My roommate and I watched the horror movie “Final Destination 3” last night. For those of you unfamiliar with the series, it’s about a group of teenagers who narrowly escape getting killed in a horrible accident. But Death, refusing to be cheated, hunts down and kills every last one of them in spectacularly gruesome freak accidents.
Instead of being horrified as you watch these hapless kids get decapitated, squashed, run over, and blown up – you can’t stop laughing. (I especially liked how the junior lounge lizard’s character gets his brain pan excised by an engine fan, Classic.) It’s a testament to the filmmaker’s skill that something so terrible can be played for laughs. Let’s face it, life is full of hazards. You can obsess yourself into a straitjacket or you can laugh it off. In the end, other than exercising normal prudence, there’s nothing you can do. When your number’s up – it’s up!
And that got me thinking. A restaurant can be a very dangerous place. There are literally a thousand ways to die. Hmmm, maybe I can pitch this to some LA types……..
Final Destination 4 – The Bistro
“The grill man slipped on a tomato and back flipped into the deep fryer? I told you guys to sweep up! Now we have to change the oil!”
A customer’s surfing the internet on his Dell laptop when the battery explodes igniting his brandy and flambéing him tableside. Dammit. I told Fluvio to turn off the Wi-Fi. It’s nothing but trouble. Better turn up the fans.
“You can’t breathe? You want me to call 911? You’re allergic to pine nuts? So sorry……….”
An exotic bug from South America hitches a ride on a produce crate, ends up as a salad garnish, and bites a patron. The customer dies a week later from explosive flatulence. Oops.
“Officer, I was making cherries jubilee when it all went horribly wrong.”
“The waiter’s sleeve got caught in the industrial meat grinder? Better put an ad in the help wanted section.”
“If you order the Steak Tartare you have to sign a waiver. Listeria? Salmonella? Never!”
“You locked Felipe in the walk-in freezer? Better thaw him out before the health inspector shows up.”
A stray champagne cork goes down a loudmouth patron’s gullet and chokes them. Good shot!
Employees must wash hands before returning to work? “Mrs. Wilson died of typhus? In this day an age? Jeeeezz………I don’t know how that happened.”
“The unrefrigerated butter somehow cultured a particularly nasty strain of flesh eating bacteria? Poor Mr. Jones. He came here to get something to eat – but something ended up eating him. Is that irony?”
“Your honor, the chef’s knife throwing demonstration didn’t work out as planned.”
“Waiter, there’s a tsetse fly in my soup.”
“I told Fluvio to fix that ceiling fan! Tell the hostess we’ll have a free table as soon as the bus person cleans this up. Now where did that guy’s head go?”
“I don’t know what happened! I just gave the man his check! Call 911!”
“But sir, it’s only a wafer thin mint.”
Can you think of other spectacular ways to make a restaurant your “Final Destination?” Feel free to elaborate in the comments section.
How about “A drunkard drops their glass of wine, jumps up, runs to the washroom, skids on the tile because of their wet shoe soles, trips, bounces their head off the sink, and ricochetes off into a toilet stall and drowns.”
LOL at the freezer. When I was a server, I always had a secret fear that I would get stuck in there: someone pushing a chair in the way or whatever. The freezer was right next to the back door, so they could easily put trash cans there and not even think twice about the fact that someone may be in there.
What a way to go. Brr.
In retirement central the little ol’ lady driving through the restaurant is one way to go.
Hahaha, how I love those Monty Python references… Classic.
We have a floor to ceiling stock area that you literaly have to climb the wall all the way to the top to get the straws and napkins.
I’m a big Six feet Under fan so I’ve always had this secret fear off climbing that damn wall and slipping bashing my head against the other side and nobody finding my dead body body until someone comes looking for me to pick up a table.
Officer: So How did she die?
Coworker: She was reaching for straws.
I got locked in a walkin while attempting an attitude adjustment. lol. Luckily I had a cell phone and it got service inside the metal box!
Another time my sous chef was sauteeing with liquor. he was playing at having the fire ignite the stream. when it ignited the vapors inside the bottle popped the cap out and dumped alcohol all over the burners. it was quite the fireball.
But the closest I have ever come to death was when we were heating some sauce in a pan with a whisk. A while later we were walking down the line and heard a loud bang. puzzled, we searched for the cause. turns out that the whisk had just been through the dishwasher and had moisture in the handle. this was slighty over a flame. as the pressure built up the metal cap eventually shot out of the top made a dent in the wall on the other side of the restaurant and landed in the sink at the end of the line. It weighed a good ounce and probably would have killed either one of us had we been one step closer
Dude you should get another job, the world wants you gone
There’s probably about 40 different ways to kill someone with a wine key. Not that certain tables have caused me to spend time contemplating this, or anything…
While working in a S texas kitchen in August i had to call the paramedics to treat a case of Hypothermia and frostbite. An intoxicated/stoned waiter has stolen a piece of chocolate cake and slipped into the walk in freezer to eat it. he then proceeded to pass out. His cheek was frozen to the floor by his own drool.
LMAO! @ the “wafer thin mint” one.
When I was a kitchen manager, I once accidentally set the underside of the stove on fire. It had never in, oh probably 20 years, been *cleaned*. I was melting butter, and some upper management jerk needed me *right then*, and the damn butter spilled over about half a second later. Everyone then spent 20 minutes dithering how to handle it until we found a guy who’d used a fire extinguisher before. >.> still couldn’t get them to give me fire training.
My worst injuries were: slamming my finger in a hot case door when I was a barista, and burning my forearm on an oven door. The first resulted in multi-lingual cursing for 20 minutes and my finger taped up for a week. The other won me a 2nd degree burn and a scar. Just first aided and kept working. KMs don’t got to the ER if they aren’t dying!
Hmm…how ’bout:
“I open wine bottles all the time! The opener’s never slipped before…he was a bad tipper, though, so no loss.”
RE: #8 – Colin, You are onto something there…