GENTLE READERS:
Miss Dish would be remiss if she just turned a perfectly
perfumed, rouged cheek and ignored the injustices against
the bellies of this city that are perpetrated in kitchens
every day. If you too have a tale to tattle, ring up the
Restaurant Snitch Hotline at 243-2122 ext. 349.
Some recent dispatches:
1) "When I was 16, I worked at a concession stand,
and I got stuck serving people nachos. What you had to do
was stick your hand in a big lightbulb-heated chip container,
then dish out the shellac cheese. I served about four buckets
of this when one of the customers asked if someone was bleeding.
I thought, no way, but then I looked down and there was
red all over me. So, I made up the story that it was Sno-Cone
juice, when actually I did have a large cut on my finger
and was serving my own blood to people. But no one ever
came back to complain."
2) "I'd been working at a gourmet pizza restaurant
about a week, and one of the girls there got jilted by a
guy, who actually came in one night for a pizza. The manager
came back and told one of the pizza cooks to spit in the
guy's pizza. The cook hawked the hugest loogie in the middle
of the pizza, then swirled it around with his finger and
served it. I almost puked. I didn't know what to say as
I had just started there. To make it more sordid, one employee
did write a letter to the restaurant's owner, but the manager
got ahold of it before it was sent."
3) "I was working for a pub, not at any one
particular location, but filling in as needed around Portland.
I had a weeklong assignment at the Southwest restaurant,
and on my first morning I had to clean bathrooms. I pretty
much knew the drill and didn't want to ask a lot of questions,
so when I couldn't find a toilet brush near the bathrooms,
I looked in the mop sink in the prep kitchen. I found a
long-handled brush and went about my job. A few days later,
I walked in and gasped when I saw another worker stirring
a large pot of black beans with the same brush I had used
on the toilets. I figured any toilet germs would cook out,
so I kept my mouth closed."
4) "I worked at a fried chicken place: I
was the front person and my boyfriend was the fry cook.
One day he found some green chicken and we told our manager
about it, and she said to serve it. So we decided that I
would distract her while he called the health inspector.
The health inspector showed up, as did our general manager.
The inspector said the chicken could not be served, and
inspected the rest of the meat in the fridge, and wanted
the managers to throw away seven cases of chicken. The managers
threw away the chicken while the inspector was there, but
the minute he drove away they pulled all the meat out of
the dumpster and soaked the meat in bleach water, then served
them."
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