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!)
More From Consumerist
-
How Complaints At A Restaurant In Seattle Led To Arrest Of Alleged Credit Card Hacker In Romania
-
L.A. Bans Plastic Supermarket Shopping Bags
-
Stressed-Out Gate Agent Will Not Tolerate Tiny Purses On United Airlines Flights
-
The DOT Thinks It Might Be Nice For You To Get Some Cash From Airlines For Delayed Bags
-
Student Group Tells Santa Fe To Ban Plastic Bags To Help "Everybody In The Universe"
Cheap chips and cheap phone to boot. Then again I would have just thought it was some kind of prize. Holly S$$T I just won a Cell Phone. No Charger but I just won a Cell phone, Ya.
At least the phone wasn’t deep fried.
Another whiny entitlement minded American. I hate this crap. Someone was working a shift and accident happened. I garauntee the owner of the phone was upset it was missing and this was not intentional. We are human beings. These things happen!
@feckingmorons:The black and Jewish ones are.
And he’s racist. He’s not afraid of Americans, he’s making blanket statements about a group of people and disliking them due to a stereotype. Just because it’s a nationality and not a skin color doesn’t mean it isn’t racism.
@badhatharry: i am very much an american, raised in iowa, educated in constitutional law, international affiars, art history, and science, currently serving in the army. i’m as american as can be aside from not being born in the states proper. i grew up as the litigations rose around the country. silly lawsuits begot other silly lawsuits. and now, every time there’s a perceived wrong, people automatically get dollar signs in their eyes. not everyone, but far too many. and we, as a country, tolerate it. so yes, fucking americans.
If she sues, find her number and call her.
Just say, “Ring, ring!” and hang up.
Actually, all she needs to do is take that bag back to Aldi. They’ll replace it with another bag of chips AND refund her money. It’s the Aldi 200% guarantee!
@J Rob Taylor: Ah, I miss that. If they ever had a real miss with one of the generics, you could always take it back and get twice your money back.
@J Rob Taylor:
They should send her another phone too, just to prove that they know how to ” bring the funny”.
It looks like Emma Schweiger’s super power is turning no harm into foul.
I shop almost exclusively at Aldi, and i’ve never had a problem with them. Their prices are great, their products are always fresh and tasty, and i’ve never found anything unexpected inside anything I’ve bought.
Sounds to me like Aldi did the right thing by pulling the run of chips, and offering an apology and some compensation.
I’m with you guys though, I smell some kind of lawsuit. For the love of god lady, don’t run my favorite grocery store out of business. >_>
Why lose your taste for potato chips because a phone was found in it? I can see not trusting the company so much, but I’d probably accept the coupon for a new bag of chips from a different lot number if I’d never had problems before.
Sometimes I think mountains are made out of molehills. Why add all the extra stuff about “what if this had been a microwaveable product” and the implausible “what if a child had opened this BIG BAG OF CHIPS and put an ENTIRE CELL PHONE in his mouth”? I’m sorry but any adult who hands a small child a big bag of potato chips will probably have problems to deal with long before the kid reaches the telephone in the bag.
@uptonogood: Hm. Well, you got me there. Um, Uncle Tom?
Maybe I’m just missing something…I don’t see where all the hate is coming from. There are lots of things smaller/more discreet than a phone that can contaminate your food….if you found something that obvious in your food, how could you possibly trust their quality control afterward? Her concern is not this particular instance, but its implications.
Wow, I thought you only got prizes in cereal!
Sounds like a new marketing scheme to me..
if it were a Nextel phone, it would have survived and probably been chirping on the shelf…
I too think the lady is looking for money. Sad part is she will probably get it, based on the fact that no one wants to pay to take something like this to court.
If she had just waited a little longer the phone would have rang and gave her info on a top secret mission…instead she had to alert the world and ruin the undercover operation into the potato chip underworld
Its like finding a toy in a cereal box…awesome..BTW she is stupid…I would get a nokia universal charger and fire up that bad boy and sneak through it
Anyone else think that a single free bag of chips is a bit of a lowball offer? Heck, it sounds like they are simply replacing the bag she already bought.
They should offer her a lifetime of free chips (if you had cases of chips around the house, you could pretty much scratch 10 years off your life).
To me , it’s not a big deal. I found a razor in a bag of onion rings and a roach in my refrigeratorin my onions from aldis, so I told my family not to shop there anymore. You get what you pay for. Cheap prices, cheap results.Even though groceries are going up, I never had a problem with tops or wegmans.
@cjones27: And subsequently destroyed it, no?
@supercereal:
Oh, man. You beat me to it. But keep in in mind that those who see the US as the “shining city on the hill” aren’t likely to admit to our faults as well.
You would have thought that something would have caught this before it went out since the cell phone probably would have made the weight of the bag differ than than the stated capacity. The sad fact is food safety in this country has been on the decline and her lawsuit, as frivolous as it may be, is needed to call attention yet again to the lack of safety and inspection protocol for food.
Then again, imagine if she found the cell phone slathered with PEANUT BUTTER inside the bag?
This person is owed a new bag of chips and that’s all. Everyone is a scam artist these days. Not going to eat chips from a bag anymore.
Maybe it was time to stop with the bags of chips for brunch anyway.
I’m surprised it wasn’t detected by a metal detector at the plant. Most food processing plants have all of the food pass through metal detector before leaving the facility so that any bits and pieces of machinery don’t end up in the consumers hands.
We all know Nokias are hard to kill but in the ultimate torture test, it failed.
The Nokia 6810! The Nokia 6810! A great phone with flip out QWERTY keyboard. It’s an oldie but a goodie.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_6800
Anyway, I gotta run. My shift at the Clancy’s plant starts in an hour…
@LenitaKollx: Came here to say that. I’ve got a 6800, 6820, and now an E70. I love the butterfly keyboard design.
Why does the belt clip part make it even more gross?
Wow, all this QQ for a phone in some chips. Kepp the phone, eat the chips and have a funny story to tell to people and get your 15 minutes for a week then forget it.
@WBrink: People like me? What is that supposed to mean? That’s such an asshole thing to say. You don’t know me. You obviously haven’t reviewed my post history.
No, phones are fucking dirtier than toilets. I deal with them everyday. If I don’t wash my hands immediately after handling one I GET SICK shortly thereafter. They’re nasty. It’s the same as if an employee at the plant spat or pissed in the bag.
You’re talking about a germ-ridden device that shouldn’t have been in the distribution or packaging area of a center and all of you are crying no harm no foul over it. I’ve got news for you; this is a serious FDA snafu and your lack of caring is so disconcerting and is the reason we have anyone die from salmonella poisoning ala peanut butter is because of this lax attitude.
Because of you dissenters, I now hope she does get a good lawyer to get a nice out of court settlement. I hope she crosses that line.
Thanks for misreading me.
The fact that she was traumatized by a PHONE should clue you in guys. “Oh no, I’ll never eat another chip again because there was a phone in the bag!” Nobody is THAT paranoid unless they’re OCD, crazy in some other way, or faking it. I could understand if she had been eating the chips and there was a headless rat in there or something, since touching all of the other chips with dead rat is likely, but jesus, doesn’t she walk around, opening doors, going to the mall, eating the food there? There are germs all over that door handle you just touched, not to mention those trays, you know, that they use over and over and probably never wash? What about the gas pump handle?
I admit that I think about germs a lot and it’s good to be aware of them and everything, but you’d have to be living in a bubble to avoid them entirely. The faux disgust by this lady is annoying and, as others have said, typical of someone who’s leaving her options open for a lawsuit or whatever.
@Phydeaux: You seriously get sick handling a phone? You’re a robust one, aren’t you?
Nice straw man on the peanut butter part. In the peanut butter example, regulators were in question. In the chip example, some woman freaked out because there was a phone in her bag. I would’ve laughed, and the bags were recalled anyway.
Oh, sorry, here’s my own exaggeration to contribute- I SWEAR, IF I SEE A HAIR IN MY FOOD I WILL NEVER EAT AGAIN! IT COULD HAPPEN TO YOU!
@WBrink: Phones are fucking nasty, dude, and until you handle 50+ a day from people of all walks of life, don’t try to talk down to me about it.
You’re talking about a device that people seem to be comfortable taking into bathrooms, handing to their children to gnaw on and keeping on their person near 24 hours a day.
I have gotten sick from handling phones if I don’t wash up after handling them, and if you think to insult me as a result of that… you’re such an asshole.
Maybe the maker of these potato chips meant this cell phone as a prize – “free cell phone with every purchase”, just didn’t label the bag.
y cn hr th csh rgstr rngng frm th tn f hr vc. fckng mrcns.
@uptonogood: Wow. You can hear the the smug sense of self-satisfaction from the tone of your voice. Fucking whoever you are.
@badhatharry: Wow. Really?
@invisiblenemies: Yes. Really.
@uptonogood: My thoughts exactly.
@uptonogood:
Yeah… what money? She isn’t going to get much if anything. She didn’t suffer any injury.
@uptonogood: I didn’t hear the sound of cash registers at all, and I’m an American who’s never filed a lawsuit. Fucking whoevers who assume all Americans are greedy.
@invisiblenemies: badhatharry gets grief for responding in kind to uptonogood, but uptonogood doesn’t get one for starting it? Gotta love double standards.
@kidjesus: as an american who grew up in the states and witnessed the past 8 years as people grew greedier and greedier, buying houses they couldn’t afford based on the assumption that the market was going to keep inflating. that’s who.
@uptonogood: Yes, these people are called “morons.”
The same “fucking Americans” you refer to are the same “fucking Americans” that built the most successful economic system in the history of the world. So yeah, I guess they just don’t know anything.
@cjones27: *helped build, heaven knows this woman probably had nothing to do with it.
@uptonogood: get a life and stop blaming Americans for your problems. branding us all the same, good lord. you are extremely ignorant.
@logicbox: how do you not pick-up on the tone of her voice from the few basic quotes she’s credited with? she’s looking for a hook so that she can cash out.
@uptonogood: what are you talking about, how can you HEAR her tone of voice from what you have read? if you are picking up verbal cues from a text quote than you are inflicting yourself onto the statement.
@logicbox: I dunno, I’d have to agree with him. The quotes do make it sound like she could be fishing for a lawsuit. And we really don’t know either way, she may or may not. But I don’t think it’s an unreasonable assumption.
“look the dead rat i found in my crips is ringing! i want compensation….shall i answer it?”
Is this going to turn out like the Wendy’s finger or all those other frauds? Once it’s investigated and actually proven, then I’ll condemn them.
Over my years I’ve seen way too many people make false claims just for either money or 5 minutes of fame. I find that kind of behavior detestable.