Korean Job Discussion Forums

[babtangee]

Was eating in a restaurant on the weekend. One of the customers started yelling at the waitress. Apparently he had found teeth marks in the radish kimchi sidedish on his table.

"YOU DON'T THROW THE SIDEDISHES AWAY?" He demanded.

"We do," the waitress feebly declared.

"So what's that?!"

"Sorry..."

Ech... Be-Ware the tainted restaurant sidedish, my friends... one of your students may have been sucking on that piece of kimchi the night before.

[Tiberious aka Sparkles]

Maybe it was a rat what did it.

[JongnoGuru]

Some Koreans I've asked swear up and down that this isn't common practise. But wives 'recycle' kimchee and everything else from the dinner table at home in front of everybody and no-one gasps at eating leftovers. Who would? So where there's a financial incentive and the kitchen door is closed... (they should really go the extra mile and pluck out the half-chewed pieces, though)

[laogaiguk]

I've just always assume they do this, so I don't think about it now (took awhile at the beginning). I am sure most places don't though.

[charlieDD]

I've heard this was a big issue a few years back: like the kind that gets on the national news as a scandal, with hidden cameras recording it and such.

They apparently showed restaurant aujumma after restaurant aujumma scraping uneaten rice back into the rice cooker, and doing similar with uneaten side dishes.

I never eat any side dish when I eat out; flat out. I simply don't trust them. I worry about the rice too, but . . you gotta eat something! I try to go to decent places, though I know that doesn't necessarily mean you've got a decent kitchen staff behind the facade.

I once saw a worker at a Burger King in Seoul picking through the garbage collecting the ketchup packets that hadn't been used. On top of the bin was a small plastic container with a note asking customers to put unused ketchup packets in it. I called the Burger King customer service line in the states about it. Noticed the plastic container and note went away; have to trust they stopped collecting the packets from the garbage.

Related: I've been told that the U.S. Army stopped allowing the aujushi barbers on Yongsan and other posts in Korea to give shaves because they simply couldn't get them to follow the policy of using disposable razors and then disposing them after each, single use.

[Novernae]

[Tiberious aka Sparkles]

[Novernae]

[Tiberious aka Sparkles]

[Juregen]

If you had to go through War you would think differently about throwing away perfectly good food. *I hear my grandma say*

[khyber]

beyond me why princesses get as mad as they DO about this kinda stuff.

[charlieDD]

While extremely unlikely to happen . . . it has happened in the past ( e.g. the Tylenol thing in the . . uh 80's?): Once those packets are in the hands of somebody other than the restaurant staff . . .

For a restaurant like BK, poison introduced to one of their burgers or other products by a re-used ketchup packet would be disastrous. This and the unsanitary factor is why, while a waste, big chain restaurants don't collect up un-used packets of any sauce, ketchup, dressing - - even if you try to give them back (they'll take them back, but their staff is trained to smile, take them back, thank you, and then throw them away . . so I've heard.) (Once I tried to return paper bags to a Wegmans cashier - - several dozen neatly folded - - and she told me while I was welcome to recycle the bags for my own re-use, it was company policy that she could not re-use them for another customer's groceries - - because of the possibility of contamination, accidental or intentional.)

The germs factor concerned me; but it was the unlikely, but possible intentional poisoning factor that got me to call BK's customer service line.

[periwinkle]

My husband absolutely hates to eat at kim bap jips for this reason. He is as frugal as you can get, so for him to refuse to go to a cheap restaurant is a big deal. He insists on going to "clean" restaurants, and he says you can tell the cleans ones because the kimchi comes in a neat, tight roll. We don't eat out much because he doesn't trust restaurants and their standards of cleanliness (he's a pretty relaxed guy, but the dirty habits of restaurant staff really bug him). OP, did the guy with the teeth marked kimchi get a free dinner, at least? I would've refused to pay.

[R-Seoul]

The OP�s story is pretty rank but I�ve always viewed Korean dining habits suspiciously. Think about it, if you�re dining with somebody and you both eat from the same side dish and let�s say that other person has hepatitis (not that far fetched considering the popularity of dodgy barber shops amongst the Korean male population) the chances of you catching it too would be fairly high in my estimation.

Don�t forget to get those jabs kids�

[Woland]