Theresa Rodgers found an unexpected surprise when she sat down to lunch at the Duke Hospital South Food Court Oct. 12.
To her dismay, Rodgers took a bite of her turnip greens, only to find that she had chewed off the better half of a cockroach.
After Rodgers discovered the insect she turned the greens over to a supervisor at the Food Court. Rodgers, a medical assistant, said the supervisor issued an apology the following day, along with three meal passes to the Duke South Food Court.
She said she initially accepted the passes, then returned them, refusing to dine at the same eatery at which she had found the roach.
"Nobody wants to take this matter seriously," she said. "[Sanitation] is very important. You're serving the public and the sick and things have to be right."
Food served in the Duke South Food Court is first prepared in the Duke Hospital North Food Court and then transported. The location of where the cockroach entered the turnip greens is unknown.
When asked about the tainted food, Eddie Anderson, an assistant manager with the hospital's dining services, initially said he had "no documentation" of the incident ever occurring.
"It's all hearsay," he said. "If something like that would have happened it would have been made extremely public really quickly."
It is normal protocol for a complaint to be documented, explained Fred Bissinger, the University's resident district manager for ARAMARK Corp., the Philadelphia-based company that also operates some of Duke University Medical Center's dining facilities.
Later, however, Chris Collom-a spokesperson for ARAMARK-apologized on behalf of the company for the cockroach incident and explained that the company will look into the situation immediately.
The root-cause investigation entails pulling, inspecting and disposing of the product in question, notifying the supplier of the food, inspecting the kitchen and serving areas and interviewing staff members, Collom wrote in an e-mail.
For the past few years, ARAMARK has come under fire from Duke students and Dining Services administration. In the past two years, both the Duke University Student Dining Advisory Committee and Duke Student Government have voted "no confidence" in the company and its food service on campus.
ARAMARK's administrative personnel in DUMC, however, operate completely independently from their counterparts in the University's Dining Services.
Although most customers of the Duke South Food Court surveyed said they had never experienced any problems with the food or questioned the cleanliness of the facility, a few patrons did raise concerns.
"Cleanliness is my biggest complaint," said Irvin Eisen, a data processing specialist for the Center for the Study of Aging.
Rick Sloan, who also works in the Center for the Study of Aging, raised similar concerns, noting that sometimes trash is "piled up."
Other customers noted that the area does not look clean at times.
The North Carolina Department of Health issued each of the Hospital Food Court eateries a grade of 90.5 after a random quarterly inspection Sept. 26. Any sanitation grade higher than 90 is issued an "A" mark, however the scale goes up to 102.
On West Campus, Alpine Bagels received a 96.0, Chik-Fil-A received a 94.5, the Great Hall received a 94.5 and The Loop received a 97.0 after the last round of inspections.
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