Days of the Tainted Tator Tot

So, in San Jose some lady found a fingertip in her bowl of chili at a Wendy’s restaurant.

Now, don't tell me you’re surprised at this. Disgusted, yes, but surprised?

C’mon, we have grown up in the age of desecrated dining experiences…the era of fast food tomfoolery…yes my friends, these are the days of the tainted tater tot. Forget about mad cow disease - at your local burger bistro these days, you’re more likely to nosh on a short and curly…and I’m not talking about the fries.

I don’t eat fast food myself anymore. Well, there is one hamburger chain here in Canada I’ll go to occasionally – Harvey’s – but it’s only because they prepare your burger right in front of you so you know the pimply punk’s not hiding a giant oyster loogie underneath a slice of cheese.

Still, I’m not naive. I’m still pretty sure the disgruntled greaseball on the night shift likely spends his downtime urinating in the deep fryer, so you know, there’s that.

When I was a kid, I worked at a Burger King and there were always rumors of terrible things rotten employees would do to the food. A notorious tale that is forever lodged in my memory is that one little shithead used to take hamburger buns and wipe them around the edge of the toilet seat in the staff washroom. I don’t know if this is true or not, but to this day, when I order a hamburger, I hold the mustard and check the bun for yellow stains.

Well, maybe I shouldn’t be so worried. After all, don’t they say ‘what you don’t know, won’t kill you’? Sure, tell that to the poor kid who unknowingly orders the special ‘fecal-matter’ sauce on his Filet o’ Fish and contracts Hepatitis and see if he concurs with that argument.

But I suppose we do need to go through life with some semblance of blind faith, otherwise we’ll become completely paranoid searching for fingertips in the chili, and believe me, once you start looking, you’ll probably find a lot worse items than someone’s dialing finger.

Besides, haven’t researchers found that in our lifetime we unknowingly ingest something like 7 spiders as we sleep? If that’s true, I’m sure our stomachs can handle one little pube in the milkshake.