I Said Hold the Lettuce!: Fast Food Mishandling
July 20, 2012 5 Comments
Three Burger King workers have been fired in response to outrage at a picture they posted of one of them standing in to-be-served lettuce.
A Hamburger, fries, and a coke from a fast-food restaurant. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The first question this should raise is: if these employees enjoyed publicizing such antics, how often do fast-food workers have this kind of fun without publicizing it? The second is: why is anyone surprised? Do people really think that the minimum wage fast-food workers earn is going to make them care about the quality of the food they serve?
Then again, George Orwell, who had worked in fancy restaurants, was convinced that the more you pay for your restaurant meal the more dirt you have to consume with it. His thinking, backed by experience, was that the more expensive the food was, the less likely restaurants were to discard it when inevitable accidents happened.
Bon appetit!
In the book The American Way of Eating, the author says that out of ag fieldwork, the Walmart produce section, and the Applebee’s kitchen, the only real lesson in food safety she received was a few videos at Walmart. If Applebee’s doesn’t bother with it, why would Burger King? Especially since they never really deal with fresh food.
That’s separate from the antics. Obviously those workers knew that stepping on the lettuce would make it “unsafe.”
Ugh, that is so disgusting. But the ridiculous thing is that no matter how many horror stories I hear about restaurants and their trifling behavior, I still dine out. I just lie to myself that nothing gross happens to my food. Ha.
A friend in school worked for the local Tex-Mex eatery. He confided to our circle of friends that the owner routinely instructed servers to recycle uneaten chips back out to new customers. A local Asian restaurant was sanctioned for keeping cats in the back in the food prep area along with their uncleaned litter pan. I will refrain from any politically inappropriate jokes here. An ex-boyfriend from high school worked at the local Mickey D’s and circulated Polaroids of several of the employees urinating on the burgers. Don’t even ask me to tell you what went on at the pizza place I worked at. Last year I stopped eating at the local chicken chain because when I reported the cockroaches climbing openly on the food bar to the server, she picked up her foot and stomped the closest one dead ON THE BAR, picked it off her shoe and flicked it into the trash, then walked behind the buffet and began working with the food without even wiping her hands. Right in front of us, I swear. Once you find out what goes on in a restaurant you won’t ever want to eat there again.
Funny, my dad says the same thing: expensive restaurants have dirty kitchens. Hard to believe but I’m starting to accept it now. Middle-range restaurants for me now!
Maybe I’ll start a garden out back.