The Consumer Complaints Blog

Here are a couple of incidents that happened about 3 years ago, but it pretty much turned me off of eating pizza for a long time. At least pizza that is not made at home.

I had injured my foot somehow. The method is not really important and I can’t quite remember anyway. The important thing is that I could only walk about as quickly as a turtle with a broken leg.

My wife and I were making our way home when we decided that we were both really hungry. Not having anything in the fridge we decided we’d stop and grab a pizza on the way home.

We were leaving the subway and I tell her to go ahead and get the pizza because it would take me a while to make my way up the stairs. She nodded and made a beeline for Pizza Pizza.

As I was hobbling towards the store, a stocky little guy passed me. He was carrying one of those bags that keeps pizza warm on a delivery. Being in the parking lot, I figured he was coming back from delivering a pizza.

This Pizza Pizza is at Yonge and Sheppard, and the kitchen is pretty visible from the outside, so I watched him while I waited for my wife.

He walked through the back door, entered the kitchen, put the pizza warmer bag on the counter, and grabbed a hunk of pizza dough to start kneading it with his hands. Hands that probably handled money from the customer, groped his steering wheel while he drove, and no doubt did other things hands do while he was in the privacy of his car, alone.

A pinky coated in a film of snot…fingernails packed with dandruff…his right palm speckled with a spray of mucus from a sneeze…I have no proof and I can only imagine. But it was enough for me.

I opened the side door, situated near the counter where my wife stood while she waited to be served. “Let’s go.” I barked, and without hesitation but puzzled, she left the store (I explained to her later why I acted that way.)

After vowing never to go to Pizza Pizza, we decided to try Pizzaville, also at Yonge and Sheppard. This was a few weeks later, at night.

The following is my wife’s account:

I order a medium pizza and chicken wings.

After taking my money and preparing the order, the cook shoves it in the oven to heat it. Seeing that this would take a while, he sits down to wait. I sit facing away from the kitchen and him, but I watch him in the reflection of the window. He’s far more interesting than the lifeless street outside.

It is a slow night, so he begins to work on some paperwork. Nothing wrong with that, right? He jots a few things down here and there, adds some numbers, then shoves an index finger in his ear to itch it.

Okay. that’s gross, but I’ll let it go. After all, he doesn’t know that I’m watching him, and everyone does it, right?

But he really gets into it.. He switches his pen to the other hand and shoves the other index finger in his ear. Then his pinky. He digs and pokes, twirls and picks, itches and scratches until finally, he’s satisfied. A sigh of relief quietly passes his lips.

Oh….just a second. His head is itchy now. The same hand that itched his ear now goes up to his head.

With a frenetic scratch, he looks at his watch and sees that it’s time to take my order out of the oven.

And he doesn’t even wash his hands. Just like the Pizza Pizza guy.

My wife is ashamed that she still took the pizza and chicken wings, despite watching all of this. She claims that he never actually touched the food with his hands, using utensils to put it in their boxes. But her claim doesn’t comfort me, and we haven’t gone back.

Yes, these two stories aren’t that bad you may think. I agree.

I’m not naive enough to believe food is always prepared in sanitary conditions. I know that my standards and expectations are set far too high for the norm. I know that the factory or restaurant environment is not as clean as it should be. But it’s the standards of staff, and their work ethic, that disgusts me.

Wash your hands if you’re going to be touching my food, especially if they’ve been picking your ass!

For those of you that don’t know, Highland Farms is a supermarket chain in Toronto. They do huge business as each store is massive. The store I’m talking about is located on Dufferin Street north of Finch in North York.

As soon as you walk into Highland Farms you think that the store is impeccable. Or just seriously anal. The fruit is stacked in neatly ordered piles. The shelves are well “faced” (to use an industry term that means that everything is lined up nicely). Even the floor is clean. All and all a very nice presentation but, as I found out, looks can be deceiving.

Here is what happened on Thursday, September 19th 2005. My wife, Jennifer, and I just moved to a new place and we needed to go serious grocery shopping. We went to Highland Farms because we liked shopping there (once or twice a week). Our over $200 bill included 5 kilograms (11.0231131 pounds) of ground pork. Yes, that’s a whole lotta pork.

Jennifer has allergies at this time of year so she can’t breath / smell too well. Remember that.

When we got home she divided the meat into portions and froze it so we wouldn’t have to go shopping so often. A point that the keen sleuths at Highland would find very puzzling the next day. She puts it in the freezer and saves a portion to cook for dinner.

So, I’m sitting at the computer working when I smell the stench of rotten meat, getting fried. Jennifer has no idea as she sneezes and blows her nose. I go to the kitchen and confirm that it is off. I get pretty pissed at this point. I feel totally ripped off. I gave this store my hard earned money and they sold me rotten food. Not only did they rip me off but they could have made me sick.

We can’t make it back to the store that same day because of an engagement but we head over on Friday morning.

We walk up to the customer service counter and are ignored for a bit while a few women in tidy green outfits chat about something irrelevant. (Green is the Highland colour in case you’re wondering.)

Finally one of them waddles over to us and says. “Yeah, can I help you?”

“We bought this meat yesterday and it’s rotten. We’d like to get our money back.”

She looks into the bag with a disgusted look on her face. “Why is it frozen?”

My wife and I both explain it to her. Her expression changes to a smirk of disbelief and she calls the meat counter manager over.

He strolls over. “Is the pork in the original bag with the seal on?” He asks her.

Yes. I brought it back because my alternate secret identity has super powers which allow me to smell through a sealed plastic bag.

Some days I really feel like people are just not trying. And I don’t mean at customer service. I mean in life in general. It’s like they’ve switched off their brains and are just coasting on neutral.

He then proceeds to rub the meat. Smells the meat. Tries to twist the frozen meat around in his hands all the time saying that this meat is not rotten. Oh, okay. So now I’m a liar too. The one behind the counter is laughing with him at why we separated it why it’s frozen. She ends with a snarl of her upper lip and a roll of the eyes.

At this point I’ve pretty much lost it. This company not only ripped me off. They sold me something that could make us sick, they insinuated that we’ve lied and laughed at us. Not once did they have the courtesy of apologizing.

But I know, this was all my fault. I’m just a scheming bastard. That’s what it is. I bought over $200 worth of stuff at this place and when I got home I felt bad. I then came up with a brilliant scheme. I went and found 5 kilos of ground pork and replaced it with the pork they gave me. I then wasted money on some Ziploc bags and separated the bags so I could take it back the next day and get my money refunded from Highland. Yup. I am a genius. What can I say?

After a bit of heated conversation with these two people who obviously did not care about us as people or customers, the manager comes over. He introduces himself as the manager and points to his nametag. Ahh…The Omnipotent One!

By this point I’m pretty much in no mood to deal with him. I just want my money back and I’ll never shop here again. I have a few exchanges with the manger. Nothing aggressive or anything but enough to tell him how I feel about his establishment and his employees. No apology once again. Just the same look of disbelief. (Why, oh why, is the meat frozen!??)

What is wrong with these people?

In the end we got our money back but that is really the least they could have done. It is the bare minimum when they ripped us off and sold us potentially dangerous produce.

If anyone at Highland Farms stumbles across this blog, here is a pointer on how it could have gone.

First of all, no company is perfect. I don’t care how careful you are, you are going to make mistakes. Don’t act as if there was no way the meat could be off. It was, and you didn’t seem to care that you could be hurting people. And I’m not saying the whole 5 kilos was off but contamination spreads.

Second. Say you’re sorry. It’s a simple thing but it goes a long way.

Third. Don’t assume that the client is lying. Why would I be trying to scam them with pork? There are many better ways to get money out of a company. I am just a consumer who wants his money back for bad produce. And look at the bill. I’m not exactly making a profit on returning the pork when the bill is $200+. Use your brains.

Finally. Give me a box of Ziploc bags because you made me waste mine.

If those simple things would have happened, we would have kept shopping there. I really don’t understand what was so hard for them. Instead we got cheated. Then laughed at and then called liars.

But it doesn’t stop there.

By the time I got home I was still very incensed at the whole experience. I wasn’t so mad about the pork but rather the way we were treated. And the fact that they didn’t care at all about the health implications of them selling this tainted meat.

So I decide to do something about it.

I decided to contact the city of Toronto’s service for reporting these incidents. Here is their website and phone number in case anyone else is having a food related problem.

http://app.city.toronto.on.ca/food2/index.jsp
416-338-FOOD (3663) between 8:30 a.m and 4:30 p.m., Monday-Friday.

So I call. They are actually very polite and they tell me that an inspector will look into it and get back to me by Monday. Great I think. Now someone will look into this and maybe Highland doesn’t have to get away with doing this to anyone else.

I get a call on Monday. The inspector tells me that he just visited them and he could not find anything wrong. He looked at all their paperwork and they have a good rotation schedule of only keeping the meat for 5 days.

He then proceeds to tell me that it could have been the pig’s diet which changed the smell.

Holy crap! Everyone has lost it. I’ve been eating meat my whole life and I know the smell of rotten meat. I don’t know if any of you have had the pleasure of ingesting meat that has gone off, but when you have it coming out of both ends for two or three days you pretty much remember what made you sick. What the hell could they have been feeding those pigs to make them smell like putrid flesh? Damn! Go inspect the farm then.

Of course I clearly failed to grasp his argument. I complained about rotten meat on Friday. The government went to the store on Monday and inspected the paperwork. Of course! That makes sense now. Not the meat. The paperwork! Because we all know that when a company puts something on paper, they always tell the truth. How stupid of me.

Basically he found nothing wrong and I am crazy after all. That makes me feel a lot better.

So in conclusion lets think about where we’ve come to as a society. The suspension of reality through bureaucracy, red tape and record keeping. It no longer matters what is real or truthful. If some quasi-official individual writes it down, it must be the truth.

The moral of the story being this: If this ever happens to you, eat the meat, go to the hospital and keep the records and then complain because you’ll at least have paperwork.

In conclusion. Highland Farms sucks.

As usual. Thank you for reading.