You have to applaud someone’s work ethic when an employee doesn’t want to stop working to run to the bathroom to answer the call of nature. But if he decides instead to use the sink — in a restaurant, it doesn’t deserve applause. And if he’s a district manager, it most likely isn’t a wise career move. It happened in Kermit, West Virginia, where, the AP reports, health officials have now shut the restaurant down — and the district manager has been fired (definitely not a good role model):
Health officials have temporarily shut down a southern West Virginia pizza restaurant after a district manager was caught on surveillance video urinating into a sink.
Local media reported that the Mingo County health department ordered the Pizza Hut in Kermit, about 85 miles southwest of Charleston, to shut down.
The video recorded a few weeks ago shows a man walking over to the deep sink and urinating in it. The same sink used to wash kitchen utensils and supplies. The Pizza Hut Corporation has confirmed the man in the video is a Pizza Hut District Manager.
…Michelle Salmons of Kermit and her family wanted to eat at the restaurant. However, when they pulled up the doors were locked.
13 News showed her the video and she said, “That’s disgusting. That is just horrible. Oh my goodness and we eat there all the time.”
13 News contacted the Mingo County Health Department regarding this video. Brett Vance, the city’s sanitarian, watched the video and went to the restaurant to temporarily close it.
Now a sign hangs on Pizza Hut’s front door saying the restaurant has been shut down because of “conditions within the establishment constituting a substantial hazard to the public health.”
Pizza Hut released this statement to 7WTRF:
“First of all, we are embarrassed by the actions of this individual. Pizza Hut has zero tolerance for violations of our operating standards, and the local owner of the restaurant took immediate action and terminated the employee involved. While the isolated incident occurred during non-business hours and did not involve any food tampering, we follow strict safety and handling procedures and the restaurant has since been closed. We apologize to our customers of Kermit, West Virginia and those in our system who have been let down by this situation.”
Here’s the video:
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.