Domino's Charges Two Workers for Contaminating Food
Domino’s is making an example of food pranksters Kristy Lynn Hammonds and Michael Anthony Setzer. In a YouTube video, Domino’s president of U.S. operations, Patrick Doyle, stated Wednesday that the pizza chain is taking the two employees' prank of contaminating food and filming it as “incredibly serious.”
The Conover, North Carolina franchise completely shut down on Tuesday to sanitize the store, dumping all unpackaged food. The County Public Health department inspected the pizzeria twice.
Doyle stated emphatically in the video, “It sickens me that the actions of two individuals impact our great system, where 125,000 men and women work for local business owners around the U.S. and in more than 60 countries around the world.”
According to MediaPost, the Domino’s brand has indeed taken a major hit from Monday evening’s incident.
“BrandIndex shows Domino's Pizza's "buzz score" -- which measures response to the question: "If you've heard anything about this brand in the past two weeks, was it positive or negative?" -- as dropping from 22.5 as of April 10 to 13.6 as of Tuesday. The drop was mainly driven by negative perceptions expressed by women, the service reports.” - MediaPost
Besides the perceived problems of food sanitation, one of the pranksters, Kristy Hammonds, was a registered sex offender. Regarding how a Domino’s franchise could hire a sex offender, Domino’s Doyle responded, “We are reexamining all of our hiring practices to make sure that people like this don’t make it into our stores.”
Few franchisees of any brand conduct pre-employment screening.
Doyle says in the video, “They have been dismissed and there are felony warrants out for their arrest.”
Both later turned themselves into the Conover Police Department at 3:30pm, where they were placed under $75,000 bail in secured bonds and could see up to a year in prison. (See text of applicable NC law)
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Related Reading:
- Two Domino's Employees Fired Over YouTube Prank
- Domino’s employees charged with contaminating food
- Large cheese pizza, hold the snot
- Domino’s Press Release
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