Hotel chef fired for boasting on Instagram that he feeds meat to vegans

boing
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Is it?

First, if someone jokes around and then says it was just a joke, is there really reasonable doubt? I’d rather call that “unreasonable” suspicion.

Second, if there is reasonable doubt that you are murdering people, you will not be punished unless it can be proven beyond reasonable doubt. Why should people be forced to have a career change if there’s no real reason to believe that they actually did something like that?

Okay, so it might not be a forced career change, because the next restaurant might just hire him because they know he’s innocent, and the Internet lynch mob will never find out that the new chef at that other restaurant is the same guy. Which only goes to show that firing him didn’t make much sense in the first place - if he was actually in the habit of preparing stealth anti-vegan dishes, why shouldn’t he continue?

Sure. A wage slave sullied the reputation of his masters by saying something in public. And the master’s reputation is valuable to the master, so the master must act to protect it.
How about “We’ve investigated the matter and found no evidence that this was anything more than a joke in bad taste. Furthermore, the work processes in our kitchen ensure that it would be impossible for a single employee to slip in any unwanted ingredients without other employees noticing”?

Anyway, the reason the managers feel forced to fire people over things like this is the Internet lynch mob that demands blood. And I won’t participate in that, even if I was convinced that the person in question was an asshole.
Keeping a job is not a luxury, so it should not depend on how often you’re an idiot outside your job, on your political views, or whether you get into fights with vegans, Arcturans or the entire Orion Syndicate on the Internet.

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I used to teach anatomy labs that used donated human cadavers.

If we found out that one of our students had been “joking” online about treating the bodies disrespectfully, they would have been thrown out of the class instantly. Regardless of whether or not they had actually done anything.

Why?

Because it endangers the future cadaver supply.

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As a customer yes, i’d have a doubt i’d judge reasonable.

I tend to have the reasonable doubt threshold quite high.
This means that i find very difficult to be sure about a conviction, for example.

On the other hand, you have to take action in some way, or it would be impossible to administer any kind of justice.

Anyway in this case i think that just casting the doubt is enough to deserve what happened.

Most likely they just won’t care. Or they may be a steakhouse, they could even use it as a publicity stunt.

Oh, this is a distinct possibility.
But from the manager’s perspective it does make a lot of sense, since this will be someone else’s problem (one of the less visible things in the universe, as you may know).

In this case i don’t buy the working class rethoric, i find it somewhat contrived (supposing i can use this word in this context).

If that was the case it could have been a solution.
Maybe it is the case but the manager choose the easier way, thinking that the public would just assume a cover-up.
Maybe it is not the case (i reckon it would be quite hard to be sure that a single employee could not slip something in the dishes without alerting some other employee beyond any reasonable doubt, ehm…) but either way i don’t see much of a problem with the decision.

I would have called it a lynch-mob-firing if it was about something unrelated to work.
Say he was reading the mein kampf while sauteeing the main dishes, or went to work wearing KKK outfits.
In this case it is more a “now eveyone knows that, you idiot” firing, the angry mob is just a consequence.

As i said, in this case i think he has been an idiot inside his job.
Regarding the Orion Syndicate, the solution would have been surely different and much more definitive…

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And if wealth and privilege allows someone to be forgo meat, why is that a bad thing? Here’s a tip. Try not calling people wackos for their personal (and harmless) preferences.

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I could’ve helped with that.

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I really appreciate that reassurance. One summer I worked in a chain restaurant and the only thing I ever saw that I’d consider mistreatm of customers was the manager who chopped fruit and vegetables with a lit cigarette dangling from his mouth. If he did drop any ash it wasn’t intentionally directed at anyone.

To this day though I consider the best part of that experience to be an appreciation of just how hard people in the food industry–even the chains–work.

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I’m not going to name the restaurant cause the guy responsible was quietly sacked and is now unemployable in the food industry.

This cook made all the vegan food at an omnivore taco joint. Vegans loved the tacos.

He was frying everything with a bunch of duck fat. So yeah it was fucking delicious, but not. Vegan.

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Addendum: it wasn’t just about maintaining the supply of corpses.

For the cadaver classes, we’d begin in our normal classroom, then march them over to the anatomy labs. But before we entered the anatomy building, I’d stop them on the lawn outside and deliver a speech that went roughly like this:

“Before we go in, I need to tell you that if I hear one zombie joke or see an “Alas, poor Yorick” routine, I’ll be dragging you out of the room so fast that your feet won’t touch the floor. These are people, their decision to donate was fucking heroic, and they deserve your goddamned respect. Y’all hear me?”

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I think what goes on in chains is entirely down to the franchisee or whether it’s a franchise or corporate. I’ve never worked corporate or chain places. Doesn’t sound fun for the most part. But I’ve heard some crazy shit. Mostly about abuse of employees, by shit franchisees. But there are a lot of chains where the kitchen is entirely staffed by teenaged boys. Which is a recipe for gross disaster.

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If it reveals a weak character flaw, like untrustworthiness or lack of self-control, I say fair game on social media.

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Shit, I had a dentist once who did that.

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I find that almost all food contains vegan ingredients. Isn’t that good enough?
If god didn’t want us to eat animals, he wouldn’t have made them out of meat! /s

But seriously, I would have fired that chef too.
I would also hire him without reservations.

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I’m sure you RTFA, but in case you didn’t, it might interest you to learn that the hotel initially did just that. From the linked news article:

The hotel initially suspended the chef after insisting his comments were only made “in a heated moment” and that “this practice has never taken place.”

But yeah, the “internet lynch mob” demanded blood.

But the rage from the vegan community only intensified, with many calling on customers to boycott the hotel… The chef’s suspension was then escalated to a termination. The hotel chain released a statement saying they had investigated the accusations and while no evidence to the claims was found, due to Lambert’s comments regarding “specific dietary requirements” the company has decided to terminate his contract.

Before I get to the “meat” (ha ha) of my argument defending the hotel management’s decision, I want to address this small point:

Nobody’s going to buy that. Commercial kitchens are very busy places, and the cooks have a lot to concentrate on without constantly second-guessing what their co-workers are doing down to the smallest detail. If one of them decided to keep a small packet of lard in their pocket to dab onto the odd vegan dish now and then, that could go on for a remarkably long time without anyone (except the sickened vegan customers) being any the wiser.

Since most people realize this, the position of chef or line cook (or even server) is a position of considerable trust. Food can be contaminated (accidentally or maliciously) at any stage by any of those people, and as restaurantgoers, we are obliged to trust that the vast majority of food-service employees aren’t spitting in or otherwise adulterating our food. This is the reason why food prep and service is so heavily regulated, mostly to protect from unintended contamination, since the prospect of other people pissing in the punchbowl is so offensive to most people that we’re obliged to believe it’s pretty rare, otherwise we’d never eat out again. But it’s a touchy subject, and food customers are understandably sensitive to such jokes… because the people who fuck with food are rare, but they’re not that rare. And everyone knows someone who knows someone who has either done it, or had it done to them.

As a food-service employee, one is supposed to take the public trust inherent in the job 100% seriously. Messing with that trust undermines public trust not just in the cook, but in the kitchen that employs that cook. The guy’s inconsidered rage-post directly affected his place of employment, and so he was let go. That’s the way this cookie properly crumbles. If the guy worked at a hospital and made jokes that he liked to molest patients under anesthesia, that would also be a fireable offense, though of a greater degree. If the customers can’t trust the institution (be it hotel or hospital) to protect their health and safety from the actions of mischievous employees, the customers will understandably avoid that institution like the plague, and so the institution needs to protect its reputation against such mischief.

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Liked for the subtle Scott Pilgrim reference.

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But maybe…

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I understand the call for respect and it is in no way undermining my desire to donate my mortal remains but I’d love the thought of my dead ass being the butt of jokes.

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A chef joking that they’ve contaminated food almost as bad as doing it and should have the same consequences as though it were a confession.
The “for the record I have no issue with vegans” comment appears to be a toal lie, which makes me doubt the authenticity of his claim that he didn’t really soil the dishes he was serving. If he’d said “yeah I do have an issue with vegans but I’d never do that” then I’d be more compelled to believe him. What a prick.

This behaviour reminds me of the shitty people who’d walk up and down the harry potter book release queue shouting out plot spoilers that may or may not be true, tainting the reading experience for the group because they’re waiting to see if it was a lie or not.
Also reminds me of the sick attitude of those army jerks who dipped their ammunition in pigs blood to make what are already deadly rounds even more offensive to the enemies they were targeting (and the civilians who lived in those areas) for religious reasons.

Going above and beyond the call of shitweasel.

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“For the record I have no issue with vegans.”

Well, he did have a beef with at least one vegan.

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I agree with all of the above that you stated. But that said…what we should or should not do/say and what is allowable to be punishable by law are two different things.

I always remember how a middle school principal was brought before the school committee to face disciplinary charges for having a photo show up on Facebook of her and her husband at a wedding. The table had bottles of wine and glasses with wine in them and a parent brought up allegations that this showed the principal was in fact a alcoholic who shouldn’t be trusted with children. She had done nothing illegal, and yet her she was facing a committee, discipline hearing, and potentially being fired from her job.

Being fired for saying something stupid is wrong. Punished as in written up, disciplinary action, sure. To be fired you’d have to have said something beyond just stupid.

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So don’t.

Look, I"m an ass. People of the same race, gender or diet preferences are not asses because they share that with me. If other people are asses, it is just because they’re asses. MAYBE they express their assness through their cultural lens, correlation, causation and all that. Plus I’m only an ass in some situations.

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