James went undercover as a pot washer
James the private investigator returned with another job that involved becoming part of somebody else’s workplace. This time he had been hired to look into a branch of a major high-street restaurant chain and went in as a new member of staff, working in the kitchen as a pot washer.
The work itself was exhausting. James said keeping up with the volume of dishes was a challenge, but the four-day placement also gave him plenty of opportunity to listen to the kitchen staff and watch what happened when customers complained.
He said he had seen enough during those four days that he personally would not go back to that particular restaurant. Scott and Chris were careful to make clear that James was talking about one branch rather than making a claim about every restaurant in the chain.
What happened when food was sent back
The most disturbing part of James’s account concerned food returned to the kitchen. He said a dish was not necessarily replaced with a completely fresh one. Sometimes the same food would simply be altered, reheated or cooked for longer before being sent back out.
James also said some staff boasted about retaliating against difficult customers. The stories he heard included spitting on food, dropping it and putting it back on the plate, or wiping it somewhere unhygienic before serving it again.
His practical advice was to change the food in a way that would make it obvious if the same plate came back. He suggested putting a large amount of salt on it before returning it, so a diner would know immediately if the kitchen had simply sent the same meal back out.
Several people working in restaurants messaged the show to stress that nothing like this would be tolerated in their own kitchens.
Listeners made the restaurant stories worse
The calls that followed did little to restore anybody’s appetite. Jasmine, who had worked at a luxury hotel, remembered a wedding where the kitchen had made more individual trifles than were initially needed.
Once the first service was over, the head chef tipped the surplus trifles into the rubbish. Around ten or fifteen minutes later, another request came through for more of them.
According to Jasmine, the chef simply retrieved the desserts from the bin, separated the contents from the other rubbish and spooned them back into glasses before they were served to guests. The rest of the kitchen staff watched in disbelief while the chef treated it as if nothing particularly unusual had happened.
Other stories included a steak allegedly being tenderised by somebody stamping on it.
Who was listening commando?
The show also followed up Scott’s admission that he sometimes went without underwear. They began asking callers outright whether they were listening to Radio 1 commando.
Kate, who was on a train, was not. John from Ringwood said he went commando almost all the time, apart from during exceptionally cold weather such as the recent Beast from the East. Nick from Andover was firmly in the underwear camp.
The completely unscientific survey ended up feeling surprisingly close to 50/50. Chris suggested Scott should simply announce at the beginning of each programme whether or not he was wearing pants, so everyone knew where they stood.
Before the show
Listeners also heard a little of what happened before 1pm. A recording caught Scott arriving tired and tense before the programme, with Chris trying to reassure him before they went on air.
It was a much less polished version of the usual opening: Scott saying he was tired, Chris trying to settle him down, and then the pair effectively deciding, despite everything, to get on with doing the show.
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