Friday, April 17, 2009

Domino's Delivers a Pink Slip to a Couple of Real Lunkheads

If you haven't seen the video, it's probably too late. But you still may have heard of the two hapless, clueless, and now jobless Conover, NC, Domino's workers who put a prank video about food prep up on YouTube. (Source for info in this post: NY Times.)

Kristy Hammonds and Michael Setzer are no kids, by the way - they're in their early 30's. But they're now not just jobless, they're infamous for their crude humor and their profound idiocy for not realizing that:

a) Material like this goes viral really quickly.

b) Domino's is not exactly an outfit known for their robust sense of humor.

Sure, they're also 15-minutes of fame famous, but where do they go from here, job-wise?

Okay, the will no doubt get to be interviewed on Jimmy Kimmel and other shows of that ilk. But that's when they get out of jail - they were arrested for violating some defiling of food statute (a felony rap) - and Domino's is considering suing. Although I don't imagine he'll get much out of this duo. What do you suppose a food-prep at a North Carolina Domino's makes per hour?

Here's their mug shot. I don't suppose there'll be a movie deal out of this, but Noah Wyle could play Setzer, no?

Anyway, what these kitchen-eers did to merit all the negative attention was show Setzer shoving cheese up his nose, then putting it on the sandwich. Along with snot. Not to mention a slice or two of farted-on salami. Here's a bit of the clever narration:

“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,” Kristy said. “Now that’s how we roll at Domino’s.”

Recall, please, that these folks are no 10 years old. They're in their thirties.

Not that this sort of antic is unheard of in the food service industry.

As someone who logged a lot of hours as a waitress, I saw a few rather disturbing things. At one restaurant where I worked, the cooks were know to fry up cockroaches and served them on the fisherman's platter. Extra protein!

Anyway, the Domino's Duo posted their just high-larious video on YouTube, and within a couple of days it went viral, with over a million viewers. I also handed a major PR issue to Domino's (which, parenthetically, they handled quite nicely, loth as I am to give Domino's credit for much of anything).

Setzer and Hammonds deny that they actually delivered the despoiled food, but that probably doesn't do much for anyone who had anything from Domino's to eat recently. Stomachs, I'm sure, are churning from coast to coast - and especially in Conover, NC, where I'll bet there are plenty of folks scratching the Domino's phone number off the list of take-out joints magneted onto their fridge.

Ms. Hammonds apologized to the company in an e-mail message Tuesday morning. “It was fake and I wish that everyone knew that!!!!” she wrote. “I AM SOO SORRY.

I'll bet you are, Kristy, but not as sorry as you're going to be when you look for your next job, I'm guessing.

You know, virtually everyone in this country uses working in fast food when they talk about the most downside job they might ever have to hold.

A few weeks ago, I read about some fallen hedge fund manager who claims that he was making half a million per, but is now making $8/hour delivery pizza. He's not the only one I've heard make a similar statement.

Well, the good news is that there are a couple of fast food openings in Conover, NC. 

The bad news for Setzer and Hammonds is that they can't even hold a job at Domino's.

Where do you go down from here? Chicken factory?

Talk about a bad career move.

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