Accept the downvotes. Embrace them.
Reddit’s many things, but unquestionably, one of its greatest attributes is its relentless sense of humor. They’re funny on Reddit. Really funny. And recently, the following question was posed to the r/productivitycafe subreddit (which goes about a half million strong): What is the worst fast-food restaurant?
The replies (there were close to 1,500), naturally, were gold.
To be fair, we don’t think a single fast-food chain escaped unscathed. Subway, however, appeared to take the brunt of the crowd’s ire.
“The bar is quite low there. They’ve abandoned fresh is best to basically [expletive] it,” said one user.
Another said:
“I hate the way Subway smells. Heard someone say it smells like bread in a dishwasher, which sounds about right.” A user shortly after replied, “Everything there tastes like chicken teriyaki. Even the sodas.”
Yikes.
Perhaps the best of all was from this Redditor:
“You enter Subway, and it’s empty. It’s slightly too cool to be comfortable, slightly too damp to feel clean, and slightly too bright to be inviting. There’s one lonely employee who does their best not to look at you for those awkward 10 seconds as you approach. Are they wearing those gloves to keep the food clean or their hands?”
Sorry, Subway. We’ll move on. How about Long John Silver’s and Captain D’s?
“No one eats at Long John Silver’s. It’s a money laundering front,” said one user.
Another joked, “I love Captain D’s catch-of-the-drainage ditch sandwich.”
Meanwhile, this user took aim at four chains in one succinct reply:
“Five Guys are terribly overpriced, Burger King is the worst, KFC is a shell of what they used to be, and McDonald’s just sucks.”
Little Caesars, often the target of scorn for pizza purists (or just people), drew this ultra-harsh rebuke:
“Little Caesars is the vilest offender out there being sold as food. It’s aggressively awful.”
Another user responded:
“I’ll never understand people going to places like this when there are real pizza places all over. Dominos, Pizza Hut, etc. are vile.”
A Redditor from the UK chimed in and added their two cents.
“The prize for worst fast food I’ve had in the UK undoubtedly goes to Taco Bell. It was like eating cardboard with some yellow goop they had the audacity to call cheese.”
Even Chick-fil-A isn’t immune to Reddit’s wrath:
“This will be like detonating a TNT vest on myself, but I can taste Chick-fil-A’s oil on their chicken, and their waffle fries are seriously overrated. Let the downvotes and outrage begin."
As we said earlier, nobody left unscathed. If you’d like to browse the discussion in its entirety, you can do so here (or perhaps you’d like to cast your own vote).
But this Reddit user probably summed it up best:
“All of them have gone downhill. There was a time when McNuggets were fresh and not just left on a warmer. Roy Rogers used to make the freshest, most delicious juicy burgers on the planet. Burger King actually had good fries back in the 90s. Wendy’s, go back to your basics. And KFC, come on. The colonel is rolling in his grave.”
