After almost 7 years of shopping, I decided that I am going to do a restaurant shop for the very first time last night. Not a fast food place- a full-scale restaurant shop. Everything seems to be going well up to the point where the server drops a couple of strawberries from the dessert onto the floor. She immediately says "oops", then proceeds to pick up both strawberries while placing it back on the plate, and then says with a smile, "Thank goodness for the 5-second rule." She then proceeds to place the dessert plate with the already-dropped strawberries on my table.

I'm sitting at the table in a slight bit of shock, thinking to myself, "Did this just happen?" Before I could begin to process in my head of what just happened, the employee then says "Ha, ha, just kidding, I'll get you another dessert." She goes back into the back of kitchen to retrieve a new dessert.

All the while, I'm now thinking of idiotic that employee was in that I have to report this as part of a mystery shop detail! Yet not only that, I'm looking at the new strawberries on my dessert to see if they had dirt on them from previously falling on the floor. Luckily, these were bigger strawberries and hence, not the same ones from before.

Needless to say, my first restaurant experience was just that: an experience. Has anyone ever had something similar? How did you handle a possible situation such as this one?

OMG. And my next thought would be what happened to plate she took back in the kitchen. Did she actuall trash it? Was it served, if not to you, to someone else? HMMMMM..... what a bad experience for your first one.

She wouldn't have put the berries onto the plate if she hadn't actually intended to serve them. she would have gone back and gotten new berries. Once the dropped berries touched the plate, the plate was condemned. Smart thing would have been to save the rest of the dessert from needing to be tossed. I'm betting she didn't toss it at all, just exchanged the berries.

Someone's got a short career as a waitress.....

Eric, I think you report it exactly as it happened, just like you've done here. It's a shame that Florida is a 2-party state because it would have been great to have that recorded if need be.

Seems like it was a poor attempt at humor that she should
of only attempted with a 'regular' customer so that she would
know their personality already...

.........and be reasonably certain they were not the mystery shopper.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/11/2013 04:47PM by CAscotch.

Ugh, if I had a waitress do that as a customer somewhere I would be appalled. CAscotch, the restaurant SHOULD fault her. The correct response to the strawberries following would be something like, "Oops! Let me go get a new one." You don't act like you're serving your customer food from the ground, joke or not.

> She immediately says "oops", then proceeds
> to pick up both strawberries while placing it back
> on the plate, and then says with a smile, "Thank
> goodness for the 5-second rule." She then proceeds
> to place the dessert plate with the
> already-dropped strawberries on my table.
>
> I'm sitting at the table in a slight bit of shock,
> thinking to myself, "Did this just happen?" Before
> I could begin to process in my head of what just
> happened, the employee then says "Ha, ha, just
> kidding, I'll get you another dessert." She goes
> back into the back of kitchen to retrieve a new
> dessert.

IMO, the server definitely crossed the line as soon as she placed the plate with dirty food on Eric's table. Even if she was truly making a joke about the five-second rule and did not say it was a joke only after noticing Eric's negative reaction, it was unprofessional and unhygienic to put the plate with the dirty strawberries on Eric's table.

If I were the client, I might understand and forgive an awkward attempt at a joke, but not when the joke crossed the line into unsafe food handling practices.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/11/2013 04:47PM by CAscotch.

I agree with BusyBeeBee: She only removed the plate AFTER she saw your reaction.

She likely did not think you "saw" her drop the berries.

But she took one look at your face and pulled the plate off the table.

The horrifying thing is: She would have expected you to eat the berries,(had you not seen her drop them) knowing they fell on the floor. We can assume she does not mind eating food that fell on the floor, right?

I hope you've put what happened in your report.

Well, from a biohazard/bacterial contamination standpoint, the "5 second rule" really IS true. It's actually more sterile, from a microbiological standpoint, on the floor than in the icemaker or fridge.

Restaurant floors are dry, and most pathogens like salmonella, listeria, or E. coli can't survive without moisture.

But, from an "ick" factor, yeah, switch it out.

Thank god you added the ick factor.

Nothing like "fuzzy strawberries with hair on them"...

Dry doesn't mean clean. I am quite sure one will not obtain a foodhandler's permit by answering "yes" to the question, "If food falls on the floor and the customer doesn't see it, can you put it back on the plate and serve it?"

CAscotch Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Ehhh I don't think that's a big deal. I think it
> would have been more awkward for her to treat the
> situation in a serious manner. I don't think the
> restaurant would fault her for that


Oooh, I have to disagree with you on that one, I really believe that if the waitress hadn't seen that the OP noticed the dropped fruit she would have just let it go. That's just NASTY.

Considering that about 90% of shoes have E-Coli on them....ick.

The joke was a bad choice also because it was a joke that (wanted or not) aimed at embarassing the customer.
However, it was not mentioned the level of the restaurant. I would see a joke like that happening at a Eskimo Joe where there are basically only college students.

Still lack of style and not professional.

Joke or not, if her restaurant is one that takes its mystery shop reports serious, she will likely be censured or may be looking for another job. Funny joke to play at home on Mom, Dad or a sibling. Bad joke to play on a customer who is paying for the food and service at a restaurant ..... and who may njot tip you! This type of horseplay (whether she was joking or whether she intended to serve the dessert and made a quick recovery on seeing the customer's face) gets restaurants reported to the local health department. Few restaurant managers enjoy additional visits from the health department. In addition, both stories about suspicions of poor health conditions AND/OR making the customer the butt of a joke spread like wildfire and can really hurt a restaurant's business.

Did anyone notice how Taco Bell responded quickly to try to do damage control after their video of a food handler went viral?

A restaurant does not need a server who responds in a casual way to cleanliness of food served and certainly does not need a server who makes a customer feel uncomfortable.

Eric, just curious, how fast did she come back? I'm wondering if she carried the plate back, took the strawberries off and threw them away, put fresh strawberries on the same plate, and served it. As far as I'm concerned, when she picked up the strawberries from the floor and put them back on the plate, she contaminated the entire dessert.

AustinMom Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Funny joke to play at home on Mom, Dad or a
> sibling. Bad joke to play on a customer who is
> paying for the food and service at a restaurant
> ..... and who may njot tip you!

This made me think of something that happened when I was a kid. My dad was out mowing the lawn and I was cooking dinner. I finished everything up and tossed it on the plates. I went out to get my dad to tell him that dinner was done. I got in the house before he did, but his steak was gone. The dog had snatched it off my dad's plate. It was a nice friendly dog, not one of those ones that will rip you to shreds if you pull food from its mouth so that's what I did. Grabbed that steak before she took a bite out of it, tossed it under some running water, patted it dry with a paper towel and got it on my dad's plate before he got into the house. Never did tell my dad, but my mum got quite the chuckle out of that story.

Uh..... been there, done that.....

But that dog's mouth was probably cleaner than that restaurant's floor!

@AustinMom She actually brought back an entirely new dessert. I had noticed that the portion size was slightly larger, as well as the strawberries themselves. She knew that I was looking for a size difference. She had good service up until that point, and I suspect that she just became a little too comfortable with me during the entire service from appetizers, drinks, entree, and dessert.

I will say that this was not a fine dining type of level restaurant, yet it was no cheap restaurant either. The staff had a good presence of college students, yet this could be due to the fact that the restaurant is situated less than a mile from a very large college campus that is also in a downtown area.

Eric, I've relieved to hear the whole dessert was new.

I assume that she was joking all the while. Be glad, however that this happened in plain view. My husband was on the street corner of Nogales, Sonora, Mexico just people watching while waiting for me to finish shopping. He saw a meat deliveryman drop a large unwrapped piece of meat on the dusty dirty street. He picked it up, brushed it off, and continued his delivery to the restaurant, coming back outside empty-handed.

Actually that would bother me less than the strawberry thing. The meat would be cooked before being served and probably rinsed off first.

I once lucked out due to the obcession with cleanliness. I am not commenting on whether this is good or bad, just that it is. I went to a small grocer and saw a 25 lb bag of sugar in the street in front of the store. I assumed it had fallen off the delivery truck. It had tire tracks on it and a small rip in the paper container. I spent a good half hour in the store and mentioned the bag to one of the employees and when I left the 25 lb bag was still in the street near the curb. So, as someone not overly concerned with cleanliness, I threw the bag in my trunk with the willing help of two passers-by. I threw out the sugar close to the rip and but felt I had gotten the best bonanza I have had in a while. The store obviously was not able to put that bag out on the sales floor with a small rip in it but did not seem to want to remove it from the street. They sold the same brand of sugar in 25 lb bags.
I can see the points of the dog eaten steak experience and also the restaurant customer. No, we do not want to be served something that has fallen on the floor, but when it happens to us in our own home our standards may be different. It is probably a good thing this came up on a mystery shop. A good teaching point for the staff at that restaurant.

I'd have picked up the sugar in a heartbeat and done just what you did, pour out a bit and use the rest.