On a related note, a pizzahut near me had a major cockroach infestation. So bad they were crawling up the walls in the open. The place shut down, and a couple years later Popeyes moved into the vacant building. The renovated the facade and interior, but I’m sure the legions of six-legged horrors are still there.
Definitely will not be going there. Eep!
(Edit for clarity)
If he was breaking in / trespassing then I could see your point: breaking the law to report law breaking is a tricky area. But he was allowed to be there and he had the key.
Who cares? It’s a fast food restaurant kitchen. There is no credible argument that he was e.g. revealing propriety information. He didn’t record anyone in violation of their expectation of privacy (except the rats of course). It shouldn’t be an especially dangerous place and if it was he was allowed to be there so it was already the resturant’s obligation to keep it safe for him.
I’m not 100% clear his intentions were “good”. His intent may well have just been to collect internet points rather than trying to address unsanitary conditions. But I’m not sure it really matters.
Example? Neither his presence nor the video could reasonably be considered to cause unjust harm to the Popeyes. I’m failing to see any liability angle here.
At least the rats look well-fed.
Yup. Popeyes: the anti-maskers of fast chicken food.
What makes you say that?
No spinach for blaqazzrick. You rat on Popeye at your own risk.
And those are capers - not rat droppings.
The restaurant is rightly closed due to the actions of the franchise owner.
You want it to be that simple but it’s not. Put yourself in the shoes of the person’s employer- this employee just destroyed your business in an instant, through no fault of your own. You could have this whistleblower’s back all the way to hell and back, but that means your business is done and you’re unemployed as well. I could run the cleanest restaurant in town and I don’t want a vendor who lets their employees think it’s ok to snoop around sticking their nose in things.
Even if someone thinks official channels wouldn’t work (I know a health inspector, and I’m pretty convinced it would) there are more anonymous ways of getting it out there.
I’m not sure why you would make this kind of assumption that the two places are so different. I also know people in the SD health-and-restaurant scene, and there absolutely are occasionally scenes like this here. We’re not so special, and neither is DC.
Remove the drama, and you ain’t got much there.
Anyone explored the possibility that he had already contacted the health department, and his employer?
So…the rats are there for decoration or something? This is the responsibility of the franchise owner.
If you look at the video, the rats are scurrying around in plain sight. The franchise gave the chicken vendor a key to make deliveries when nobody was in the store. By health inspection standards, there should not be rats in the restaurant where food is prepared, cooked, and served.
“It’s D.C.” just isn’t gonna cut it.
Lord help anyone who would eat at your restaurant, Quark.
If you can’t do BASIC SANITATION in a RESTAURANT… maybe you should find ANOTHER LINE OF WORK.
Perhaps I misunderstood, but my impression is that this person worked for a vendor, not the restaurant itself. If they work for the restaurant, then absolutely they should have whistleblower protection. If they don’t work for the restaurant, then they absolutely should have “ratted” them out, in a way that doesn’t make his actual employer look bad.
How about we stop acting like corporations who regularly exploit people deserve the same consideration as the rest of us who don’t.
Why would a vendor want to be associated with a restaurant with a rat problem?
The photos I saw included boxes of supplies. Popeye’s could make an argument (not a strong one, but an argument nevertheless) that he was disclosing proprietary supply chain information. I don’t know that they would be able to win a case like that, but they could try. More importantly, they could just stop doing business with this guy’s employer. This guy’s employer could lose business from other clients as well because of something like this. They would have no recourse for that loss of business.
Supply chain info isn’t proprietary.
I guess they could claim that, but it seems like an extremely weak argument. Supply chain information can be proprietary of course, but normally, proprietary supply chain information would be things like pricing and volume agreements. Labels on the side of boxes in the kitchen of a fast food chain restaurant? That seems pretty unlikely to be either valuable or actually secret. I would guess that level of information would be easily accessible to anyone who wanted it anyway.
Sure, but that is not “exposing his employer to all kinds of liability from Popeye’s”
I dunno, if someone warns me of a danger to my health, I think it makes him look rather good.
