May the Noid befoul them

The disguise shouldn’t affect my typing, though the fur is starting to itch. I had to go incognito the instant I heard about the Domino’s video, and a Chewbacca get-up from the Halloween of ’84 was the only dodge I could find. It was no picnic, people. Twenty-five years will definitely shrink a hair-covered jumpsuit.

But losing circulation is preferable to hearing my knuckleheaded friends spout urban myths about the restaurant business, as they’re prone to do after an industry gross-out like the YouTube posting. Who knows how far they’ll stretch after an ewww of that dimension? In case you missed it, a thirtysomething making sandwiches in a North Carolina unit shoves cheese up his nose and waves the cold cuts under his butt for what I’ll politely call a crop-dusting. Then the ingredients go back on sandwiches.

The escapade was caught for posterity by a uniformed co-worker of equal vintage, who regards the prank as the biggest knee-slapper since Jerry Lewis was in his prime. With presumed pride, the clip was posted on YouTube, where the wedgie-loving crowd can detect such things the way a starved spaniel can sniff out a chewy.

And who said our younger generations have lost their way?

But back to my friends, who tend to view such outrageous transgressions as validation of their worst restaurant fears. They haven’t had fodder quite this rich since rats were spotted in a halftime dance routine inside a New York Taco Bell two years ago. Now they’ll be absolutely certain that servers would as soon spit on the food as swallow, that restaurant ice harbors more bacteria than a germ-weapons research center, that listed calorie counts are about a tenth of the actual content, and that valet attendants have a non-stop demolition derby underway a few blocks over.

Never mind that the Domino’s vid stars were instantly fired, criminal complaints were later filed, and the pair ultimately gave themselves up to authorities, who charged them with food-tampering. Here's what Domino's had to say about the situation in its follow-up YouTube post:

Yet people are going to look at the shenanigans of two lowlifes employed by a chain in one North Carolina restaurant as symptomatic behavior, not an aberration. And they’re going to tell me all about it as they tsk-tsk my naivete about what happens on the other side of kitchen doors.

So I’d just as soon hide in my modified ape suit and marvel at how much damage two wing nuts can do to the industry’s reputation with so many enablers waiting on the sidelines.