Sat, 09 Apr 2005 12:29:36
I got a finger for you, lady…
Lost of people have now talked about the finger found in a bowl of Wendy’s chili and how the latest is the cops are looking at the woman who made the claim.
Authorities are now taking a closer look at the woman who claims she found a finger in her chili at a Wendy’s restaurant in San Jose.
K-G-O T-V is reporting that police say they served a search warrant yesterday at the Las Vegas home of Ana Ayala. She’s the woman who says she bit into the finger in her chili on March 27th.In the warrant, police say that the finger could belong to Ayala’s deceased aunt.
San Jose police aren’t saying what they did or didn’t find at Ayala’s home.
Forensic experts found no match among 50 (m) million fingerprints in the F-B-I database.
Over at Wizbang, Kevin notes that It’s starting to look more and more like a shakedown. I agree.
I meant to blog about this from jump because I had a take no one else seemed to have. See, I worked at Wendy’s all through high school. I was Assistant Manager of the Western Avenue store in Albany NY by the time I graduated. I have made Wendy’s chili more times than I can remember, and I knew the finger story was bullshit the first time I saw it.
Wendy’s chili is about the most simple thing you can imagine once you know where they keep the ingredients. The meat is made up of damaged and left-over burgers from the day’s business. When you work the grill, if a patty breaks or the order is canceled before the sandwich is assembled, or you just cook too many, burn one, etc., the patty is tossed in a metal half-bin (about 9x10x4) that sits in the prep table next to the grill. It’s refrigerated, and when full transferred to the walk-in cooler. The next day, that full half- bin is taken to the back kitchen stove and dumped in a big ole bin that sits on the burners and is set to simmer for *hours*. The goal here is to cook it all uniformly and remove as much excess fat as possible. Then you take two spatulas and do one of the only fun jobs at Wendy’s: you chop and smash the meat until it’s all itty-bitty and small.
The meat is drained, and one then goes to the dry goods storage for a sealed pre-mixed packet of dried chili seasoning. Dump that in. Grab two cans of “chili tomato sauce.” Grab one can of light beans and one can of dark. Dump all that in. Then you go to the freezer for a bag of pre-cut, flash-frozen onions and peppers. Dump that in. Cook the whole thing for two hours or so, and bam...Wendy’s Chili.
If you have ever actually done the procedure, you’d know there is at NO time any way for a finger to slip it’s way in except in the cans of tomato sauce or beans. And because of the cans, the way you have to open and pour them...well, the odds of not seeing a finger? Something that is ten times larger than any other single thing in the mix? I cannot even fathom how the dumbest of all foodservice workers wouldn’t see it. You have to stir and stir and stir the chili for hours to make sure it’s all mixed according to specs. I can recall stirring a batch and recognizing particular pieces of meat by shape and color I had to stare at the batch so long. It just doesn’t seem possible to me to miss a finger. I suspect anyone else who has worked there knows just how silly the whole thing is as well.
I think the bitch is lying. I hope Wendy’s sues her and bankrupts her for the rest of her natural life.
Posted by JimK at 12:29 PM on April 09, 2005
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Categories: Other, The Stupidity Of Man, Crime and Criminals, Anna Ayala
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#2 Posted by jo-jo 
on 04/10 at 07:20 PM -
wow. that really makes wendy’s chili sound appetizing.
*HURL*
#3 Posted by Rann Aridorn on 04/10 at 10:01 PM -
Heh… I’m trying to think of how this process really differs all that much from making regular chili, Jo-Jo. n.- In fact, it sounds a little better since you’d be removing excess fat and such from it.
#4 Posted by Helo on 04/11 at 06:24 AM -
I linked to this, but my freakin’ trackbacks still don’t work.
#5 Posted by jo-jo on 04/11 at 01:36 PM -
rann - as far as i am concerned, food is born on my plate ;) i do bake things from scratch, but aside from that, i have cooked exactly one non-microwavable meal in my entire life (aside from pasta or mac & cheese or the like), and that was in high school! thankfully, i have a husband who is an amazing cook, and i don’t have to think about squishing meat to get the ooze out, etc. ;)
i hate wendy’s in general (i used to love their salad bars. sure, they weren’t sanitary, but i was in college, what did i care??), so maybe it was the left over wendy’s meat concept that got me (not left over meat… left over WENDY’S meat)… or maybe it was the way jim so graphically described it… i’m not quite sure ;)
#6 Posted by Kevin on 04/11 at 09:04 PM -
My, my, my, the way Wendy’s prepares it’s chili just sounds so appetizing…
#7 Posted by JimK on 04/11 at 09:17 PM -
I should clarify: It sounds worse than it is in my description. It’s pretty much all decent ingredients. The meat is 100% Grade A beef, Wendy’s only adds salt to their meat unlike other joints that engineer a patty.
The weirdest thing in it is the chili seasoning, which is pretty much just like any other, just in a bigger package.
I’ve always ordered the chili at Wendy’s because I know what’s in it and it’s pretty good!
#8 Posted by Rann Aridorn on 04/12 at 12:10 AM -
Ah want TACOS!
(This thought brought to you by watching Invader Zim and craving spicy beef.)
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May not just be a lawsuit. She could be looking at violation of a corpse, inducing a health hazard, all that sort of stuff.