Rats and restaurants, two things that don’t go together |
Maybe I don’t want to visit New York after all. The city can’t be all that bad, but then I still vividly remember the James Herbert novel The Rats.
An ADF-owned KFC/Taco Bell was closed by New York health inspectors last week after TV news crews peering through the windows recorded about a dozen rats skittering across the floors and climbing on tables and countertops. The restaurant wasn’t open at the time, and officials later said construction in the basement might have stirred up the rodents.
As someone who worked in the restaurant business at one time and fortunately never experienced any public relations meltdown to this degree, this is not going to be easy to rebuild business at these restaurants when/if the health department signs off on them. We had the occasional mouse sighting, which freaked a few people out, but nothing a call to the Orkin boys couldn’t resolve. It’s rare seeing one rodent, much less multiple ones. And the fact that a TV crew could document the sighting on video is even more unsettling.
Perhaps the most disturbing part of this story, once you get past the rats, is they got a clean report from the health department. The health department in our area was brutal — and that’s a good thing. I clearly remember this inspector making our lives miserable during his routine inspections. At the time he seemed to be a nuisance, but in hindsight I’m glad he was that way. It’s not only the right thing to do, it’s job security keeping a restaurant in compliance.
The rats have to go somewhere, I’d just like to think it’s never going to be “skittering across” the table where I’m chowing down on a burrito.
Did this post make you go hmm?
(Hmm, no ratings yet)
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I once accompanied a friend of mine who worked for the state on his rounds inspecting the wells of restaurants that had their own water supplies. I was astonished at the hostility he encountered. The proprietors were even giving me hateful looks.
If they’d been smart, they would have realized that he was actually performing a valuable service for them. Imagine the liability nightmares they might have encountered if patrons were sickened by water polluted by chemicals or E. coli bacteria.
Comment by Vince Williams — March 3, 2007 @ 4:26 pm PST