A new genre has opened up with the advent of camera-phone technology, Instagram, and Tweeting: fast food gross outs. There’s been a lot of buzz in the news lately of fast food workers snapping pictures of gross things their work does, or alternatively, gross things they do at work. Consider Ian Jett, for instance, who photographed a series of appetite killing pictures, including him rubbing his genitals on Subway bread. The picture came with the caption “My name is @ianjett and I will be your sandwich artist today.”
When the Huffington Posts interviewed the man, he said “I would never do that at work – it was at home. This isn’t something I’d ever do at Subway. It was totally a joke.”
Nice try! You’re fired! That’s the news he received after Subway caught wind of his pictures – there’s a whole series of such prankish posts, including a picture of a bottle of urine his friend said he froze at a Subway restaurant.
Incidentally, the exact Subway location in question is at Tuttle Crossing Boulevard in Columbus Ohio. Not that those guys are hanging around; Subway released a statement saying:
This isolated incident is not representative of SUBWAY Sandwich Artists™. These actions are not tolerated and the franchisee took immediate action to terminate the two employees involved.
But such “incidents” are becoming more well known with the advent of such technologies as Twitter that render such fast food workers into anti-heroes when they are willing to defile food for the camera.
In this case, one anonymous tipster sought justice after being grossed out by the pics:
“I saw the frozen piss picture and thought, ‘What is this guy doing?'” the tipster said. “Then came the penis picture. They’re stupid enough for doing this in the first place, but then to post it to the world? It was a dumb move.
“I didn’t send these to be vindictive,” he said, “But something needs to be done. It’s disgusting.”
So there’s some balance with what fast food employees will do for a prankish guffaw, and what the public will do in response to get them fired. The take home lesson, apparently, is not to put your penis of customers’ food. But as more and more of life gets Tweeted and Instagrammed, all those gross and annoying things we normally could ignore and not think about will be posted and “go viral” making us once again have to face the less delectable aspects of life.