If you read on Facebook that a waitress in a local restaurant was inclined to spit on your food, would you ever go there again?

I must be dense because I can’t tell from that whether the post was fake or not.

I generally tip well and treat waitrons as though they were in charge of how wholesome my food is. As such, I am generally treated well. If I were such a crappy customer that my waitron felt the need to rant at me thusly, I would take it as a clue that my kind are not welcome – which they probably aren’t.

Yes, it’s a “bad customer service” story, but I have found from years of working in retail that bad customer service most often happens for bad customers: lose-lose. In this case, though, if the non-tipping customer never comes back to waste the waitron’s time, and thereby never eats waitron-spit supplemented Bloomin’-Onion-clone, I’d have to say that’s a win-win.

As for where the stupidity comes from, on the waitron’s part it’s probably high-frustration from non-tipping customers when you’re working your arse off for rent money and your feet hurt like hell. As for where the customer’sstupidity comes from, perhaps he was homeschooled and just never learned how to treat strangers who bring the food?

Like most of life’s lessons, an individual learns the repercussions of an action done in anger or frustration, whether verbal or physical. The word gets out, especially these days due to social networking where people have no personal investment in the poster but still have concerns.

In this case, if real, she deserved to be fired and the announcement made publicly in order to save the reputation of the restaurant, as well as the chain.

If I read that post, I would assume the waitress was venting and not at all serious. Spitting in food is classified as assault in California (which is where the waitress is from), and everyone I know who has worked in food service has told me that no one actually spits in food. Apparently, it’s something taken rather seriously by wait staff. They police their own on this matter, which is good to know.

Yes, it’s foolish to leave your Facebook profile public. No, we cannot put all the blame on Facebook despite the fact that the site makes everything public by default and forces you to change that. Still, this was simply a case of a person doing something quite normal and healthy—emotional venting—that was made public and blown out of proportion.

Maybe her boss had to fire her for even suggesting that she’d do this, but that in itself is a sad commentary on the gullibility of persons. It casts all potential customers as “Mother Earth’s morons” by implying that we are unable to tell the difference between an angry comment directed only towards sympathetic friends (regardless of who actually saw it) and a genuine statement of intent. Quite frankly, I’d like to be given a little more credit than that.

Hell No! We won’t go!

Few years back a guy was caught placing sperm….that’s right I said sperm, into selected meals at Macdonalds. This wasn’t my local eatery, but a place a few miles down the road.
Never go back, as the boomerang said to the stick.

Usually, yes (though, an obvious venting might make no impact). But when I was doing food service, any tampering with the food was grounds for an on-the-spot firing, because they could get shut down by the health department for having that. So when someone tells me they do that, I think that restaurant isn’t complying with many other health regulations.

I’m in the treat your wait person well camp and have only had one bad experience with a shitty waiter with an attitude once. Was a high end establishment and I had ordered a nice bottle of wine and was waiting and waiting forever for the wine and bread to be served.
Flagged my waiter down after about 20 minutes and asked if I could expect my wine soon. He said, and I quote…” WHY? Do you NEED it that badly? ”

Oooh, little fuck, big mistake. His manager heard about that one and no tip for you, you sassy little bastard. lol
Of course I would not patronize an establishment with this sort of rumor.

I would rather chug a gallon of saliva than eat at Chili’s or any chain “restaurants”. Perhaps it’s a well deserved punishment for blindly supporting such establishments.

Also, if you treat others with respect, there’s a 98% chance that people won’t mess around with your food.

I definitely wouldn’t go back to that particular store in a franchise, ick! I’m also in the camp of @laureth, pretty much word for word.

Chili’s is not really known for the quality of their food. The spit would probably improve it, I’d think. But I wouldn’t go there in the first place. I ate at one once. That was enough. I also at an an Appleby’s once. Also sufficient unto the day thereof.

Life sucks for waitresses at places like that, I think. Also for customers.

Years ago, one of the restaurants in the Coco’s chain had some sort of health issue. I don’t remember the exact issue or the town the restaurant was in, I just remember it had a problem. I’ve never eaten at a Coco’s, and as a result I probably never will. There’s a Coco’s here in my town, right on the main drag, and every time I drive by, I think of the incident. Guilt by association.

Recently, there was a report of norovirus at the CPK in Walnut Creek, CA. Probably will never go there, either, even after they scrub it clean.

At one time I thought that being a restaurant inspector from the city health department would be a cool occupation. On second thought, maybe not. It would probably make me not want to eat at a restaurant again.

Sometimes I look through my county’s list of recently inspected restaurants and the violations they found. It’s so gross that a little spit is nothing, quite often. If a favorite restaurant has gross violations, I always think I’ll never go back. But I do. Maybe that’s just the certain je ne sais quoi that makes the food so good.

I think… there was a lot of potential for misunderstanding demonstrated there, on both sides.

For one thing, the customer may have been from another part of the world (a saner part with respect to dining out) where “tipping” to essentially pay the waiters’ salaries is NOT the norm. When I first went to Europe in the late 90s, we learned that American-style tipping was way over the top. In the Netherlands (at least at that time) a nominal tip of one to five guilders (worth about $0.50 to $2.50) was a normal tip for a meal that might cost the equivalent of around $40. That kind of tip in the States might get you chased into the parking lot and your car keyed. In NL at the time it meant, “this was for really excellent service”, because the server’s pay was included in the cost of the meal.

So I’m thinking that in the Chili’s incident, it may be that the diner didn’t understand American custom. The waiter might not have known that the diner wasn’t local.

Or it might have been something else entirely. In many parties of multiple diners (as little as 4 in some places, or with a minimum of 6 in others) the gratuity is often itemized in the check. Maybe the waiter didn’t notice that. Maybe the software malfunctioned, or maybe, again, the diner simply assumed that it would be in the total bill, and didn’t check.

Personally, I’ll be glad when the custom of tipping “as a way to pay the salaries of waiters” goes away. I liked the custom in the NL. I think the waiters liked it that way, too.

I wouldn’t hold one person’s rant against an entire restaurant, especially given that they fired her for it. That said, someone actually could spit in your food anywhere and you’d never know. If I thought about it too hard, I’d never go out to eat at all. As is, I push such thoughts to the back of my mind, and enjoy my meal.

If anything this restaurant is the most spit free place to eat in America now. She was fired, others are now scared of getting fired for doing the same.

And we used to walk in the bins of popcorn seeds at the theater in our bare feet since it felt really good after standing in the same place for 10 hours. So yeah, this is going to happen everywhere and you might have not done anything wrong.

Accept it and move on.

@johnpowell This reminds me. Do they still stomp on grapes with bare feet to make wine?

The potential is there for any waitress any time to spit in the food (or waiter, for that matter). I like Bloomberg’s idea of posting restaurant Health Department grades on the front doors of establishments, so it’s clear when you enter what type of place it is.

@jca Health inspection scores aren always clear for a few reasons:

1.) They are based upon the findings at the time of the inspection. The establishment could receive a stellar score, but the disgruntled employee may not be working (or spitting) that day.

2.) Let’s say that the disgruntled employee is working that day, spits into someone’s food, and it’s discovered while the inspector is there. The inspector is going to notify the manager or owner, and that person would be a fool to no fire the employee on the spot if there is enough evidence.

When I was a hotel inspector, I received a call from a hotel manager about the rumors going around about a sister property in their area. The manager said that supposedly the hotel wasn’t changing the bed linen when guests checked out. It surprised me as this hotel was one of the highest ranked in chain when it came to hotel inspections and guest survey scores.

Despite the doubt, I showed up unannounced at the hotel and asked if we could start the inspection immediately. The manager agreed. After it started, the manager said, “I’m surprised to see you this soon. We aren’t due for another inspection for another couple of months.” I told her why I was there early, but not who told me. Her response was unexpected. “Wow. How did you hear about that? It’s true. We hired two housekeepers who had worked at another hotel chain. When it was discovered that they weren’t changing the linen, even after they were trained in our protocol, they were immediately terminated.”

When I got back to the office, I called the manager who reported the rumor to let her know the story, as well as thank her. If the right person is given a heads up, a situation such as the Chili’s situation, it can be resolved before the panic becomes widespread and damages the reputation of a business, or even crazier, a whole chain.

@Pied_Pfeffer: Yes, I have no doubt that inspections don’t always catch every issue, and that there can be bad employees doing bad stuff that just may not be at work the day of the inspection. However, I think that even if an inspection is 75% accurate, it’s close enough. It may be possible to have a restaurant get away with some things, but if a restaurant is awful and the surprise inspection shows that, then it would be helpful for the public to have easy access to.

@jca We have a segment on our local news called “Behind the Kitchen Doors” that, once a week, tells the viewers what the inspectors have rated the restaurants that week. I think it is a helpful review that the residents should be aware of.

When we lived in North Carolina, I was impressed that every establishment that sold food had to post their ratings from the health department in clear view in various places throughout their business.