CREDIT: Flickr/William Ward
Restaurants are the lifeblood of communities, but most patrons don't realize how close to death (or at least, a lot of bloodshed) they come when eating in one. To perfectly season your next meal with crippling paranoia, we asked past and current restaurant employees, managers, and owners to name the most likely/plausible ways a restaurant will someday kill you, no matter whether you're dining in one or working in it.
Do your neighborly thing in the comments to warn everyone about your life-threatening restaurant experiences.
CREDIT: Wikipedia
YOUR WAITER IS PROBABLY SOUSED
If you're one of the estimated 15 million Americans with food allergies, a loaded waiter is all it takes to put you in the ground -- and if there's one thing that restaurant folks like more than tips, it's substances.
"You don't realize it, but on any given night, your server is likely well on his/her way to [overserving themselves]," explains Carrie, 25, a one-time Long Island waitress. "After 8 p.m., it was almost impossible to walk past our kitchen without being forced to do a shot with another waiter/bartender/chef."
Edgar, now 29, worked in an Austin pizza place with a manager who sold [somewhat illegal drugs] out the back, and Matt, 30, routinely smoked [said somewhat illegal drugs] on delivery runs for his Ann Arbor parlor. Matt's line cook regularly blew Oxycontin, so "needless to say, he was prone to erratic behavior", which just might include accidentally using a peanut oil-tainted knife on your peanut-free meal. No bueno.
[2,500 people choke to death in the U.S. each year]
MURDER BY RESTAURANT
"The biggest danger in restaurants might be the employees themselves," says Matt. Depending on the area & the establishment, they can "be some pretty unsavory folks". Indeed, Edgar's coworkers included "a pimp and his former crackwhore", and Keith, 27, once waited for a chef "who was on work-release from jail at Macaroni Grill in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Dude was 6'5", prison-strong, hated everybody, and had access to huge knives."
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