binned if they’re not sold by a particular date.

But for hospitality workers, this means that they could potentially take home the leftover goodies, which means it’s quite upsetting when a customer does end up purchasing the last muffin in the cabinet.

“It sucks when the last muffin gets sold after you’ve been eyeing it up all day thinking it won’t sell,” said a barista.

“Some days you want to make it look unappealing so you can ensure it doesn’t sell and you can have it yourself.”

We can hear you at the drive-thru microphone

Fast food employees can hear everything you say at the drive-thru microphone, even before you place your order.

More often than not, the fast food worker in charge of taking orders at the drive-thru window will have multiple jobs to do at the same time, such as taking orders over the speaker across multiple drive-thru lanes and taking payments at the window.

And while doing these tasks, employees can hear everything being said at the drive-thru microphone, not just when they begin taking your order, so be careful with what you say at the window.

“When you roll up to the drive-thru window, we can hear you arguing with your family, or complaining about the long wait,” said a former fast food worker.

“And please don’t yell ‘HELLO?’ at the screen - we know you’re there, screaming in our headsets does not help speed things up.”

Extra hot coffees suck

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A popular opinion among baristas is that ‘extra hot’ is a terrible way to have your coffee.

The desire to have a coffee at a warmer drink is understandable, but having the milk at a higher temperature burns it and ruins the taste.

There’s a reason baristas steam the milk at a certain temperature and it's to make it as nice tasting as possible.

And an additional side note that baristas want customers to know: “Extra hot long blacks don’t exist, we can’t make boiling water any hotter”.

Specials are not so ‘special’

Be careful next time you order something from the specials board...

While specials on a restaurant menu can be exciting, it’s not as ‘special’ as it may seem.

Many restaurants use the specials as a way to get rid of leftover produce or items that are about to reach their expiration date in a bid to avoid wastage.

“When I worked as a waiter, our specials were just a creative way to get rid of produce we over-ordered that week, so the chef would just come up with a creative way to sell the leftover salmon,” said a former waiter.

Next time you ask for the specials, just keep in mind that the fancy sounding dish might not be as boujee as it appears.

We hate when you order fries with no salt

Ordering fries with no salt is a good hack to get fresh hot chips, but the workers will hate you for it.

There’s a quick way to become the most hated person at a fast food restaurant, and it’s ordering fries with no salt.

While many people know that it’s an easy ‘hack’ to get fresh fries, it can be a major inconvenience to the people working who have to delay other orders by putting on your ‘unsalted’ chippies.

“Yes, it’s a good way to get fresh fries, but it makes it so much longer when we’re already super busy, and we know you’ll just ask for salt packets at the window anyway,” a former fast food employee told us.

We judge your coffee order

Some baristas can be self-professed ‘coffee snobs’, which means that they do judge you by your coffee order.

It’s probably the thing a lot of customers are worried about, but yes, baristas do judge you by your coffee order.

Some of the biggest ‘bad orders’ among baristas include:

• Ordering a ‘weak’ coffee
• Anything with soy milk
• Too many sugars/syrups

“I can understand having a sugar in your coffee, but having three pumps of vanilla?! Order a milkshake next time,” a former barista told us.

Don’t ask for our recommendations

A waitress has revealed why you shouldn’t ask what they ‘recommend’ on the menu.

While it might seem to make sense to ask a waiter what food they recommend on the menu, sometimes it’s not as useful as you think it is.

“I would constantly be asked ‘What would you recommend?’ when I worked as a waitress,” a former waitress said.

“Did I ever try the food? No. Usually, I just recommend dishes that are popular among regulars,

“Don’t think that I’m giving you my personal opinion because I’m not.”

From what we’ve heard, the closest wait staff got to trying the food was from a big silver bowl of hot chippies that they got to eat sometimes in the kitchen.

Be rude and suffer the consequences

Hospitality workers are warning customer not to be rude, or they might suffer the consequences.

Perhaps the most popular secret among all current and former hospitality workers, but if you are rude, staff will be sure to get their revenge.

While most said they wouldn’t go as far as to spit in a rude customer’s food, there are little things that are within a worker’s control that they can do to ensure the rude person’s day is made just a little worse.

“Sometimes I make the wait time longer if the customer is rude” a current barista told us.

One former bartender said that they’d purposely make a customer’s drink weaker if they were rude to them.

A restaurant host said that “if someone was rude to me at the door, I’d tell them the 30-minute wait [for the restaurant] was going to be two to three hours”.

“If someone was a jerk to me when they ordered at the bar, I’d make their cocktail a little less strong,” a former bartender told us.

Even cafe staff have mentioned that they’ll give rude customers the smallest cake in the cabinet or the stale croissant in an act of petty revenge.

“I keep a dead shot [of coffee] in case someone is rude to a cashier” a barista told us.

We go up to you when your mouth is full on purpose

Yes, sometimes waiters go up to you when your mouth is full on purpose.

When you’re having a meal at a restaurant, most places require wait staff to check if you are enjoying your meal so any issues can be fixed prior to you finishing your meal.

But that doesn’t mean they can’t have fun while doing it.

“When I worked as a waitress, I’d check to see if people were happy with the meal while they had a mouthful of food because then they’d just nod and usher you away,” a former waitress told us.

Stop asking for substitutions

Restaurants have menus for a reason.

Some substitutions are fine like asking for mashed potatoes instead of fries, but sometimes it gets ridiculous to the point that the meal has an entirely different price and is a pain for the chef.

If you want a million different substitutions, don’t go to a restaurant - a menu exists for a reason.

Originally published as Confessions of a hospo worker: The tips, tricks and shocking secrets