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When you’re stuck in a toxic work environment with a boss or manager who just seems to not like you for whatever reason, it may be draining. Worse, imagine becoming a scapegoat and carrying the burden of blame every time someone makes a mistake.

Now, in this particular story, a mistake was recurrent. While working in a sandwich shop, this former employee and Redditor said that staff kept receiving complaints from customers about hair in their food.

“Every time a customer would complain about a long black hair in the food, my boss would immediately blame me without any hesitation or investigation,” the woman wrote in a post on the Petty Revenge subreddit. This happened despite the fact that she was “the only person who wore my hair up and netted.”

One day, the author had enough and decided to take matters into her own hands to prove she was innocent.

Image credits: RODNAE Productions (not the actual photo)

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Image credits: cottonbro studio (not the actual photo)

Bored Panda reached out to the author of this story who said that working in this sandwich shop was terrible. “We would get shouted at for things that weren’t our fault, for not doing tasks that we weren’t shown how to do, and your hours would be cut without explanation if the boss decided you’d upset him somehow,” she recounted.

“To be quite honest,” the Redditor continued about what was it like to work there, “I believe there was a lot of favoritism towards the Indian employees, as the boss was Indian as well. It was this way towards the Filipino and Chinese employees as well.”

The author recounted how they would be instructed to do all the prep and cleaning while the Indians socialized and played on their phones. “They got discounts and free food, we did not.”

When asked whether the members of staff had to wear head coverings, the author said that there was a rule about tying back/covering hair, but it was only enforced for her. “Honestly, I dyed my hair just for the fun of it, and then a friend pointed out that I couldn’t get blamed for the black hair in the food anymore,” she told Bored Panda.

Referring to her boss, she said “he was pissed off and hostile towards me the next few times he tried to blame me and realized he couldn’t.”

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When asked whether her boss did something about managing the issue of hair in customers’ food, the author said they didn’t. “The only time I got away from this was when I got pregnant and my boss started cutting my hours until I couldn’t pay rent anymore. I was so fed up that I quit without giving him any notice. Serves him right,” the Redditor concluded.

The author added some more information about the whole situation at her former work in response to these comments

If you ever eat out, the inevitable is likely to happen. Sooner or later, you will find a hair in your food which you know very well is not yours. The gut-wrenching feeling make you question possible scenarios, the grossness factor, and the next step – should you ignore it, do you take it out and pretend nothing happened, or do you call the waitress?

Meanwhile, Peggy Post, the etiquette expert, author and director of the Emily Post Institute, argues that in a restaurant, when you find something that doesn’t belong in your food – a hair in the butter, a worm on the lettuce or a fly in the soup – it’s best to quietly point out the object to your waiter and ask for a replacement.

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“Causing a scene by yelling at the wait staff will likely get you nowhere, and there may be something worse than hair in the next dish brought to your table,” she explains.

According to the FDA Food Code, the main goal for a food preparation and handling worker is to use a hair covering that will hold any dislodged hair in place so it doesn’t fall into food or onto equipment. Hair restraints like hair nets, baseball caps, or hats are acceptable to wear. However, according to the FDA Food Code, hair restraints are not required for servers.

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