As far back as the 1970s, there have been rumors and urban legends about restaurant employees tampering with customers’ food.
I recall one such story from the 1980s, about a steakhouse employee who supposedly urinated on random customers’ steaks. That might just be enough to make even a sane, well-adjusted person go vegan.
One thing I noticed, though—these stories never stood up to scrutiny. How, exactly, did a single employee manage this urinary sabotage in a crowded kitchen environment, with other cooks, managers, and servers coming and going? Did the cook have a name? Well, no, not exactly… he was some dude who worked at X steakhouse.
Stories like this about restaurants have been around for a long time because they play into our anxieties of vulnerability. The barriers to entry in restaurant work are notoriously low. And the people who work in restaurant kitchens prepare items that we put in our bodies. Half of the urban legend is already written.
Now add all of those preexisting anxieties to the 21st century culture wars, and the upcoming midterm elections—which are sure to be an excrement show.
This past week, an anonymous social media entity, claiming to consist of cooks at an unspecified Texas Roadhouse, claimed that they tampered with black customers’ food in various disgusting and unsanitary ways. The original social media post (since deleted) predictably went viral, leading to calls for a boycott of Texas Roadhouse.
My 58 years of life have taught me to exercise caution before declaring anything impossible. Something like the behavior described on social media could theoretically happen.
It is important to remember, though, the level of conspiracy that would be required for something like that. The managers would probably have to be in on it. So would the servers. How else would the cooks know when a particular sirloin steak or shrimp dinner was destined for a black diner?
I’m not in a position to categorically declare this one a hoax. But if I were a betting man, I would put all of my money down on the square marked, “Yet another instance of viral online nonsense.” We certainly had nonsense in the pre-internet era; but nonsense travels much faster online, and nonsense travels at light speed on social media.
-ET