Update: Three employees were fired in the aftermath of lettuce-gate 2012, and the Cuyahoga County Board of Health has cleared the restaurant. The scary part? In its inspection, they found it wasn’t only those two containers of lettuce that were affected. The non-scary part: they caught any of it before it was served.
Three Burger King employees were fired in connection with the incident, Burger King’s corporate office said.
Dave Covell, the Deputy Director of Environmental Health for the county board of health, said the store’s management found more than just the two lettuce bins affected.
Covell said the store threw out all of the affected food on Saturday morning. None of the lettuce was served to anyone, nor have any illnesses been reported, he said.
Yummers.
***
The internet can be a magical place sometimes.
A (briefly) anonymous employee of Burger King snapped a pic of himself, which you can see to the right, standing on two containers of lettuce. And not so much on the containers of lettuce so much as in the containers of lettuce. The lettuce that people were going to eat.
Everyone might have deep fears that this is the sort of stuff that happens in the back kitchens of fast food restaurants, but most know disgusting Waiting-esque hijinks don’t actually occur on a regular basis. At least we hope. That mental imagery ruins a perfectly good Whopper.
Anyway… he posted the pic on 4Chan.
Anonymous, the online collective famous for high-profile hackings, internet sleuthing, and virtual attacks against monster companies like Mastercard, didn’t take too kindly to senor asshole’s post and quickly destroyed his nameless, faceless designs by grabbing the GPS data from the picture, which our mastermind was too dumb to strip before posting. You can also sorta see a barcode in the background on a box, which would have been another clue.
It took all of 15 minutes, according to HyperVocal.com, to find out that the employee worked at the Burger King in Mayfield Heights. Phone calls and emails ensued.
Scene called over to BK this morning and chatted with Andrea, a manager during the breakfast shift. She said she had just heard about the incident recently and has been trying to get in touch with her district manager and general manager. But she assures us justice will be had.
“Whoever this is is getting fired,” she said. “And whoever the manager was at the time will be fired, too.”
At this point, she hadn’t even seen the picture yet. When Scene directed her toward the snapshot, she quickly said: “Oh, I know who that is. He’s getting fired.”
And there you have it, folks. Don’t fuck with people’s food or the internet.
This article appears in Jul 18-24, 2012.
FIRE EVERYBODY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Never eat at BK again…
Makes me feel even better about ridding the fast food joints from my diet a few years back.
I am glad such an action has been taken and justice has been served… Lol, JK, I’m just glad this asshole is getting fired. I saw pictures of the 4Chan thread when it went down, within just 2 comments on the post they had the exact BurgerKing it was at.
done with bk for good
When I was in high school a kid used to brag about peeing on the grill at Mcdonald’s.
How does she know who that is? It’s pretty nondescript. Shouldn’t corporate be on the case? Interesting.
First, how do we know this is food people were going to eat? I’ve worked plenty of places where too many of an item was panned up and had to be throw out. Second, I HIGHLY doubt that the manager of this place actually said those things. Aside from not being able to say those kind of things, what right does she had to say the manager on duty was going to be fired too? Third, there is very little to go off of, you just see someones feet, I don’t think you can fire someone cuz you *think* its their feet
how about all the worthless fucks who, apparently, just watched this asshole and did nothing about it? everybody on that shift should be fired and maybe even prosecuted for letting it happen. oh, and Lindsay is an idiot. 1. even if it was “extra” food, the containers they are in aren’t for standing in/on, food goes in there. 2. You have no idea what the manager or whomever is “allowed” to say and any manager who allows this type of behavior from his/her crew clearly isn’t supervising closely enough, which is their responsibility, and probably will be fired. 3. You wouldn’t recognize this jerk from a picture of his feet but someone who sees this person often enough could easily recognize a pair of shoes or some other distinctive piece of clothing, and that’s what she said, “Oh, I KNOW who that is”, and right away after just seeing his shoes. Fire the whole shift, from the manager all the way down, that will send the message: This type of behavior will not be tolerated AND we will do something about it. Otherwise they may as well close the doors today.
Hey steve, bet you’ve eaten worse? I Can guarantee I personally have done worse to peoples food when I worked in restaurants. Without this photo I bet only dude man and his coworkers would have known.
Lindsay….
Whatever you do, do not apply in the medical field (I don’t want you to accidentally kill someone), Journalism, or as an Investigator.
You seem too much like the sucker type
I worked at a different BK (western suburbs) for 5 years, and have never seen such a sick and revolting display of total disregard for other humans in my life. The creep that stood in the lettuce bins needs to be charged with a crime that will take him/her as far from working with food as is humanly possible. How about putting the individual on a one-way trip to Mars.
Lol, Anonymous the Hacker Activist Faction had nothing to do with this. Most 4chan posters appear as “Anonymous”. Silly Author. 😀
This was NOT found by Anonymous. The people who post to 4chan post under the Anonymous tag.
The idiot in question left the GPS coordinates tagged to his picture when he posted it. One simple look up on google and it was over.
Get your facts straight. If your going to run an informative internet site, at least know something about the internet.
I also gave up all fast food a little bit ago (for bulging stomach issues), and I can’t tell you how glad I am that I did. Still, seeing things like this don’t inspire any more confidence in fast food workers or people that prepare your food where you can’t see it. Even though this isn’t the norm for places like Burger King, pictures like this really, really hurt the fast food industry in general.
Disgusting. Makes me wonder how much dirt and spit I ate during my fast food eating career.
has anyone charged him with violating Ohio Revised Code 2927.24 Contaminating substance for human consumption? this is a felony of the first degree.
Go vegetarian and you don’t have to worry about this =)
I work at McDonald’s, have for a year. I don’t know about BK, but we only have one manager in the store on some nights; and they can’t always be on the floor, the have work in the office too. If someone does something like that in the back and I’m working up front, is it really fair for me to be fired? I’d have no clue that ever happened.
I think a good public shaming would be a nice punishment. On top of being fired, of course, which thankfully this person was.
And there you have it, folks: Always remove the GPS data from your pictures before posting them. And use your own kitchen, the only way to know what you eat and how it was prepared.
Is firing three stupid kids really sufficient action when there has been such an egregious violation?
Why wouldn’t Burger King revoke the franchise license of an operator who caused such damage to the Burger King image? (and put the health of its customers in such danger!!)
What bothers me is how much contaminated product I or any of you folks unwittingly consumed…
In the original picture you can see that the bins are labeled with a “SAT” sticker, indicating they were prepared to be used on Saturday. This is confirmed in that the picture was taken Friday evening. The picture, however, did not get posted until the middle of the following week.
Most restaurants don’t prepare food just to throw it out. If BK had known about the incident and disposed of the food and none of it got served – then that means that they knew about it before the picture was released, and did not terminate the employees until after the picture was released.
I don’t believe this to be the case, I suspect the lettuce (and any other affected food) was in fact served on that Saturday or possibly Sunday. The picture didn’t surface for a few more days, so there’s no reason any employees or management would have taken any extra care or notice to the lettuce or other food. There’s no reason to believe it wouldn’t have been served.
I would rather eat contaminated lettuce on my hamburger than eat non-contaminated lettuce on a “veggie burger” or whatever the heck you call those pieces of crap. Those things are so awful, we should call them Jimmy Dimora patties.
The label of SAT does not mean they were to be used on Saturday this means that they expire on Saturday. For all we know the product was used right after the picture was taken.
Mayfield Heights, Cleveland Heights , Orange, Beachwood, University Heights , pretty much all of the ” Heights ” areas in surrounding Cleveland, Ohio areas are infested with this type brought in from the city because of Section 8 … if you know what I mean. If you don’t .. Google it. Nastiest people I have ever worked with. And let me tell you , it is the 18 to 25 group who does crap like this. Try to fire there asses if they’re in a Union you can’t believe what it takes. Enough to quit my job for good ,and stay home. I never eat fast food except for Chick Fil A ( go to one and you will know what I mean , their employees are of the highest standards and morals and are all college students or empty nesters ) and stay at home