My family decided to eat out at a Chinese chain restaurant known as Big Bowl, which I am sure a few of you know.
This was a few years before our local restaurant remodeled. During that time, the food was okay and the lighting was pretty dark.
Upon arrival, we decided to sit in a large booth, which had deep crevices between the seat cushions. We sat chatting for a while.
Suddenly, my mom shrieked and pulled her hand away from one of the cushion's crevices. We looked at her hand, but we couldn't see anything. Like I said before, the lighting was pretty terrible.
My dad is a doctor, so of course he had a small flashlight handy, normally used for looking down people's throats. He shined the light where my mom's hand had been, and he saw something move into one of the seat's crevices. Upon closer inspection, we were shocked to find that the little nook was filled with INSECTS. Lots and lots of them.
Needless to say, we asked for some sort of compensation, and we were fortunately able to get some (can't remember what it was). We got the hell out of there, and made sure not to venture back to Big Bowl until later, when they remodeled (and hopefully cleaned out all the bugs).
It's quite ludicrous that this would go unchecked by the staff for so long. (From the number of bugs, it was clear they'd been there quite a while.) We have a hesistant trust with Big Bowl now, and we're sure never to sit in a booth there again.
A funny side note: my mom told many people about the "Bug Bowl" incident, which they found quite humorous. For one of her birthdays, she got a laugh when someone gave her a Big Bowl cookbook and taped a paper cutout of a cockroach inside.