Businesses usually survive based on reputation. One bad word and it’s easy to lose customers quickly. As such, many businesses take precautions when it comes to dealing with customers. However, there are always people who will try to take advantage of this.
Recently, a hotpot restaurant in Leshan City, Sichuan Province had their reputation jeopardized by a customer. Said customer claimed he had found a condom inside his dish.
According to Mr. Hu, he gone to the restaurant with a friend on 18th December. At that time, there weren’t many customers as it was rather late. However, as he was finishing up, he encountered a rather chewy piece of food. To his horror, it was a condom. Disgusted and furious, he called a server over. The server offered to help check the surveillance videos to find out what happened, but they were sitting in a blind spot.
The restaurant owners denied the allegation stating they always monitored their cooks. As such, the condom could not have come from them. However, the customers threatened to publicise the issue online, unless they were compensated with at least 10, 000 yuan (~RM6500). The restaurant owners argued that their allegation was baseless as condoms could not be cooked in hotpot.
As proof, they took a video of themselves cooking a condom in a pot. The condom was placed in a pot and boiled for 2 hours. As it turns out, the condom expands in the water, thanks to heat, before floating to the top. It no longer retained it original shape, looking more like melted film. However, Mr. Hu was not convinced by the experiment.
The incident unfortunately affected the store badly. The restaurant owner shared that their daily revenue had dropped drastically, from 6,000-9,000 yuan (~RM4,000-RM6,000) to just 700 yuan (~RM460). Needless to say, things weren’t looking good for the shop. However, on 23rd December, another restaurant owner contacted them about the issue. The person who ran a noodle shop shared that he had such an incident occur at his shop before, perpetuated by the very same man.
Apparently, Mr. Hu once visited the noodle shop consecutively for three days, before discovering a worm in the food. The shop was forced to compensate the man 500 yuan (~RM300). Once is an accident, twice is a coincidence. Emboldened, the two reported the issue to the police. After investigating, police found that Mr. Hu had put the condom in the food himself!
The 33-year-old man had apparently been dissatisfied with the prices of the store. As such, he tried to blackmail the shop, by purchasing a condom and pretending the store had put it in his food. Police are detaining Mr. Hu for 14 days. Netizens were glad the man’s scheme was found out and that the two restaurant owners were proven innocent.
Well, it’s certainly crazy to think that people would go to such lengths to avoid paying for food. Hopefully, the two restaurants can recover their reputations now that the issue has been cleared up!
Sources: China Press, Newsnpr, iNews, Weibo
