Sheldon's query about Chinese restaurants in Seattle got me thinking about
this. Do you read restaurant reviews prior to eating in one? Even if it's
in your own town? There's a place in Memphis called 'Mortimer's'. I've
never been there (heh, I remember when there was a dress shop at that
location.) I was doing a search for someone and ran across this rant by a
former employee (no, it wasn't me!). Talk about waiter rants...

"I am a former employee of Mortimer's, and I would like to take this chance
to warn anyone who might think of dining there about the godawful unsanitary
conditions there. Some examples:

1. I once saw a waiter carrying a sandwich out to a table. Just before he
exited the kitchen, he dropped the top piece of bread on the floor. He
picked it up, dusted it off on his shirt, put it back on the sandwich, and
took it out to serve it.

2. I saw an employee knock over a five-gallon bucket of shrimp which spilled
all over the floor (the floor in the kitchen is filthy, by the way). The
dishwasher began scooping up the shrimp and throwing it in a garbage can.
The kitchen manager ran over and started cussing the dishwasher, saying that
the shrimp was way too expensive to just throw away, and that he (the
dishwasher) would either put the shrimp back in the bucket to serve to
customers or he would be fired.

3. Each table is given a complementary basket of rolls. There is a basket
next to the dish area in the kitchen. When servers bus a table, they are
required to salvage any rolls that have not been eaten off of and put them
in this basket to be recycled for the next table.

I don't know how a place this filthy and disgusting has managed to stay in
business. I can only assume that they pay bribes to the health department."

That's enough to put me off a place. But I probably wouldn't have read it
if I hadn't been looking something else up.

Jill