Panda Express — Restaurant in Florence

Garbage is taken out the front door past eating customers.

Servers yell back to cooks constantly to ask "how much longer on whatever item ? " . The servers are the ones ringing up and taking orders , selling the item, ...they... should know their item well enough to tell how long it should take. The cooks maintain a constant circle of checking the runners for their obligatory dishes and cook it asap. it will take the same amount of time it took the last time they asked.

certain staff think they're too good to wash dishes and like to wait til theyre all dirty to pile them on one employee that they just dont like. or the oddball that doesnt congregate as much on things irrelevant to the business.

the manager is often late every morning, sometimes by 15 to 30 minutes. they only have from 10 am (work shift begins) to 11 am (doors open to customers) to get all items prepared. one morning a whole kitchen crew waited outside 45 minutes past 10 am ,because of a locked door in hurricane weather ,soaked, while customers began to show up asking whats going on.

even truck drivers (stock delivery) has complained asking us where our manager was...and then when they finally get in the door , they have to set all the boxes in the floor in front of the coolers and prep areas, where we cant get to the tools and items we need to prepare food (not the deliverers fault however). those deliverers show up at least a couple hours before all this and are left stuck waiting on him , when all this stuff should be put up and ready to use as soon as a workshift begins.

and even if its all there, most of the time all our work tools are scattered all over the kitchen (or hidden....he likes to hide the cleaning rags and other stuff), where i spent more time looking for the stuff i needed to set up than actually doing it.

he constantly told me different measurements for ingredients in dishes, and would go from bragging on my food to complaining, after doing it exactly like he said. it got to where i was just using my own and THAT was when they were all pleased.

several crew servers stand around lounging in the prep room with the manager eating donuts and just hanging out , while one of the few foreign girls is washing a mountain of dishes all by herself. i helped with that.

then hes joking with some slackers about how hes going to fire some people next week...hes already had a handful of people walk out and quit midshift, and they were usually the better, more interested workers. and he apparenly cant get the doors open on time to either employees or customers , much less needing to be firing anyone.

manager likes to play with the girls when they should be working (see the donut situation). so theres a lot of favoritism in the workplace.

i had to call the cops just to get the manager to finally set up my payroll.... after 4 times of asking about it and he blew me off each time. which i know cops can only do so much there, but i had to raise some hell just to get it set up.

sunday morning the manager was slamming pans on the ground and cursing at somebody on the headset. came over to me and said "its too early for this." im thinking... " no...? our workshift has begun...and we only have about 30 minutes to get this stuff put out... it is certainly not "too early". ".

the manager has a "LINE" app account set up for staff to communicate through...which only a few favorites are on it. personal social media should never be used for a corporate business. ...and even still , when hes late, either no one can get him on it, or one of his favorite girls is chatting up a storm with him while hes still at his apartment probably hungover and were all sitting locked outside after shift time has begun.

then i got fired for clocking out on time... because somebody came and loaded dishes in the sink as i was clocking out and management tried saying i left a chore unfinished. ...they think theyre too good to wash dishes.

certain staff drag feet and look half asleep when they get there....if you dont want to be there, go...

This is absolutely the worst Panda Express experience I have ever had. I travel around the country, and fell in love with Panda Express last year. I have never had less than a 4 star experience at any location until this one in Florence.

The customer service was lacking, and I had to repeat myself three to four times with various answers. But the food was the worst! The chow mein noodles had absolutely no cabbage in it, and most of the noodles were cold, with several noodles hardened as though having set out for hours to dry out. There were HARD clumps of rice in the fried rice. More than half of the orange chicken tasted hard and stale, and the same for the teriyaki chicken, with the addition of it looking and tasting undercooked.

What makes this experience even worse is that I came with my mom, wanting her to experience the great food, since she had never tried it, and she had the same reactions as I. So not only did it disappoint me, this location gave my mom a negative experience associated with this brand. And she paid for both our meals, so I felt obligated putvof guilt to repay her because the good was so bad!!

It is unfortunate, given how much I love Panda Express, that when I visit my mother, I will have no location to take her too for her to know how delicious it normally is supposed to be. I normally wipe my plate clean, but it was so bad, you can see by the picture attached how much I left uneaten when I felt disgusted and threw...

On Jan 27, 2024, at 1:53 PM, we went to Panda Express #2871, in Florence, Alabama, and bought a Family Meal. My husband paid $64.39, Order: 201172. We had fried rice, (he even bought additional fried rice), the Honey Walnut Shrimp was good, the Black Pepper Steak and Beijing Beef, the meat was good but the carrots were raw, and the broccoli stalk were tough, you have to cut the stuck, the 4 Spring Rolls were good. On the Black Pepper Steak, they filled up the box, but on the Beijing Beef it was not filled up. You can see the big difference when you open the boxes. My husband was not watching while they prepare our order, he just set on one of the chair. For so many years since they open in Florence, Alabama we always go there and buy Family Meal for take out. We stop going there I think by August or September of last year, I got tired of the food. But last Saturday I said I'n ready to eat Panda Express food again. So we went back there got our order and when we got home, we were not happy with the food. A lot of changes. We should have tried the fried rice before we order, but I was assuming the food was great, like it was used to. We won't be back...