A Nokia phone found its way into a bag of Clancy’s Ripple Potato Chips, where it surprised Wisconsin nosher Emma Schweiger. The phone, which didn’t work, was slathered with “greasy potato-chip film” and looked like it once lived on a belt clip. The chip’s distributor, Aldi, pulled all other Clancy’s chips with the same batch and expiration date and, by way of apology, offered Schweiger a free bag of chips. She isn’t biting…
“You kind of don’t want chips for a while” after something like that, she said.
Schweiger contacted the Madison office of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and an official there told her to hang onto the bag for an investigation, she said.
FDA officials could not be reached for comment Friday.
Schweiger isn’t sure what she’ll do next but hopes the FDA can track down the owner of the phone.
She’s glad she found the phone and not a child who might have put it in his or her mouth, she said. She’s also glad the phone wasn’t in a product she would have heated, she said.
Schweiger doesn’t know when she’ll have an appetite for potato chips again, but when she does, she’ll do things a little differently.
“I will never, ever eat chips out of a bag again,” she said. “They will be dumped in the bowl.”
Local woman finds unpleasant surprise in her potato chips [The Janesville Gazette] (Thanks to Rob!)
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Generic chips from Aldi? ewwwwwwwwwwwww
@se7a7n7:
Yea, everyone rips on generic products, but alot really isnt that bad. My dad works for a regional potato chip company where I’m from and right along side of the chips that have his companys brand name are the generic chips with the stores name on them for ALOT less. Same chips, slightly smaller packaging, HUGE discount.
@Megladon: I actually do buy a lot of generic products but I have a mental block against Aldi
@se7a7n7:
Most of their generic stuff is pretty good. The saltines, graham crackers and cereals are good, as are the condiments. The cheese and frozen vegetables are good.
I DON’T like the Clancy’s chips. They’re too salty, even for me.
@se7a7n7: You’d be surprised. I shopped at Aldi for many years when I lived in the Midwest, and most of it tastes the same. Plus you can still get name-brand items sometimes there for much less.
As I said, most of it’s just the same – repackaged, as someone said above, with a different name – but there are some that are real misses.
@se7a7n7: actually Aldi brand food is pretty good I think
@se7a7n7:
IIRC, Aldi and Trader Joe’s are run by the same conglomerate. Most of their products are the same, relabeled. Easiest place to spot that is the seafood, since they use exactly the same box art with a different company name.
Why is she losing her appetite for chips? It’s a phone, not a slug or maggots. I think she’s making this into something it isn’t…it’s not a traumatic experience, it was just weird.
@pecan 3.14159265:
I think it’s the fact that something foreign was in the bag, period. Beside, phones can pick up all kinds of germs from hands/mouths which can then be transmitted to the food.
@ramfan1701: The entire production process can also put germs from hands and mouths and nuts and bolts into a bag of chips. It’s rare, but it’s not surprising when you think about how food is manufactured and packaged. If I opened a bag of chips and reached in to find a cell phone, I’d think it was weird, but it would hardly be an experience that would prompt me to say I’d never eat chips out of the bag again. It’s a phone, not a sharp stick or maggot. I’m not denying that there’s an issue with foreign objects mistakenly being put into food products, but I feel like this woman’s response is just a tad melodramatic.
@ramfan1701: Even phones tend to be pretty sterilized after being fried. When’s the last time you’ve heard of a food poisoning incident at McDonalds (and what are their sterilization procedures)?
@unpolloloco:
It’s obvious from seeing the phone that it didn’t go through the fryer.
It fell out of someone’s pocket or out of a belt holster & onto the belt where “Quality control people” are supposed to remove the badly burned chips.
Somehow it got past them or most likely, the phone belongs to a member of that same vaunted “quality control team.”
And I hope she does get a few grand from whoever Aldi’s chip maker is.
Having to pay out the big bucks & maybe even losing the Aldi contract will cause them & other companies to tighten up their procedures & prevent it from happening in the future.
And there may not be a SIM card in the phone if it’s a CDMA phone.
@Greasy Thumb Guzik: Oh my God, you think someone should get a few thousand dollars because a cell phone accidentally ended up in a bag of chips? Are you worried about germs? If so, you DO know that germs are EVERYWHERE right? Like, you know, the air you breathe, the clothes you wear, etc?
Accidents happen, no one’s perfect.
@deadspork: Yes, but things that are pressed up against someone else’s unprotected ear, possibly with dubious hygiene, are (hopefully) not as prevalent.
I think a few grand is a bit much, but I’d be squicked out by a phone in a bag of chips too. If *that* found its way in, there’s no telling what else might have. IT’S A FRIGGING PHONE. How does QC miss a phone?
@h3llc4t:
AFAIK there would be a scale attached to the bag filling machine that weighs the bag as it’s filled so that everyone gets the advertised weight. I’m surprised that didn’t red flag, b/c that phone looks like it weighs more than an entire bag of chips, + there were chips in it!
And with this germ stuff, I don’t think that cell phone is any more dangerous to you in a bag of chips than, say, if you borrowed a friend’s phone to make a call.
Which is to say not dangerous at all.
PS – When I’d just read the pic and the headline my first thought was “someone was playing a prank on a co-worker at the chip factory”.
@deadspork:
You’re missing a very important point here!
Nothing but potato chips are supposed to be in the bag.
I’ve seen other chip plants on TV, the late & lamented Jay’s plant in Chicago was shown constantly here when it was shut down last year.
The chips are on a conveyor belt & you can see them moving along. There were several women on both sides of the belt whose sole job was to pull off any bad ones.
Somebody at Aldi’s supplier dropped that cellphone after the quality control people passed the rest of the chips.
Who knows what the hell else that idiot has dropped on to the belt in the past.
And where I’m from, $5,000 – $10,000 as a settlement from a big company is referred to as fuck off money!
The purpose of the settlement is to force the plant to be more vigilant in its operations.
Or don’t you get that the criminal charges against the peanut company are a warning to other companies to clean up their acts?
And the money should not come from Aldi, which is probably blameless, unless they own the plant, but from their chip maker!
@Greasy Thumb Guzik:
Just ignore the allowed percentages of insect parts and other contaminants.
Honestly, we expect FAR too much from our food suppliers. When your home kitchen can pass USDA inspection, you can complain about the very, very rare cases like this. Isn’t it enough that millions (or billions) of bags of chips likely passed through the line with no issue?
I’m not adverse to her getting some money for her time, but they really shouldn’t be expected to lay out thousands of dollars for a single bag of chips. And the “penalty” excuse doesn’t fly here, since they pulled the entire unsold batch of chips, costing them substantially more.
@unpolloloco:
McDonalds is consistently the highest-scoring restaurant for food safety in any given area.
Say what you will about the food, but they take sanitation and safety VERY seriously.
@pecan 3.14159265: I would agree with you. Granted I wouldn’t eat that particular bag of chips just to be safe, but I wouldn’t be turned away from them completely. Heck, I’d probably fix up the phone if possible then eBay it.
@C.S.M. Technophile: Description: Salty, with a hint of potato flavor.
@pecan 3.14159265:
Sounds like she is angling for some cash for her traumatic experience.
@pecan 3.14159265: I see your point. But to perhaps from her point of view, if an entire cell phone can make its way through production and distribution of the chips, what else might make (and have already made) its way through? A cell phone isn’t a dead mouse; maybe that’s in another bag.
(Personally, though, I would chalk this up to freak occurrence and continue to eat potato chips. I might avoid this particular brand, though. Maybe…)
@shadowboxer524: Maybe a mouse was using his phone and …. nah, never mind.
@shadowboxer524: A cell phone is something that can slip off your belt clip or fall out of your pocket during the packaging process. That cannot possibly be compared to a rat as that’s an issue of cleanliness.
@pecan 3.14159265: You don’t get a check for just being amused that there is a phone in your bag of chips.
I would have asked them to send it back to the guy that lost it at the chip plant and taken the free bag of chips.
However, I bet in a few days this will turn out to be the finger in Wendy’s chili type of scam.
@pecan 3.14159265: She misread the packaging…”now with silicon chips!”
Sorry, best I could do before having my morning coffee.
If I found a cell phone in a bag of chips, it wouldn’t put me off. It’s a cell phone, not a dead animal (or a LIVING animal).
@Kogenta:
We found a spider in our Herr’s chips when I was a kid. It was dead, but it had time to spin a web before he croaked. That was nasty.
Course, this being the 80s, we didn’t sue. Got a half dozen free bags, or something like that. He were happy with that.
I think the point is, if quality control can’t detect an entire WHOLE cellular phone, then what else could slip in.
Now imagine if when she opened the bag it was ringing…
@Chris Chagnon: “hello neo, this is Chester Cheetah, do you want to see how cheesy the rabbit hole really is?”
@Chongo: lol, hahahah, genius. Tell her to take the blue pill.
@Chris Chagnon:
THEN WHO WAS PHONE?
Anyway, I wonder how the cell phone actually got in there? Probably some worker talking on the phone and it dropped into a tank of chips or something?
@Chris Chagnon:
I wonder if (for some reason or somehow) it was either placed in or fell from an employees belt. It may have come into the back post the Q&A process where foreign objects are caught
First off eww generic chips. If I’m going to eat something unhealthy I’m getting the good stuff. What’s the point in it if it’s not the good stuff?
Second, whats wrong with a free bag of chips? Lawsuits are not the answer.
@Ajh: The Target kettle chips are really good.
@KyleOrton: Their tortilla chips are really good, too! I love the blue corn & flax kind. It seems like their house brand pita chips are always broken into teensy pieces, though.
@Ajh:
We’re in a recession. Generic chips ftw it seems.
@Ajh: Clancy chips are actually pretty good (sans cell phones).
@Ajh: If you knew anything about Aldi, it’s usually the exact same thing as your name brand kind, just with a different label. When you buy name brand, you’re paying for the name.
It’s seriously no different. Same ingredients – sometimes even made at the same factory. No difference whatsoever.
@femme_dork: I always loved the products that say “Kraft does not manufacture store brands/generics” or w/e.
Except Kraft doesn’t say that, because Kraft does manufacture generics, last I checked.
I still buy Kraft though… or some store brands I’ve tried and found to my liking. I’m growing out of lactose intolerance as a child, and quality and mildness helps.
I am a consumer whore.
@femme_dork: Yes, but it’s not the same as the GOOD chips. The homemade kettle chips from the market downtown. They’re absolutely wonderful. I also have no idea what an Aldi is.
@Wombatish: I know someone that works at kraft. They definitely manufacture generics.
No, she isn’t biting, she’s angling. This woman is positioning herself to claim trauma which can only be mitigated by the arrival of a check containing at least two digits to the left of the comma.
She’s correct in not eating the chips and alerting the store and the FDA. But she’s not correct in what I perceive as a game, and her claim that she’s glad she found the phone as opposed to a child sticking it into their mouth is a ridiculous statement. There isn’t a choking hazard to any child not old enough to know better, and children not old enough to know better stick far worse things in their mouths — like their own hands, old socks, pets and whatever they can shove in there.
As far as the quality control statement, that’s a valid point and one that should make consumers realize that food quality isn’t the only thing that suffers when buying house or non-name brands. I’m sure the QC suffers a bit too.
@zentec: And what young child who would put a cell phone into their mouths also knows how to open a big bag of chips? Or would be allowed to?
I just hate that this woman is making this into some sob story, because it’s not. It’s a quirky story about a stray object getting into food. To me, she has money grubber written all over her with her melodramatic statements.
@zentec: i gotta agree, i mean its absurd to think a child would jam a phone in his or her mouth thinking its a potato chip…
@22pine22: It’s been brought up a few times already, but both the chips and the bag itself are definitely MUCH more of a hazard to children than the phone itself.
I can hear the lawyers’ shrieks of joy already.
@zentec: True dat. She sounds like she would sue Lucky Charms for including a decoder ring in their cereal.
@zentec:
Nothing wrong with store-brand or generic-brand food quality. There are a finite number of food processing plants, and a majority of products are a mishmash of components from various wholesale lines.
Keep in mind that the peanut recall involved:
Nestle
General Mills
Hershey
Kellogg
Unilever (Breyers)
to name some of the biggest umbrella-brands. It *also* involved thousands of smaller brands, but the “Breyers Tin Roof Sundae” and the “Kemp’s Tin Roof Sundae” sit right next to each other on the shelf.
Sweet baby Jeebus, if a child had put that thing in his mouth! His mouth would have been…full of cell phone. Or he might have pushed some buttons and called a 900 porn line! I’d definitely sue. Definitely. The potato people think they can get away with anything just because they grow potatoes. Bastards.
@ZoeSchizzel: The battery might have exploded and blown his little head off! The children children children, oh the children! The entire potato chip industry should be in jail for this!
@ZoeSchizzel: my thoughts exactly.
phone is too large to be a choking hazard, and if it’s a young child (not a baby) i don’t know why they would have put the phone in their mouth. if anything, they would have consumed the chips anyway, and i’m confident that it wouldn’t have killed him (or even made him sick)
and am i the only one that thought “cool, free phone!”?
@ZoeSchizzel: My god! The potato people and cell phone people are working against us to get our kids hooked on phones and chips!
then when they unveil the Potato Phone we’re all fucked!
Any kid dumb enough to try and eat a phone should be culled from the herd.
“Duuur this phone was in a bag of food. It must be made of food too!”
@ZoeSchizzel: What if that phone came preloaded with porn! Oh the humanity!
This broad is clearly looking for a payday.
“Schweiger isn’t sure what she’ll do next…” Sure she is. She’s looking for some scumbag attorney to sue for millions and settle for five figures.
@GayNerd: What a maroon. She could have gotten at least double what the giant cheeto guy got on ebay for a gigantic potato chip resembling a cellphone.
If this happened to me, I would have laughed at it. Or wished it was at least an iPhone instead of a crappy old Nokia. An iPhone would have been a definite bonus!
Pull the sim card from the phone, check both the number and the contacts list attached to the phone and figure out who it belonged to. Not real difficult to investigate this one.
I’m sorry, but this line:
“….and not a child who might have put it in his or her mouth”
Does she really think a child who is eating potato chips would really confuse a phone with a chip?
I can understand the complaint about non-chip items being in the chips, and hope the situation is solved – but trying to make it sound worse like some stupid child would accidentally eat the phone thinking it was a chip…. Give me a break. Just stick to the fact, try not to pull the “emotional” card.
@coan_net: I thought the same thing, you beat me to it.
@coan_net: I think maybe she meant that the child would play with the phone and put it in their mouth.
But that leads me to a point I made somewhere else. Why the heck would a parent let a child who would stick random things into their mouths to chew on eat potato chips or open a bag of them by themselves?
@coan_net: I read it like she was worried that she would find a child in her bag of potato chips. Now THAT’s news!
This is what happens when you shop at elcheapo places like Aldi. All they have is expired and generic foods. When you only want to pay generic prices you give up other things like quality control and taste. Im actually surprised this type of thing doesnt happen more often. The blame here should be on the chip company and not Aldi but Aldi probably has more money so that is who she will sue
@Gorphlog: I buy plenty of store brands, I’ve never gotten weird things in my food. This isn’t a reason to NOT buy generic food. Plenty of name brand food end up with weird things too.
@Gorphlog:
A lot of name brand manufacturers make the generic stuff too. It’s just packaged differently.
@Gorphlog: Aldi actually will give you double your money back if you don’t like what they’ve put out. I shopped at Aldi before I left the Midwest, and it was a great way to save on money. Nothing seriously tasted different to me. There were some real misses in there, but you’ll get that with brand names as well.
As HogwartsAlum said, though, the generic is the exact same as the brand name. It’s packaged differently. It’s often made at the exact same plant. Seriously no difference.
@femme_dork:
“Aldi actually will give you double your money back if you don’t like what they’ve put out.”
Seriously? Wow, I didn’t know that. Aldi’s FTW!!!
@femme_dork:
Totally don’t like their canned pasts, too much sugar in them. Just like every other store-brand canned pasta!
I shop fairly often at Aldi here, and I rarely have any problems with any of the food I’ve bought there. And given the prices, I’ve never returned anything since it would cost me more in time to return something I didn’t care for than the product cost to begin with.
Also, they’re the only store in the state that carries Beer Chips.
@Gorphlog: Um, actually, I’ve gotten better quality items at Aldi than at groceries. The Aldi distribtuion center for my area is in my town. They have the best avocadoes in my area. I go there to get frozen fish, produce, some baking goods, salad, wine, beer.
Also, their items are the same as name-brands, just without the name brand on it. They are manufactured at the same place and all their items are fresh. It’s not a close-out store where you have to worry about that.
Aldi food is no different from any other food. I’ve been eating it for years and it’s always been just as good as the stuff you naysaying snobs overpay for at other stores.
@temporaryscars:
The last time I shopped at Aldi was when my bag of store-brand shredded cheddar came complete with shredded band-aid. Some things are worth paying more for.
@WorldHarmony:
Wow, how did you cut that thing open? It must’ve been harder than a rock
I don’t know if this is related.. but ever get one of those really over cooked or burnt chips? did you try to eat it too? omg that was gross, right? from now on i’m only eating cell phones.. the light ones, i’m not an idiot.
@Skeetz:
I love the toasty brown ones.
@Skeetz: Make sure you get the phones with no trans fats.
@Skeetz: One time in the mid ’80s I bought a bag of Lenders Bagels. I put a bagel in the oven to toast and soon the entire apartment smelled like dirty socks. I looked at the bag and discovered it had a coupon printed on it that expired in 1976!
She has a legitimate complaint but there are soldiers who come back from war with less PTSD than she does after this
She is correct not to eat the bag of chips, a phone can pick up all kinds of nasty germs. There was a case here where a student picked up MSRA from using another student’s cell phone. Apparently cell phones are now to be personal objects that are not to be shared, your supposed to treat it as makeup.
I would just be freaked out by this, but it wouldn’t make me claim a lawsuit or anything. I would alert the store, and they could decide what they wanted to do about it.
I do agree that there is some quality control issues going on there, that phone would make the bag of chips very heavy, much heavier than other bags of chips, so they should have known to pull that bag with the phone in it.
The phone probably doesn’t have a charge which is why it won’t work. Would probably be fine if it had a charge. I don’t think grease on the outside of a phone would be enough to kill it. Maybe if it fell in a pot of grease. I own a similar model of phone and you can open it very easily, all you do is push on the back, so she could do that to see if there was any grease inside of the phone, which would indicate if it was dead or not.
@Outrun1986:
If cell phones are to be treated as personal objects not to be shared (lest one contract MRSA from the things), what about regular landline phones? Each member of the family has to have their own now?
@Outrun1986: Perhaps this is due to the fact that I’m male, and generally stay far away from anything makeupish, but I had never realized that you weren’t supposed to share makeup.
@asplodzor: Not sharing makeup is a general rule of makeup. No matter what makeup is usually always shared though, and honestly I have never seen anything happen from it. What girl didn’t share makeup in high school, although the warnings weren’t as intensive about it as they are today. Now you can’t even share a phone or nail polish, which was shared all the time when I was in high school.
The MSRA scares were huge here, as it was spreading through a couple high schools, so I guess your supposed to keep a bottle of rubbing alcohol near the phone and disinfect it after you use it so the next person who uses it won’t get germs!
I do agree the warning is a little out of whack, but with a regular phone in the house you usually only put your ear to it. With a cell phone most people, especially teenagers, slap it on their face and also hold it with their shoulder so its essentially plastered to their face and mouth, so that the whole phone touches their face. This is probably where they were coming from with the warning.
@asplodzor:
Depends on the kind. Something that you pour out of a bottle like foundation is fine, but I’ve seen people sharing mascara or even sampling it at counters, which just seems plain nasty to me. My eyes are one of the last places on my body I want to pick up a weird infection.
@asplodzor:
Not sharing makeup is a basic rule of hygeine. More than that, though, the rule is “Don’t share personal hygiene products.”
The list also includes: deodorant, anti(biotic/septic) creams, hemmorhoid cream, ‘personal lubricants,’ and multi-use feminine products.
You can very easily pick up an infection or disease from sharing any of these things. They don’t even have to be “kill you” infections to cause you problems – if you let someone with a (non-MRSA) staph infection use your deodorant, you might wind up with an abcess.
Notably, antibiotic and antiseptic creams state on the label that they are not to be used by more than one person or, alternately, not to be applied directly to the wound.
@Outrun1986: Deep fried cell phones don’t have many germs.
Hey they’re stealing Cracker Jack’s gimmick of including a prize.
@Coopon: ah, i should have read further down into the comments before my “free phone!” comment
@Coopon: Those are prizes? I thought the cracker jack people were trying to kill me by adding cheap trinkets to every box. All these years I’ve been choking on them when I should have been opening them to find out what it was!
Sue sue sue sue! OMG! Pain and suffering! Psychological trauma! Whiplash..infertility..anxiety, loss of work, divorce!
Everyone aboard the lawsuit train!
@☠GrÑrÑrÑrÑrÑrÑrÑ…still doesn’t feel stimulated enough. E…: The first person she needs to sue is her hairdresser.
@Canino: Thanks for making me fall off my chair laughing.
@Canino:
OHHH SNAP
Now she needs to see a therapist….
Doc, I just keep thinking now matter what I’m eating, it’s a phone…
Sue? She has no case.
am I the only one thinking
‘What a free gift! they’ve really improved over the years….’
How many kids starved to death yesterday? There might be something worse than putting cell phone in your mouth.
@chuck0008: None in America.
@fatcop: I sincerely hope you don’t believe that there aren’t neglected children without enough to eat in America. And yes, some of them starve to death.
She made the whole story up. Our government regulates food processing plants. Hence, there are no germs or foreign objects ever allowed near a production facility. You’ll have to excuse me. All of this talk about food has made me hungry. I have to go make a pb&j sandwich;) It is all that I can afford now that we have the Republican depression.
eww… A nokia phone? I would have called to complain too.
I don’t think she’s overreacting. A used cellphone is very unsanitary.
I’m sure it’s not only the cellphone that diminishes her appetite. I think it’s the newfound knowledge that potato chips may not be processed with much concern for food safety. Imagine if the phone had been dropped in the chips, then retrieved by the owner. You’d never know what your eating.
And why the assumption that she’s just looking for money? What would you do in this situation? I’d bet most of us would head straight to this site and tell everyone about it.
@BathroomDuck: Because she refused to accept a new bag of chips, which is the extent of her loss.
Her comments indicate she’s looking for a payout, as some one said earlier, due to “emotional distress.” For example ,why say, “She’s also glad the phone wasn’t in a product she would have heated,”? What does that have to do with the chip company?
@MichaelLC: If she has no appetite for chips, why would she want more? Personally, I’d accept a refund, but I’d never eat their chips again.
She never claimed to have “emotional distress”. She simply said that’s she’s glad it wasn’t a product that requires heating. I’d be glad too. Cellphone batteries and ovens don’t mix. It doesn’t mean I’d be seeing dollar signs though.
@MichaelLC: Well, I can understand the whole heating thing. A cellphone has metal, metal does bad things in the microwave. Capacitors can (possibly?) explode in the oven etc.
I mean, I’m sure we’d be seeing a totally different story if a cell phone in her pot pie exploded and burnt down her house.
But I will agree that some of her comments appear to be overly dramatic considering what actually happenned.
@Kogenta: You’re right – that would be bad news in a microwave. I was trying to ask why she would bring that up when she had a cellphone in a bag of chips. She didn’t buy a potpie, just chips.
Yes, disgusting and factory should be checked out, but I read it as she was trying to get a guilt trip going unrelated to the chips for a higher “pay out.”
People can be so damn wierd. Yea it sucks that a phone was in the bag of chips but being turned off from eating them, and never eating them out of a bag again? Give me a break lady.
Shes acting like she found a finger or something.
I’d hate to see the mutant child that could choke on a cell phone!
Aren’t these things bagged by weight? Was there some strange gravitational energy in the bag to offset the weight of the phone? How many chips were in the bag? My brain hurts.
@tripnman:
I think they might be bagged by volume (a predetermined “blast” of chips into the bag) and then inspected by weight. So it’s possible that the bag was shorted on volume and still met the weight.
Or not.
@tripnman: My thoughts exactly. Anyone who’s ever seen Unwrapped on Food Network has seen how bags of stuff are sorted by weight. Too little or too much and they’re knocked off the conveyor belt at high speed. Hell, I’m surprised there are any humans near the process at all…
Something just doesn’t add up.
I wish people would lighten up on this lady. She did find something disgusting in her food. Check out this article:
[abcnews.go.com]
Beat that, Cracker Jack!
@uptonogood:
You’re blaming the OP.
I thought we got rid of all you guys.
No, really, when food products are screwed up, consequences need to happen. Period. Otherwise you’re going to open something up to eat one day and find feces in it and not have any sort of recourse because you let the bar fall so far.
There’s a line there, and this lady hasn’t crossed it.
@Phydeaux: I hope that post is a joke that I’m not getting?
I think your logic really only works if people are PURPOSELY putting stuff into these bags of chips. It’s not like because this happened, other chip companies are going to start saying “Man, they got away with that cell phone, let’s try to get away with putting this dead squid into our box of bran flakes”. You have to take the intent, as well as the object, into consideration here.
The chip company should apologize, and maybe give some coupon for free chips or something, but I agree with the previous posters, the lady who had the phone in the bag does seem to be acting a little overdramatic.
@Phydeaux: It’s ok to blame the OP when they’re gold digging. I can’t believe someone would think that the people in these stories are infallible. You’re ridiculous.
OH MY GOD A PHONE GOT IN MY BAG OF CHIPS THIS MUST MEAN THAT ALL CHIPS ARE BAD.
This (and people like you) is exactly why I didn’t apply for the Consumerist editing contract.
@WBrink: uh dude, all she wants is to return the phone. rta
@DaoKaioshin: The context and her reaction are ridiculous. It smells of someone overreacting and hoping the company compensates her. She’ll never eat chips in a bag again? I guess if she gets into a car accident, she’ll never drive again.
@Phydeaux: consequences? like having the FDA or whoever’s in charge of chips inspect the plant and double checking safeguards are in place? believe it or not, genuine accidents happen and nothing is 100 percent fool proof. the old adage “shit happens” applies nicely here. or maybe consequences like this woman walks away with enough money to buy a house or three because she was traumatized by a goddman phone. people need to man up and accept that not everything’s going to go their way. she found a phone. she called the FDA. the agency is thus obligated to investigate. and from there, there’s nothing else she needs to do. there’s nothing else she should do. she is no longer in the process. and if she wants money, fuck her. she’s just another worthless money grubbing piece of shit then. THERE WAS NO HARM DONE. the chip manufacturer is recalled the batch.
@uptonogood: Aren’t you a bundle of fucking sunshine. So because you apparently met all 300 million Americans in your eight years living in the States some how applies you to be a sociological expert to some how think all Americans are greedy (lovely sweeping generalization there, but I don’t think you really need me to point out what a gigantic logical fallacy that is), and then some woman follows CORRECT PROCEDURE to contact the FDA on the situation is some how a “money-grubbing piece of shit”? Did you fall off the stupid tree and hit every branch on the way down or something?
I suppose this would be completely different if she found a SHARD OF GLASS in the bag instead, right? Considering the likelihood that negligence in the produce line has happened, recalling the product on the date printed on the bag WOULD MAKE SENSE. Or does making sense not work for you? Apparently the safety of the consumer is definitely something a woman who finds a cell phone in a potato chip bag shouldn’t be looking out for. So why don’t you take your xenophobic self and spout your nonsensical crap some place else.
@MercyEleusis: i’ve lived in the states since 1988 actually and was pretty benign toward how society behaved till right around the time i exited high school and hit the real world circa 2001. it’s since then i’ve declared open war on baby boomers for running this country into the ground along with inadequately raising an entire generation of pampered babies. her story should have ended the moment the FDA got involved; the chips company did a recall. the two in conjunction will review their quality controls. that should be the end of it. no one should be entitled to damages lest actual damage was done. she is fishing because she is a greedy self-absorbed entitled cunt.
@uptonogood: Since she has neither filed a lawsuit nor intimated a plan to do so, I think your response is more about you than her.
@floraposte: You’ll eat those words once her tv movie deal goes through!
@uptonogood:
Now I see why you’re frequently disemvoweled.
I find it interesting that she felt the need to alert the Food and Drug Administration because of a cell phone.
She didn’t find a dead animal, insects or a finger, she found an inanimate object. No, the cell phone should not have been in the bag, but if she would have just alerted the manufacturer, they would have gotten to the root cause of the situation. The food manufacturer has procedures in place to deal with situations like this. If she would just give them a chance, they will solve the case and take the appropriate corrective action.
There is no doubt in my mind she is just looking to make a big deal out of nothing and probably looking for some easy cash. She wasn’t harmed in any way. She should just accept some replacement potato chips and move on with her life. If she feels too traumatized *sigh* to eat potato chips again, she should just move on to another snack food.
Sorry lady, life is not perfect. Get over it.
I found a band-aid in a school lunch cookie when I was in second grade. I don’t seem to recall developing any aversion to cookies after that however. This was also long before the internets and Consumerist were around, so I don’t think I told anybody either. Thinking back it was pretty gross.
On the other hand, after reading this thread I do have the sudden urge to stick an old cell phone in the microwave and see what happens. I’ll bet someone has already posted this to YouTube.
@JayDeEm:
I wonder if the phone was cooked with the chips? It would be easy to tell because the board was fried. ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha oh god I crack myself up.
Pfft… back when glass soda bottle were recycled (when I was a kid) I found a rolled up chip bag in a bottle of root beer. Later I found live worms on cookies, some of which I’d already eaten. couple of years ago a found a glob of something baked onto a cookie in a bag after I’d eaten the others.
Never barfed. Never got angry. Never sued. Sometimes things happen.
Now – kids mistaking cellphones for chips and eating them? Well I once tried to place a call on a potato chip. Not only did it not work, but it looked a little stupid.
I’d ask for a life time supply of chips.
I find nothing morally wrong with suing a corporation for a mistake like a phone in a bag of chips.
It’s a system we have in this country by which some random consumer every now and then hits the jackpot. I have actually fantasized about finding a mouse head in a can of soup. I am not kidding or being facetious like some of these other commentators.
I see nothing wrong w/ this “lottery” system. Everyone else is just jealous that THEY did not find a phone in THEIR bag of chips.
cell phones that guys leave on their belts are the nastiest, dirtiest things ever. Except the ones that parents let their babies chew on.
I’m assuming this isn’t what they mean by cellphone on a chip technology, right?
So basically this company doesn’t have basic quality control standards that WEIGHS the product before shipping it out? Hrm.
Yes, I too am glad a child did not swallow a cell phone in its entirety, mistaking the thing for a potato chip…
What more does she want? $1,000,000,000 because she is entitled?
Oh, BTW, we “know” the phone previously belonged to a line employee at the chip company.
I wonder if junior stupid has been fired for having his/her personal objects falling into the product line?
“It’ll put me off eating bagged chips for awhile.” How likely is it to get a cell phone in a bag of chips? You probably have a better chance at getting in a car accident then finding a cell phone in a bag of chips.
@kylo4iskyle4: It’s like the guy who buys the house that had a plane crash into it, then says “What are the chances it’ll happen again?”
@ohenry: “Intent” doesn’t matter – if this company allowed a Nokia phone to end up in one of its bags of chips, it’s very obvious they didn’t “intend” for that to happen – but it also means they have failed in whatever safety / sanitary systems they have in place to make sure this doesn’t happen. It’s the company’s responsibility to make sure what they are putting on the shelf is safe.
I have that phone. It’s a damn good phone. Sadly for the employee that lost it, that phone will easily be tracked to them. They will be losing their job shortly.
@Phydeaux: “Blaming the OP” can be warranted if the person acted in an stupid or unreasonable way (see the recent bank employee EECB thread, for example). Not saying that’s the case here, but not every person in a Consumerist post is a perfect little saint, as much as you probably think otherwise.
That said, no, this woman suffered no harm and deserves no monetary compensation should she file a lawsuit. Hell, even bringing this non-story to the media is overkill in my book. Bring it to the FDA or the distributor (which she did), have them do their silly investigations (this hardly seems malicious), and let that be the end of the story.
For those of you who think the woman is scheming to cash in, please be reminded that all of this would be avoided if SHE HADN’T FOUND A CELL PHONE IN HER POTATO CHIPS!
@BlazerUnit: SERIOUSLY!
@BlazerUnit: Scheming in cash? This is no different than the free toy in a cereal box. She already got a free cellphone, what more does she want?
What’s with the Adli “generic” hate? I shop there almost exclusively and find their off brands to be just as good as the name brand stuff for much less $$.
@kenposan: Exactly! I was going to post that but didn’t want to say anything quite yet. I shopped there for years when I lived back home.
I think people automatically equate lower prices and having to (heaven forbid) bag your own stuff with lower quality. Is no one aware of the double guarantee? Or that name brands often package the generic stuff? When you pay for a brand-name item, you’re paying more for the name, not higher quality.
I miss Aldi. I wish I had one out here in California.
@femme_dork: I’d rather bag my own stuff than have someone else do it. They always seem to bag cleaning products with food and over fill one bag while another only has one item in it.
I somehow think she’s not concerned about the phone being a choking hazard for a kid, rather than the kid just putting something gross in there.
Then again, I saw a kid licking the hand bars on a bus the other day… so there’s worse than a greasy cell phone.
@invisiblenemies: Absofinglutely really. If this guy came in and complained about the fucking blacks or the fucking Jews, he would received quite the beat-down. However, buy substituting Americans, his racism is somehow more acceptable. Tell me how that is all right, and why you agree with him.
@badhatharry: Are they black or Jewish Americans?
He is not racist he is apparently xenophobic, or perhaps just a putz.
@badhatharry: Americans are a ridiculously over litigated society. Someone steps on your little toe, you’re on easy street for the rest of your life. Like the guy in Office Space. It’s not racist to comment on a nation’s tendencies. If so, many of the best satirists in history, like Mark Twain, would be “racist.”