Dear Urban Legends:
This is the story I heard. Is it real or urban legend?
This friend was stuck at home with a non-functioning car. He was really hungry, so he ordered Pizza Hut pizza. He told them he'd be working in the office at the apartment complex where he also lived.
Anyway, 1 1/2 hours later, when he called the Pizza Hut they were really irate because they had gone to his (empty, of course) apartment instead of the office. My friend tried to explain and get them to send a new pizza right away, but the manager on duty was really rude and insulting. After chewing out the manager, he demanded his original order for free. All of a sudden, the manager said "Okay, in 1 1/2 hours more!" This was not okay, but this friend agreed, as he was stuck at home and starving.
Exactly 1 1/2 hours later, the order arrived, and this friend noticed the box felt damp all over. He went ahead and ate the pizza, even though it tasted "funny."
Well, the next morning, he felt sick and went to his car to go to the doctor. On his way, he saw a polaroid stuck in the office door. He couldn't believe what it showed: two or three employees in Pizza Hut uniforms urinating on a pizza he assumed was his!
Needless to say, I'm swearing off Pizza Hut. I like my pizza without the "P!"
Dear Reader:
I'll go out on a limb and venture to say we all prefer our pizza without the "P" — it's just one of those constants of human nature.
Frankly, your story has "urban legend" written all over it.
- Suspicious detail #1: Customer actually waits three hours for pizza.
- Suspicious detail #2: Three-hour-old pizza tastes "funny" but customer eats it anyway.
- Suspicious detail #3: Culprits conveniently provide evidence of their malicious deed in the form of a self-taken photograph (see "A Tail of Two Toothbrushes" for a comparably disgusting, and dubious, photo-finish urban legend).
Reports of deliberate food contamination by service workers are common currency in urban folklore. Tales of cooks/waiters/busboys spitting (or worse) in the food or beverages of obnoxious customers are probably as old as commercial foodservice itself — which is not to say they're always untrue. Though documented cases are rare, the evidence suggests this sort of thing really does happen from time to time.
'Secret Sauce'
Of all the possible ways food can be deliberately contaminated, the most revolting to consider is the prospect of some disaffected employee purposely ejaculating on or into a food item during preparation. It's so repugnant, in fact, that this genre even has its own special name: the "Secret Sauce" legend. And while I'm fairly confident that such stories are far more often false than true, every now and then an unsettling news report crops up to shake one's faith.
In June 2004, for example, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that a former night-shift cook at a Denny's restaurant was charged with aggravated battery on accusations that he had "deliberately contaminated food on at least two occasions by putting his semen into the honey-mustard dressing that the restaurant serves with its chicken strips." (Both Denny's and the accused maintained that the incident amounted to nothing more than a verbal joke.)
In December 2006, CBS News reported that a high school student had been arrested for "spiking a container of cafeteria salad dressing at Wheaton North High School with his own semen."
In the newsgroup alt.folklore.urban we find a report of an allegedly true story wherein a customer took delivery of a pizza spiked with semen — although in this case it turned out that the secret sauce had been added by "friends" of the victim, not the pizza makers.
And, from the same source, a report of an instance of urine-laced hummus, though there is no direct confirmation of its veracity.
Mucus topping
Finally, we know of a real-life incident involving a restaurant worker blowing his nose on a customer's food. Unfortunately for the employee, his customer was a cop. According to news reports about this Arizona case, the nose blower was prosecuted for adding unrequested mucus to the police officer's sandwich. He was arrested on the spot after the officer took a few bites of his sandwich and noticed a "sticky substance" on his hands and face.
The worker was convicted of aggravated assault.
Sources and further reading:
Student Faces Charges in Semen-in-Dressing Case
CBS News, 15 December 2006
Ex-Cook Is Charged with Tainting Food
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 4 June 2004
Last updated: 04/16/09
