5 Surprisingly Grim Realities Of Life At A Chuck E. Cheese's

While they don't have a way of keeping the molesters from entering, Chuck E. Cheese's has a long-established protocol in place to make sure none escape with a child under each arm. When you walk into the place, you pass through the "kid check stand," and the employee there daps the hands of everyone in your party with a rubber stamp. The ink used to be colored and kind of smudgy; these days, they use UV ink visible under a blacklight. When you leave, the employee checks hands to make sure everyone leaves with the same people they came with.

Chuck E. Cheese / YouTube

So, how well does this work in practice? It depends on who you ask. At his branch, Mark says they occupy the kid check stand religiously. If the employee assigned to it steps more than five feet away without getting someone else to cover it, they're fired, no second chances. This happened to two employees during his time there. This guards not just against body snatchers, but against the occasional child drunk on orange Hi-C sprinting out of the restaurant and right into oncoming traffic.

CEC North Georgia / YouTube

"People try and leave all the time with mismatched stamps," he says, but it's not as worrying as it sounds. Invariably, it's because some child came in with perhaps their father and leaves with their grandmother, which is usually not a case of kidnapping. Mark asks her, "Can you prove that you really are this child's grandparent?" The old lady replies, "You're darn tootin'!" And she takes out an iPhone, containing hundreds of smiling photos of the two of them together.

Heather, on the other hand, had less confidence in the system, saying the numbers frequently smear into an unreadable glowing blob. "I'd pretend I could still read them and go, 'yep, you're all good'," she says. "I'd get comments from the adults about how good I must be at my job to decipher some meaning in the blobs. Nope." Instead, she'd rely on her own memory of who entered with whom, while also keeping an eye out for any exiting child who happened to be crying and screaming.

Parents may be relying on Chuck E. Cheese's as a nice, legal alternative to abandoning their loud-ass children in the forest, but that doesn't stop them from doing the kind of shit that gets you banned from the chain forever.

"In one instance, we had to break up a fight between two young women," says Heather. "Each one had a baby in one arm and was throwing punches with the other. We ended up calling the police on them ... We're not entirely sure what set them off, but honestly nothing at Chuck E. Cheese is worth putting your child in harm's way."

Big Cheese / YouTube

"Another time, we were having a birthday party at the restaurant. Out of nowhere, the parents start yelling and throwing punches at each other and the entire family erupts in a fight. They knock over all the tables in the surrounding birthday rows with food and drink flying everywhere. The cops were called, someone with a warrant was arrested, there was hair pulled out on the floor, it was a real mess. We were there until 1 a.m. scrubbing food out of the carpet."

On yet another occasion, a manager at Heather's location got the shit beaten out of him by a group of parents because one of the games was momentarily out of order.

chuck_e._live/Instagram

Why does stuff like that keep happening? For one: Alcohol. Chuck E. Cheese's serves beer, but many adults find that doesn't get them quite drunk enough to endure a children's birthday party. "I used to find empty booze containers in the ladies room all the time, and I can only imagine how much contraband booze we didn't find."

There's roughly one poop cleanup weekly, says Mark. And one more for piss -- when a panicked child asks you which way to the bathroom, it's even money that he'll take three steps before yelling "too late!" and letting loose yellow fury. Major barf cleanups number about three per week. Matt recalls one Friday night when an especially creative kid threw up not on the floor, but into one of those water-shooting arcade machines. "It wasn't discovered until Monday morning," he says. "So glad I wasn't there to have to clean those filters ..."

And then you've got this guy:

Mark Sullivan / WireImage / GettyImages

We've told you before how smelly and claustrophobic life can be inside a full-body mascot costume, and those were the costumes at Disney World -- the best of the best. With Chuck E. Cheese's, you'll get untrained teens donning the mask and, half-blind, running over little kids. As for dealing with that interior stink, management washes the thing somewhere between "rarely" and "never."

"We brush the pizza sauce and cake off the outside," says Adam, "so Chuck E. doesn't look like a hobo, but the inside only gets cleaned when the budget allows." That's once a year, maybe. Otherwise, they have to use Febreze, and most employees don't bother. "I could always tell what the helmet would smell like," says Mark, "based off of who was having to wear it that day."

Martiniturbide / Wiki Commons

One of the most popular horror games of the last few years took place entirely in a thinly-veiled stand-in for a Chuck E. Cheese's, populated by killer animatronics. Well, that's it -- we have officially reached critical wuss levels as a species because, come on, how could anyone ever find the CEC robots scary in any shape or form?

chuck_e._live/Instagram

Oh ...

Belle & Wissell, Co.

"Taking care of the animatronics was one of my bigger duties," Adam explains. "Chuck E. looks like a Terminator when you take all of his fur off. He always looked, I guess psychotic would be the best word, without the face. Like he just couldn't wait to tear from his bolts and start smashing people," and the really scary part is that this sort of thing does actually happen.

"One time, Chuck E.'s wrist actuator sliced through the bolt holding the hand bracket on and it just fell loose. So Chuck E. is dancing away with his wrist swinging around like the world's worst nunchuck ... Another time his back actuator went out, which had him leaning way forward for his whole dance set. One song was heavy on the arm movements so he kept karate chopping and upper cutting the stage barrier, eventually busting it," like Johnny Five from Short Circuit if he was doing a cameo on Westworld.

Leo Lion / YouTube

The only thing that kept Adam from burning his restaurant down with a holy, cleansing fire, was the fact that he got to humiliate the robots every once in awhile. "I had a controller that controlled the robots' movements. I could almost get Chuckie's arms close enough to make a 'Fuck You' gesture, and of course, hip thrusting and imaginary ass slapping." Of course.

chuck_e._live/Instagram

Asked for comment, Miami's mayor said, "I'm not going to go arrest Chuck E. Cheese in front of a bunch of six-year-olds." Which is a shame, because our sources talk of six-year-olds alternately cowering at the sight of Chuck E. and punching his crotch, so they'd love seeing him dragged off in cuffs.

"There's a gambling element to a lot of the games," says Mark. For example, one game has kids dropping in tokens hoping that a balance will topple and dislodge a ton of tokens. Another game works similarly to roulette. Oh, and the machines take tokens or quarters, but the tokens cost 33 cents each. Parents buy tokens anyway, either because they don't know or because this feels more wholesome than having their kids beg them for actual money.

Greg Younger / Wiki Commons

Then there's the California parent who sued the chain for $5 million, saying that their flashy games of chance had gotten her kids addicted to gambling. That would be pretty remarkable if true, considering the two girls were aged five and three.

Chuck E. Cheese's response was masterful: "1) Our machines are legal, and if they aren't, then 2) whoa girl, you just admitted to voluntarily participating in illegal gambling, which means you'll be going to jail!" The woman dropped the suit. The house always wins, lady.

Heather S owes a lot to Chuck E. Cheese's having met her husband working there. She still loves visiting the stores with her family, all things considered. Matt streams on Twitch at twitch.tv/thehoove. Adam lives in the Midwest where he taught his cat to walk on a leash and is totally not a weirdo. Stop staring. Cezary Jan Strusiewicz is a Cracked columnist, interviewer, and editor. Contact him at c.j.strusiewicz@gmail.com. Follow Ryan Menezes on Twitter for stuff cut from this article and other things no one should see.

For more insider perspectives, check out I Am A Clown: 5 Truths You'll Wish I Didn't Tell You and 5 Hidden Dark Sides Of Life As A Street Magician.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel, and check out Internet Party: Why Nobody Gets Anything Done On the Web, and other videos you won't see on the site!

Also, follow us on Facebook, and let's be best friends forever.