Jobs are so stupid.

[PhillipJFry]

Hello everyone, (this thread may or may not actually belong in the "SA" forum. If not: I'm sorry. And if so: I'm sorry to waste your time reading this sentence).
In any case, I have a night job as a delivery driver, and on this particular night the restaurant received 4 separate complaints about becoming sick after eating items with beef on the menu (and one of whom claimed to be going to the hospital).

Compared to the amount of beef that was sold tonight, 4 is statistically a pretty low amount. However, I've worked there for almost a year now; and have never once had 4 unrelated customers call about the same issue like this.
Anyways, I noticed that one of my delivery orders had beef items in it, so I called the customer and explained that there was a chance that the meat was no bueno, and they understandably cancelled their order.

When my boss found out about this, he became extremely angry with me; and said that I shouldn't have called the customer, delivered their food as planed, and if there happened to be a problem, he could deal with it later. "That's why we have insurance" he said.

Personally, I think my boss' attitude about the situation was unethical, as I would like to know myself if there was a 5%(est) chance of becoming ill after eating. But his argument however, is that many people call and make up complaints to get free food (which is true, as I've had to deal with many of them.) But I believe that the chances of 4 different people (who don't know each other) calling us and lying about the exact same thing, on the same day, are very unlikely. And even if this was a rare coincidence, I still think that I had enough reasonable suspicion to do what I did. Wouldn't you agree? (if not, please let me know).
Also, I guess if you guys could comment me some positive affirmation to justify my frustrated sense of moral superiority in this case, that'd be cool too.

 

[Remus]

Anonymously call the health authority for an emergency inspection (I used to work in catering too).

 

[jc972]

I think you did the right thing. Look how many people die from food poisoning every year. Your boss is an idiot that's more concerned with sales than the publics well being. I'm with Remus. Call the health inspector!

 

[BlackPuma]

No, you did good for informing them.

He values business over people's health, and that's not cool. Especially when it concerns businesses involving food and drink you have a responsibility to not give the customers food poisoning. Him being willing to risk that instead of losing some profit is a scummy move. It doesn't matter whether the company is financial protected for such an eventuality, it's unethical.

An accident is one thing, but deliberately allowing potentially bad food to be delivered is super scummy. Be proud that you stood up against it.

 

[kihira]

Its good to have concerns, but its important to go about it the right way. People may feel sick at the time and believe its what they ate, when its something entirely different, so 4 people getting sick may simply be them all getting a virus (as happens on cruise ships..norovirus). To establish that it was the beef, then health authorities need to test it, otherwise its just conjecture and you may be scaring off customers for no reason. I would express concerns to the boss in the first instance, unless I had good knowledge that poor food hygiene was commonplace in the kitchen, in which case I would do as remus suggests

 

[PhillipJFry]

thanks for validating my actions friends. I don't know if I want to call the health department though, since this is the only time this has happened in like eleven months of employment, (also the beef that was being used that day was thrown out).
Bleh, I hate being yelled at. I wish I could just go to sleep and not let this bother me anymore.

 

[PhillipJFry]

Its good to have concerns, but its important to go about it the right way. People may feel sick at the time and believe its what they ate, when its something entirely different, so 4 people getting sick may simply be them all getting a virus (as happens on cruise ships..norovirus). To establish that it was the beef, then health authorities need to test it, otherwise its just conjecture and you may be scaring off customers for no reason. I would express concerns to the boss in the first instance, unless I had good knowledge that poor food hygiene was commonplace in the kitchen, in which case I would do as remus suggests

You maybe right, but if you aren't, I wouldn't have felt okay with bringing people food that was sickening, and if I were in the customer's position, I would want someone to tell me if there was a statistically higher chance of that being the case tonight, than on every single other night I've worked there.
ugh I wish there was some way to know the absolute truth to the cause of these complaints or whateves, this whole situation would be much less morally ambiguous for me.