heh... anyone see the movie Waiting?

Yeah guess what, even though a comedy, I can 100% confirm to you EVERYTHING you saw was true.

Think about that when you go to eat at a restaurant, especially a chain one!

(btw watching that movie with your significant other who worked at a chain restaurant for 8 years through high school and college is a stomach churning experience.)

@Jim Topoleski: You must have worked in some shitty restaurants with some shitty employees. Nothing like that went on in any kitchen I've worked in from diner to upscale. Maybe it was because we all valued what we did and put our work before getting an imagined revenge on some useless moron-of-the-day.

(Maybe it was because we all valued what we did)

Obviously you have never worked in a restaurant.

Good. I hope they get jail time.

@Possinator: Or you've never worked in the kind of restaurants Jules has. "Happened where you were" is not the same as "must have therefore happened everywhere."

@R3PUBLIC0N: Seconded! They were just asking for it by putting it all up on YouTube. Let's hope the jail doesn't make them work in the kitchen!

I believe Richard Jeni (funny man .. miss him) covered this issue in his act. Waffle farting was totally legal.

Crap, thanks a ton Consumerist. Now I don't think I can eat out anywhere here in Ohio again. Just the thought someone could spit in my burger and not get jail time makes me want to hurl. >< Bleh!!!!

@Jim Topoleski: I would also have to agree that waiting was totally true, even down to the employees that worked there. Somehow, they just fit into place like that. I worked at a semi-nice $20 a head restaurant, and while things like that movie didn't happen daily, it would be a flat out lie to say they never did...

Spit in food in Ohio. Not a crime.
Spit in a cop's food in Ohio. Definitely a crime.

Now I have that SNL parody of Iron Chef stuck in my head...

"The secret ingredient is...SHARK HEADS!"

"The Iron Chef is using his secrect weapon...EEL FARTS!"

"The eel farts made the dish too salty!"

"Next week's ingredient...FISH TUMORS!"

What they did was sick, but they're going to get community service. We are all raised to believe that the courts operate like they do on TV, but in reality, judges and prosecutors mostly deal with far more serious crimes and even those don't always merit jail time.

They might want to make an example of these dummies because of the national publicity... in which case they'll still get community service. However, they may receive a "suspended sentence" and probation. That is pretty serious stuff and will impact their lives forever. But for those of you hoping to see these fools eat prison food... it's not going to happen.

And if the dummies fight the charges... gosh, I don't know. They could even be dropped all together. Making a video of disgusting food and prepartion in NC may not be illegal if you can't prove they distributed it.

9/10th of the time people don't have time to mess with your food. However, keep in mind that if you are determined to be a demanding, loud, obnoxious, poor tipper with a crap attitude and a never ending list of complaints... they will make the time. Your best defense against tampered food is being nice to your server and to *hope* your server doesn't piss off the cook (which if the server is in a good mood is less likely to happen.)

Remember kids, never fuck with people who touch your food.

Consumerist: "[In North Carolina,] you can be charged with a Class I felony for knowingly distributing food that could cause "mild physical discomfort without any lasting effect."

Hmmm -- so there's no Taco Bell in NC?

@Jim Topoleski:
I've been working in a restaurant for almost a year now and the worst I've seen anyone do is bitch about bad customers. You must have worked in some dingy greasy spoon to have people like that. If anyone at the restaurant I work at did anything remotely like that, they'd be fired on the spot.

@Jim Topoleski: Seconded. Unless you're working at a five-star restaurant where people are actually trained in food preparation, then you're going to get that kind of behavior. I've seen it in every restaurant I worked in as a kid. There was no truer line than "You don't screw with the people who make your food."

@floraposte: I'm finding it more and more common that most people are less classy than the people I worked with at Wendy's when I was 17.

We never got the answer to if you can legally fart on a sanwith or not. Did I mis-read the title?

For the contextually challenged this is sarcasam.

It totally freaks me out that there seems to be an even 50%-50% split of "food contamination happened when I worked in a kitchen" and "food contamination DIDN'T happen"... which freaks me the fuck out. Personally, at the places I've worked, it has never happened, but that means there's about a 50% chance with any given food out that I will be eating someone's booger/snot/ejaculate.

Great.

@twophrasebark: She was on parole from another felony, though--might this not result in revocation of her parole?

@supercereal: that seems pretty extreme. I, like anyone, know enough people in that industry, and around here it simply doesn't happen.

@JamieSueAustin: There are employees that consider being a cop, being a non-native-speaker of English, or being a customer who wants what was actually ordered to be "fucking with." Sleazoids with anger-management issues don't really have much of a code of honor.

It's too bad that this kind of stuff hurts restaurant-going so that decent staff gets hit by the cutbacks as well. I bet there are quite a few Domino's employees trying to make ends meet who would happily hande this pair's punishment themselves.

@cmdrsass: No, it's a misdemeanor in either case. Still illegal, just not carrying jail time.

It's always a general rule of thumb for me when eating out to see all waitstaff as a potential threat to my food safety, though that doesn't mean I'm a suck up to waitstaff, it's the exact opposite, because I pay good money to eat there, and god dammit if my order is wrong you sure as hell better not tamper with my food! In fact, if my order is wrong, I will just leave the restaurant as I know that some low life has most likely tampered with my food.

You should treat the waitstaff with respect but if they mess up your order, even if you don't bitch about it and be nice about it, there is a 50% chance of it being tampered with! You the consumer pay good money to eat at the dining establishment and deserve that NOTHING will be tampered with.

Whether or not a certain jurisdiction has criminal food tampering laws, in most cases it wouldn't be difficult for a victim to bring a civil action for battery (and whatever "emotional" damages go along with it). This possibility is more likely to deter corporations and ensure strict guidelines for employees -- though the employees themselves, of course, might not give a crap.

could cause "mild physical discomfort without any lasting effect."

Could you prove in court that a sandwich that had been farted on could make a person sick (without them knowing about the tampering)?

Aren't there better food tampering laws out there? :(

@twophrasebark: Eat prison food? Hell, I want to see them prepare prison food.

@Jim Topoleski:

I've worked in a lot of different foodservice settings myself, and I know personally I have never condoned food tampering. The worst thing I've ever done to someone was extra salt or pepper on their food (heh), but NOTHING inedible. You take too many chances doing someting like that. Oh, and there was the lady who insisted on getting fresh coffee the 3 or 4 times a day she'd come in, she occasionally got the oldest pot of coffee we had on hand (and the sad part is, Madam Picky never noticed the difference). I am really afraid if there's places like that out there. That's one of the reasons when I go out to eat that I am as nice and sweet as possible to them. I've been in their shoes.

@The_IT_Crone: Probably not without cracking up the jury. "And you, Dr. Methane, are a professional fart expert?"

So... if you don't act like a d-bag, smile at your server, say please and thank you, and don't treat them like a paeon because you think you're better than they are, you're more likely to get food that's free of bodily fluids?

@Dan Grossmann: And that's exactly why, when YOU walk into the restaurant, the staff will say, "Hey, there's Dan Grossman! He pays good money to eat here and, god dammit, if his order is wrong, we sure as hell better not tamper with his food!"

What am I doing for dinner tonight, Dan Grossman? Um... washing my hair.

@Hoss:

Ha ha! Good one.

I thought of Ex-Lax in the chocolate shake, but I don't think that would be considered "mild" discomfort.

Just be very careful and specific, when asking for the "special sauce."

While I often find some punishments extreme and outrageous, I think that food tampering should be dealt with harshly. If I paid for the damn food, I want it clean, not contaminated with other people's fluids. Even if the guest in your restaurant is a real pain in the ass SOB, it's petty and idiotic to 'punish' them by spitting in their food. I wouldn't do that to even my worst enemy.

Anyways, in such cases, ignorance is truly bliss.

@Alice Arrington Radley: R.I.P. Richard :(

@unobservant: The server probably still dropped it. But since s/he didn't mean to you should feel better

@Munchie: Haha Sanwith

That dominos chick is a pedo

[www.thesmokinggun.com]

@Possinator: I worked at a family owned restaurant and you would be fired on the spot for that kind of behavior. The worst thing that ever happened was you might be talked badly about in the back but we never even tampered with the food. We took pride in our work even though it was minimum wage because it was our job.

@Jim Topoleski: I think it has a lot to do with management. I personally chased down a customer in the parking lot who left an Ipod because it was the type of conduct expected from me and the other employees. I was paid minimum wage and you eat there for less than seven dollars so wages are not the issue.

@floraposte: As far as I'm concerned, it's a good thing that stuff like this hurts restaurant-going. You don't have to look far to see just how glib some servers are about food tampering, and as you pointed out yourself, the definition of "fuck with" can be extraordinarily stretched.

As long as servers continue to romanticize their ability to get away with trying to poison you, it's going to continue to happen. Change can only come from within the industry, and it's going to take incidents like this becoming public (and hurting the bottom line) for it to happen.

Could cause mild discomfort? So is Taco Bell and White Castle Illegal in NC then?

@TEW: get off it. That whole "took pride in our work" line is a load of crap and you know it.

@Nettwerk: Sex offender doesn't mean pedophile.

You made me spit coffee all over my keyboard!@FuryOfFirestorm:

@Possinator: No, it's really not, and there's a lot of interesting research on it. As you might expect, management plays a key role there, more, in some findings, than pay level. One interesting book is Randy Hodson's Dignity at Work; a non-research but fascinating look is the classic, Working, by Studs Terkel.

And it's always a logical error to assume because you haven't experienced something it doesn't exist.

@Charles Mousseau: I don't disagree with what you're saying. I'm just looking at the dimension that the fuckwits who do this stuff are actually contributing to the job loss of their friends and colleagues and themselves as well as breaking the law and being fuckwits.

I know it can feel empowering to talk about possible revenges, but customers who think staff might taint food are more likely to just stay home than be extra nice. I think the intended lesson misfires.

@pecan 3.14159265: It did apparently involve a fourteen-year-old girl, so she's not supposed to be alone with kids.