Checkers customers in Cleveland, Tennessee are having seconds thoughts about the popular fast-food chain after a man found racks of burger buns sitting in a public bathroom stall.
Stephen Staley, who works as a manager at a nearby McDonald's (the competition!), was visiting the Cleveland Checkers location when he stumbled upon the bread display next to the restaurant's toilet. Naturally, he had to capture the evidence on his phone, snapping a selfie while pointing incredulously at the hundreds of tainted buns behind him.
“My first thought was 'Are they going to serve them?,’" Staley told Cleveland's WRCB on Tuesday. "[I was] speechless other than that.”
Staley, who says he's currently enrolled in ServSafe's food safety training program, confronted the manager of the Checkers location about the issue. “They said they were trying to get them out of there and inside of the restaurant,” Staley explains. "Food safety is definitely a big priority in a restaurant.”
An inspector was brought on the scene Sunday morning and found the buns untainted and inside the garbage.
Checkers quickly fired back after the outcry, releasing a statement regarding the incident:
"The health and safety of our guests is our top priority, and a bread delivery mistakenly left in the bathroom is completely unacceptable. The buns were misplaced during a delivery at the franchise-operated Checkers location in Cleveland, Tennessee, on Saturday, April 23, 2016, and when discovered, they were immediately disposed of by the restaurant team. The buns were never served, and the employees involved in the delivery have been disciplined."
It's hard to believe someone would "mistakenly" leave a tower of burger buns inside a restroom, and Checkers customers aren't buying the excuse. "It’s nasty. [Y]ou know the management had to know about this,” one patron told WRCB. “I’m not going to eat there any more."
Probably a good decision on his part.
[via FoodBeast]