A few years back I worked at a local Walmart as a cake decorator. In this particular Walmart we had a self serve donut case. The donuts were fried at around 5 am and left in the case until about 10 pm that night for customers to pick and choose from.
One night at around 6 pm I was working the front counter. The cake decorating counter was positioned where I could see customers approach with my peripheral vision. As I was bent over an icing bucket filling up a bag I heard a sort of high pitched gasp/squeak sound, and saw something blurry and yellow out of my side vision. As I stood up I saw a blonde standing in front of the donut case. Frizzy hair, acid washed denim mini skirt. Attached to her back was a man. He was leaning forward into her and she was leaning back against him. Overall it was actually a sort of sweet picture of open affection. UNTIL her skirt twitched.
I remember my eyes widening as the man removed his hand from under her skirt. This had of course been the reason she’d gasped in shock. He ran the finger under his nose, took a deep breath, and leaned past her and into the donut case to start picking up donuts. WITH HIS BARE HAND! The one that had just been under her skirt doing god only knows what.
At this point my mouth was hanging open. Had he? Was he? Did he? OH my god yes he did! As I watched he picked up several donuts and set them down, finally they made their selections and left. I immediately pulled every single donut in the case and trashed it. I just couldn’t stand idly by while customers bought food that I KNEW for a fact was contaminated and I couldn’t just pull a few that I suspected he had touched and feel good about it. In all fairness the donuts were probably already contaminated at that point as the customers were pretty nasty but the fact that I had seen them get touched by senor stinkfinger just made it worse.
Naturally I was chewed out by the bakery manager, even after I explained what I had seen and that I had an ethical obligation to make sure customers didn’t eat things that could possibly make them sick. Apparently the health and safety of customers came second to food cost.
Walmart was truly one job I NEVER regretted quitting.
