What do you do when you find a hair in your food?

[Locut0s]

I posted this in a different forum I'm on and got some interesting responses.

My family and I eat out probably 2-3 times a week. That makes for over 100 meals a year. Now of those times we probably find a hair in our food about twice a year or so. So my question is when you find a hair in your food what do you do? If it's just one pull it out and keep eating "it's only a hair"? Kindly ask the waiter to replace the meal? Get angry and tell the waiter in no uncertain terms that this is unacceptable? This I find really mean but I have seen guys chew out waiters over a lot less :( Or nothing "if I complain they will spit in the next dish"?

Personally I fall in between remove it and keep eating and kindly asking for a replacement. If it's a long hair or I feel particularly put off buy it I would kindly point it out. However otherwise I think I would just remove it and forget about it. Hair is as about as clean a "foreign contaminant" as you can find in food anyways.

[Spinzonner]

1. Ask for a DNA test

[candle_bright]

2. Politely send it back for a new order

but I always closely examine identifying features of the food to make sure I could recognize it if they just take it in the back and pull the hair out themselves! B-)

[Blue Gardener]

3. Gag

It's a reflex, I can't help it.

[all.of.me]

19. ditto

<gag>

then i'd ask for a replacement. nicely, though!

[hyphenate]

4. I usually stop eating it

unless it's when I first take a bite, in which case, I would tell the waiter about it.

If I'm home and I find a hair in something, I know it's usually my own or one of the cats' hairs, so I'm okay with it for the most part. (I'm sorry if that disgusts some people, but those of us who are cat mamas understand that cat hairs often serve as condiments in our meals)

The thing that bothers me tremendously is less the hair, than if there are, um, cockroaches or other such creatures running around a restaurant. I once saw a cockroach crawl by on the booth next to ours at breakfast one time, and I never, ever ate in the restaurant again. I suppose that's silly, but I absolutely and totally despise roaches.

[HeeBGBz]

13. We have exterminators spray at least once a month

In the restaurant I work at, but the fkn roaches come in off the trucks on/in the boxes from the warehouses.

[hyphenate]

28. I know in some places

it's very difficult to get rid of them totally. It's worse in cities close to the water, for example. New York City, Chicago, Boston (home!), San Franscisco, for example; it must be a nightmare to deal with in thse places. Not only insect pests, but rats as well. Ugh. I'm sincerely glad I don't work in the food industry.

[Padraig18]

5. I politely send my food back.

Some things are just unacceptable, and that's one of them, IMO.

:)

[Nikia]

6. I usually just take it out

Hair happens sometimes. It falls out easily and is all around us. Sometimes, it might find its way into food.
If it were a pubic hair though, I think that I might be angry.

[SarahB]

7. At a restaurant...

I'd send it back. If it were a situation involving a person whose hair would be in my mouth otherwise, I'd just take it out and not care.

[HeeBGBz]

8. Be nice and tell your server

They are usually embarrassed/freaked that it happened and will try to make it right. (At least thats how I feel when someone tells me they found one) In many cases, your server isn't the one whose hair you found anyway (unless they don't have their hair pulled back and put up). In most cases, it's the server who pays the ultimate price of a lesser or non-existant tip and who has to take the wrath of the customer.

[shawcomm]

9. From the head, or if it looked like it was from other various bodily parts

Then again, I suppose it would also depend on if it appeared human. A big ole clump of rat hair might have me asking the waiter to replace it. ;-)

[Ilsa]

10. Disgusting comment....

it depends on how coarse and curly it is...in other words, does it look like a pubic hair?

Really bad restaurant story: This restaurant in town which serves alot of grill and chicken fried items caught someone on staff in the bad jerking off into the cream gravy, you know, make it extra tasty. The guy got arrested. The restaurant, no doubt, was one of the safest places to eat after that.

[amazona]

11. Oh. My. Gawd.

I don't think I've EVER found a hair in a restaurant meal. Of course I don't eat out as often as you do. And now I know why.

I would politely but firmly insist on another meal. I've never had a waiter object when a meal needed to be "fixed," but if for some reason the waiter wouldn't take the hairy meal back, I would then speak to the manager.

How can you eat food that has hair in it? The chefs etc. are probably wearing hairnets so it's probably a dog hair or something that really, really shouldn't be there.

Yurgh. My tongue is curling in horror even as we speak!

The conservation movement is a breeding ground of communists
and other subversives. We intend to clean them out,
even if it means rounding up every birdwatcher in the country.
--John Mitchell, US Attorney General 1969-72

[Locut0s]

12. Well the other forum I posted this question in, most people agreed with me

[qnr]

14. Let's see, the chefs are wearing hair nets, but they let dogs wander

around in the food preparation area? That certainly sounds likely :)

[amazona]

17. none of it sounds likely to me

I have to admit, I thought people finding flies in soup and hair on their sandwich was a comic strip convention of days gone by, not something that commonly happened.

Yikes! You guys are freaking me out.

The conservation movement is a breeding ground of communists
and other subversives. We intend to clean them out,
even if it means rounding up every birdwatcher in the country.
--John Mitchell, US Attorney General 1969-72

[candle_bright]

21. Trust me, it gets much worse than just hair!

I once had a used bandaid in a bowl of soup. Someone else I know bit into a biscuit and saw HALF a roach in the middle...meaning he had just bitten off the other half! :puke:

And these are just a couple of examples!

[qnr]

15. Pull it out and continue eating. I've been on all 7 big ones - After some

of the places I've eaten in, a stray hair doesn't worry me much.

[mike_c]

16. I never make a big deal about that sort of thing....

I pick it out and keep on eating. I mean seriously, what's the harm? My own hair regularly finds its way into my food, as does hair from my cats. Most cooks make a real effort to keep their hair out of food, but it happens occasionally. No big deal, IMO.

[amazona]

18. I somehow manage to cook dinner every night w/out hair

I expect a well-compensated restaurant chef to be able to do the same?

I can't even believe that this is open to argument. I would feel like the Weenie of the Year if I found a hair in my food and I didn't speak up.

The conservation movement is a breeding ground of communists
and other subversives. We intend to clean them out,
even if it means rounding up every birdwatcher in the country.
--John Mitchell, US Attorney General 1969-72

[Phentex]

29. It would not bother me in the least.

I'd just remove it and keep eating. There's no gag factor for me.

[Freebird12004]

20. I'm not eatin that !

But I'd never make a scene. If I still had an appetite I'd ask for a replacement meal or skip straight to dessert.

[Philosophy]

22. It takes a lot more than a hair to spoil my appetite.

I just pick it out and keep shoveling it down. Anything less than dead rat or a severed finger doesn't phase me.

[Magrittes Pipe]

23. If I'm at a Belgian restaurant, I EXPECT to find a hare in my food.

[Withywindle]

24. I'd just pick it out. No biggie.

:shrug: What's the big deal about hair?

Now if it was a bug or a used bandaid or something disgusting like that I would definitely send it back (politely!)

[FloridaPat]

25. If it looks like mine, I just remove it. Otherwise, it goes back.

[Borgnine]

26. I start screaming "there's a hair in my food!"

Then I run out of the building and I keep running and running. I just keep running until they find three hours later collapsed at a construction site.

[Kat45]

27. I still remember this one time I found a hair in my food in a Chinese

restaurant. This was about 25 years ago, and I still remember it vividly. My boyfriend and I used to go to this place frequently and have luncheon specials. One day his father came with us. Now you've got to understand, these were huge Polish men with appetites to match (my boyfriend was 6'4"). Our meals came, and when I looked down at my plate, I saw a black hair that looked like it came from a Chinese person. At about the same moment, I heard the very loud sound of someone hocking a phlegm in the kitchen. Needless to say, my appetite totally disappeared (as I looked down at the yellow egg clumps in my rice). My boyfriend and his father immediately took my plate and split the food between them. I don't know what happened to the hair.

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

30. Groom it

Duh...

[Asteroid]

31. Wouldn't pay

Then go to another restaurant, or go home.