Dominos Pizza defends reputation on Twitter after YouTube video shows employees abusing food

Dominos Pizza has defended its reputation on Twitter after an employee posted a video on YouTube showing a staff member abusing food at the fast food restaurant.
 
By Jessica Shankleman
Last Updated: 5:46PM BST 16 Apr 2009
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/5164216/Dominos-Pizza-defends-reputation-on-Twitter-after-YouTube-video-shows-employees-abusing-food.html

Kristy Hammonds, 31, and Michael Setzer, 32, were fired from a Conover branch of Dominos in North Carolina on Tuesday and have been charged with distributing prohibited foods after the footage of a man who appears to be Setzer passing wind on a sandwich and shoving cheese up his nostril was posted on the video-sharing website.

One video appeared to show an employee putting cheese up his nose and passing wind on a sandwich. As he appeared to tamper with the food, a woman said: “In about five minutes it’ll be sent out on delivery where somebody will be eating these, yes, eating them, and little did they know that cheese was in his nose and that there was some lethal gas that ended up on their salami.”

A spokesman for the company said that there was no evidence that anyof the food that had been tampered with had been served to customers.

The company only discovered the videos when a blogger alerted them on Monday. The videos was viewed more than one million times before being removed from the site.

The employees claimed the video was only a stunt and not real. Miss Hammonds apologised to the company in an email message on Tuesday morning. She wrote: “It was fake and I wish that everyone knew that!!!!

“I AM SOO SORRY!”

Dominos Pizza responded by posting its own YouTube video featuring an apology from its president, Patrick Doyle. He said: “This was an isolated incident in Conover North Carolina.

“There is nothing more important or sacred to us than our customers trust.

“It sickens me that the acts of two individuals could impact our great system.”

It also set up a Twitter account, @dpzinfo, to respond to comments. Their tweets were quite informal and thanked customers for their support. One said: "To all that have messaged, RT'd or given a vote of confidence: THANK YOU! It's been a heck of a day, but we're glad to be out here with you."

But elsewhere on Twitter public reaction was mixed.

Today, one tweeter called jonezing4pizza said: “Two idiots won't prevent me from buying Dominos. Their Brooklyn pizza rocks!”

But another person called MAVinBKK said: “I will never eat a Dominos pizza again! Or even never eat anything again!”

This sort of thing happens more often than you think. My brother's friends used to work at Subway and they used to spit in the tuna container (just for the kicks of knowing people would eat their spit). My other brother also knew of people who did this kind of thing. I personally knew this one guy who admitted that when he had worked at a sandwich place in the past, he had also spat in the food.

On the news once there was a whole docuмentary on hidden cameras in restaurants and they shows this one guy blowing his nose into food. Recently, a man was arrested for peeing into all the lunch food at a nursing home (he was arrested because, since it was pee, that could have made the old people very sick).

Don't ever anger or annoy the person who takes your order at a drive thru or a restaurant because they will do nasty stuff to your food before giving it to you.