Shards of Glass Spoil Meal

August 23, 2013

in Food & Drink Stories

My father and I were on our way back from Florida. We had stopped for breakfast at a small diner by Jensen Beach. The waiter was nice and the drinks were fine. The only mildly disturbing thing we had heard thus far was someone breaking what sounded like a glass in the kitchen, but we figured – oh, people break glasses all the time. It was no big deal.

We got our food. My pancakes were great, but as soon as my father took a bite of his eggs, he pulled back, eyes tearing up, hands over his mouth. I asked him what was wrong and he pulled his hands off his mouth to reveal blood pouring from his upper gum. I was confounded for a second, and I asked him if he had stabbed himself with a fork by accident. He shook his head and pointed at the plate. I grabbed his fork and poked at the eggs – only to feel something crunching. Eggshells? No. Pieces of glass were embedded in his eggs.

After a furious conversation with the manager, he offered to take the eggs off our bill and give us a 10% discount – not nearly enough, in my opinion! Luckily my father didn’t suffer any lasting injury and thus didn’t want to take the incident further, but I still can’t understand why they would serve the eggs like that. They had to have realized there was broken glass in them!

{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }

James August 25, 2013 at 9:53 am

10% discount? If your father's mouth was bleeding after a single bite, he needed a visit to an emergency room. Glass shards might have been embedded between his teeth, or in his gums. "Pouring" blood makes me think he may have needed stitches to seal a wound.

I hope he is OK.

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mrsjamiecbaker August 28, 2013 at 7:35 am

The proper response would have been to fully comp the meal at the very least. When I worked at a pancake restaurant, we had a strawberry with a worm in it (the customer bit through half the strawberry to discover it) and the meal was comped, plus the manager offered to pay a fixed amount toward a doctor appointment if needed since she was pregnant. Glass in food is incredibly serious and I feel that the staff at this establishment overlooked that important fact.

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ShezAnEnigma September 19, 2013 at 10:42 am

I really hope you got that documented and sue. I say this as a server and as a person who eats out. I say it as a human, The manager should have comped the whole bill and made a report. Your first call should have been an ambulance so the EMTs could asses the situation and then their corporate office. The fact that your father ended up with glass in his mouth could have lead to death. it shows negligence on the part of the kitchen, which i find it hard to believe that a glass would have been broken near the cook line without getting cleaned up- and that is cause for immediate alarm in that store.

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been there May 23, 2014 at 11:11 am

Glass fragments were found in the food four of us were eating in an Indian restaurant. Served family style, the server could not nor could we identify the dish that had the dime size nugget of broken glass which my husband painfully chewed. No manager was present. The waitress offered to comp one item. We had just begun to eat, and all of us immediately stopped. Determined to see the matter addressed for the safety of other patrons, we asked all food stopped being served. We refused to pay for anything-only fair as the food was a danger. Besides, we each were fearful that the little we all ate had glass shards in it and we were at real risk of serious injury. We just left. After a call next am to the Health Dept, the inspector was told a glass jar broke in a freezer and shards fell in an open container of peas used to prepare one of our dishes! The kitchen knew all along what happened and did nothing. Mind boggling! As far as comping us, we could eat nothing as the food was hazardous. Comping is a useless gesture in that situation. Close it down is the correct response.

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Is this real life?! May 26, 2014 at 9:23 pm

Wow. I am a server. I work at a restaurant where it is just automatic to comp the food (in a case like this, no doubt the entire party check), manager go out and pretty much shmooze the table over however possible. I am also someone who dines out. It is beyond me how you actually paid for anything, I seriously read that with my mouth gaping open. I mean this as nice as possible. If anyone needs to learn how to grow a back bone, it is your dad, you, and anyone else in your party. No one should ever settle like that for EATING GLASS. His mouth was bleeding, and you left with less money and him a mouthfull of blood. Please stand up for your dad and your wallet if ever in an extreme situation like this again.

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Amber May 9, 2016 at 4:16 pm

Once, while eating out with my bf, sister and her bf we all found pieces of burlap sack in our fires and gravies. It apparently came from the bags the potatoes come in, which really shouldn't make it into the food. The manager comped the whole meal except for the drinks. Offering 10% off is unacceptable in a situation like this.

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Ava Hoffman January 9, 2018 at 9:46 pm

You should have sued

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