Van Miguel Hartless is suing the owner of a Rutland Burger King after biting into a Southwestern Whopper that contained a used condom. When Hartless complained to the manager, he “laughed off the incident.”

Hartless said during an interview Thursday that the second and last time he visited the Burger King in Rutland was on June 18 when the lure of a home-style hamburger brought him to the restaurant.

“At that time they were promoting the Southwestern Whopper. Being from Texas I was excited. There’s not a lot of spicy food here,” he said.

Hartless, who moved to Fair Haven two years ago, said he didn’t recognize anyone working at the restaurant and as far as he knows, no one in the restaurant knew him.

But while he was ordering his meal, he said the woman taking his order gave him a hard time about doing the order his way.

“I asked for a Whopper with jalapenos and hold the onions,” he said. “The girl told me they didn’t have jalapenos but the last time I was in there they gave me jalapenos. When I said that, she told me that they never carried jalapenos. I told her that was fine, but she pulled out a list and said, ‘Like you see, we don’t carry them.’

“When she read back my order a few minutes later it was wrong,” he added.

Frustrated, Hartless said he sat in a booth to wait for his meal. From the angle of the booth, he said he couldn’t see the kitchen or the person preparing his sandwich.

When his order was ready, he said he took it home with him to Fair Haven where he sat down to dinner with his spouse and stepdaughter. He said after making his gruesome discovery, the rest of the sandwiches were searched but no additional objects were found.

Hartless was rightly incensed by the manager’s crass reaction: “That’s the part that upsets me the most, is that he laughed about it.” Burger King’s official reaction was similarly insensitive. They sent an apology less than a week after the incident that concluded: “Hope you come back and have more pleasurable experience.”

The urge to think “Attention Whore! Frivolous Lawsuit!” is mitigated because Hartless submitted to a polygraph test and seems genuinely troubled. The poor guy was plagued by nightmares, the kind you do not have unless you suffer from post-traumatic stress syndrome:

“I know it sounds kind of funny now but I had dreams where I would be doing random things and whatever I was holding would turn into the hamburger or the condom.”

Vermont man alleges he found condom in Burger King burger [The Rutland Herald via BarfBlog]
Photo: Albert J. Marro / Rutland Herald

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