'It's definitely not coffee': Spitting-mad McDonald's worker causes health scare

new this morning a drive-through drama that first came to our attention in an email to our newsroom a woman claiming a fast food employee did something that was not only disgusting but probably dangerous our investigative team dug in said the story checked out 13 investigator darcy spears shows you the one thing many customers are afraid of the most does actually happen it's the kind of thing you hear about but don't think anyone would really do cynthia bear says believe it but no this actually happens to people it happened to me a frustrated worker might actually spit in your food here's cynthia's story yummy she's a single mom selling her handmade masks on etsy to help make ends meet she needs to stay home and help her young children with online school we live such a careful lifestyle we stay home we wear masks if we're out we hand sanitize we wash our hands we do curbside pickups we do school at home on december 22nd she drove through her local mcdonald's an independently owned franchise on tropicana and jones to treat the kids to some fries and a strawberry shake and i like to get a coffee an iced sugar-free french vanilla latte like this one only that day her usual drive-through experience was anything but well she cut me off halfway through my order and i just said i'm not done ordering i want to still order my drink and she goes well it's too late to order cynthia asked to speak with a supervisor he said he would take care of it and then they said which i thought was curious your your drink's not ready so you need to go to the third window curious but not yet concerned she drank the iced coffee only to get a nasty surprise when she was nearly finished when i felt that texture it's a slimy jelly like texture in your mouth and you know what that is and that's definitely not coffee i could see there was a lot more in the bottom of the cup and it was a pretty large amount that it was in my mouth cynthia's coffee contained mucus and saliva she believed came from the mcdonald's employee she had words with at the drive-thru to me it was like a threat on your life it really is we're all walking around wearing masks social distancing not going to school working from home and this person has the audacity to spit in directly into something that you're going to drink it is so dangerous she immediately called mcdonald's to report that her drink had been tampered with it seemed like either they didn't care or they didn't believe it and she said you know if you can bring me the saliva to you know and then you can make a statement if you want to she did ask for pictures also these are the pictures cynthia gave mcdonald's along with the rest of the spit that was in her drink i'm sorry you had to deal with that on that end of things and i know our you know side of the claim process getting information from mcdonald's was not the speediest by any means that's an insurance adjuster working for mcdonald's in a phone call recorded by both sides he tells cynthia about the surveillance video of the incident the angles are very clear but she acknowledged it so to me video or not she said she she did that i felt absolutely violated and i had concern about what you could potentially get from ingesting someone's spit so here you have a front-line restaurant worker who is choosing to be reckless and spit in people's food and drinks when knowing that they are at a very high risk for coven first of all it's unacceptable and absolutely it's reckless infectious disease specialist dr asher shazad if you check anybody's saliva you will probably find you know let's say close to 50 or maybe 100 or maybe thousands of germs right at that moment cynthia says it got worse later i realized that i was having symptoms from covid i got very sick got tested and it was positive this is cynthia's test result from december 27th five days after drinking the contaminated coffee there's no way of knowing if it came from the coffee but in her call with the insurance company she brought it up well i got coded from that besides the vast majority of it and usually with someone slips and breaks their arm it's usually really straightforward with my fists i don't even know where to start to be to be completely honest um you know i'm willing definitely to work with yet with this initial offer corporate office has offered me two free value meals and the insurance company offered me a 500 settlement no deal they talked again i mean i would say right after that i would double it and put it to a thousand cynthia calls that a slap in the face like i didn't matter mcdonald's told 13 investigates that no one was available for an on camera interview the franchise owner sent a statement which says in part when we learned of the incident we took the appropriate steps necessary to investigate the matter and immediately contacted local health authorities the employee in question is no longer with our organization we have apologized to the customer in this unacceptable incident and are taking action to ensure that this doesn't happen again mcdonald's has got probably the best training system in the world they train crew they train managers they train owner operators all on food safety as well as other things like managerial control etc and to have something like this sneak through is there's no excuse for it tim molson should know the certified food safety consultant worked for the mcdonald's corporation for 25 years as director of training development and operations consultant to franchisees he's also the past president of the nevada food safety task force and currently sits on the nevada restaurant association board this really shocks me it shocks me and i'm sure it shocks mcdonald's he explains that restaurant employees aren't even allowed to eat or drink anywhere near the food prep area you can't help but have some spittle come out at the time when you're eating and that also can cause a communicable disease the whole experience has put cynthia on the defensive every time she goes out to eat you don't know what they're doing back there you don't know if they're tampering with your food or not she's hoping her story raises awareness and standards for all everyone's shocked by this no one more than me darcy spears 13 investigates

Channel: KTNV Channel 13 Las Vegas

Views: 1,470,029

Keywords: las vegas, investigations, 13 investigates, darcy spears, joe bartels, tricia kean, scams, consumer alerts, consumer fraud, darcy spears investigates, 13 action news investigates, helping las vegas, helping people las vegas

Id: qG9i22OaAbM

Length: 7min 8sec (428 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 22 2021