I didn't kill you.... You're Welcome!

[Writer Cath]

Not really sure if this person was a total SC, but it was a case involving a severe lack of manners.

Background: Since Tim Horton's is a restaurant type thingie, food allergies were of course a concern. We used peanut oil on our cookie sheets, so the food was out for anyone with nut allergies.

I was working the evening shift, 3-11, I believe. Nice shift, there's a dinner rush, then you've usually got plenty of time to get things organized and arranged so the midnight shift has a little less to do. Plus, usually there aren't any tour buses around this time.

Lady comes in with someone whom I presume to be her sister and asks me if the soup has any eggs in them because she's allergic.

I sort of immediately panic because I have no clue, so I tell her I'll go check. There was nobody else in line and drive thru was empty, so I check what kind of soups we have on today, then take off into the back.

I spent the next ten minutes or so finding the boxes with the appropriate soup mixes and learning more about egg and egg by product names than I ever wanted to deal with in my entire life while trying not to drop rather densely packaged boxes of soup on my head. Every few minutes, I also have to peer out in the front to double check that there aren't any more customers gathering. To my great relief, one of the soups we have on doesn't seem to have anything I can recognize as egg or egg related.

So I come out of the back, beaming and tell her that she does indeed have an option.

She orders that, pays, gets her food and all is right in the world and as there is no ambulance called, it's safe to assume there were no gastrological difficulties.

You'll notice the lack of a thank you, though.

Now I don't consider this going above and beyond the call of duty or anything and food allergies are a damn serious business and not to be messed with, but you'd think that someone taking ten minutes to double check would at least warrant a thank you or some other kind of acknowledgement.

Am I overreacting on this one?

[flybye023]

I don't think so. People with allergies know how hard it is to be able to go out to eat. One would think that this woman would have made some comment of appreciation. Positive reinforcement for the restaurant and all...

[Rapscallion]

A significant number of people with allergies ... don't.

One lackwit phoned us claiming that we'd added gluten to our wheatbran, what with us having added a warning that it does, in fact, contain gluten. She did her level best to tell us that she would die if she ate gluten, being a coeliac.

After some exchanges, the customer services person asked her if her doctor had given her a list of food to avoid. What had a doctor to do with it, asked the alleged customer. It turned out that she'd filled out a questionaire in the back of a magazine and it had proved she's got coeliac disease.

Most also don't know the difference between an intolerance and an allergy. Quite a number of people have intolerances to one degree or another - milk has a reaction on me similar to a chemical attack - but they're generally harmless.

Still, it sells the stuff.

Rapscallion

[SongsOfDragons]

Quoth Rapscallion

After some exchanges, the customer services person asked her if her doctor had given her a list of food to avoid. What had a doctor to do with it, asked the alleged customer. It turned out that she'd filled out a questionaire in the back of a magazine and it had proved she's got coeliac disease.

Rapscallion

This is why they should boot all those stupid hypochondriac quizzes from paranoid ladies' magazines. The only 'self-determining for a doctor's query' ones they should keep are pregnancy tests, Meningitis posters and those things that lead you from a to b to answer on what to do if someone falls down (epilepsy, diabetes, heart attack etc.)

[Arcade Man D]

I'll admit I've self-diagnosed my only food allergy, but that was because a small bite of crabmeat gave me the exact same reaction I get from a properly diagnosed allergy to grass pollen.

But I'll also make sure to say thank you when I ask someone to check if something has shellfish in it. Granted, I say thank you after I get my food anyway. Maybe that's why some places in the food court give me bigger helpings ^_^

[wagegoth]

I am gluten intolerant (NOT celiac disease), but the only way to prove it medically is to have me eat a bunch of gluten and then they take a biopsy of my intestines (yes, cutting into my body in a surgical procedure) and seeing if the sample shows signs of destruction and freaking out. My older son has the same problem.

Both of our doctors said flat out that if not eating gluten worked, then don't eat it. Getting the biopsy was a painful and excessive procedure for verifying a condition that would be treated the same way after the test as it had before.

However, if the symptoms were extreme and indicated celiac disease they would have had the test done.

[wagegoth]

And many people with allergies seem to believe (SCs are everywhere!) that the world should completely remake itself for them. They'll expect restaurants to provide meals just for them that would require the restaurant to clean and bleach much of the kitchen, and make everyone else in the restaurant wait, just so they can eat out. Then, when the diner is told that it can't be done, they go into full SC mode.

Have you heard how some schools here in the U.S. have a zero tolerance policy for peanuts? No student can bring in any form of peanuts (good-bye PBJ) if even one child has serious peanut allergies.

These children are so allergic that supposedly breathing in a few molecules of peanut will cause them to go into anaphylactic shock. So the parents demand that the school be peanut free.

My problem with this is that did the parents restrict the child to only their home and school? Of course, not! They take their children out in public, to restaurants, to friends' homes, even to grocery stores filled with peanut products, and somehow the children survive this.

Your allergies are your responsibility (as much as possible, someone wearing a ton of cologne around the office that you can't avoid is different).

People suck.

[Lace Neil Singer]

Quoth SongsOfDragons

This is why they should boot all those stupid hypochondriac quizzes from paranoid ladies' magazines. The only 'self-determining for a doctor's query' ones they should keep are pregnancy tests, Meningitis posters and those things that lead you from a to b to answer on what to do if someone falls down (epilepsy, diabetes, heart attack etc.)

On a lighter note, a mate of mine took for a laugh one of those magazine pregnancy tests and it came up positive. The problem? My mate is male.

[wagegoth]

Every man should read some Cosmo quizzes. They're scary and should be banned.

[Rapscallion]

I survived a decade in retail. There is little that terrifies me.

Rapscallion