Complaint Review: Red Lobster - Lawerenceville New Jersey

DISCLAIMER: I am NOT an official representative of Red Lobster Seafood Company or any affiliates. I am not authorized to, nor do I purport to, speak on the Company's positions or policies as a whole, but are answering concerns based on my experiences and understanding as a current employee of The Company. Any remarks made by me should be taken as my opinion, and not as the official view of Red Lobster Seafood Company.

Yes, I realize this report was from six years ago, a good year before I was hired, but I know from working in several different restaurants that even when we were a Darden concept, the service and managment staff always strove for excellence.

I am a current employee, and let me tell you, whether you're a patron at a retail store or a restaurant, you NEVER get good results from making a scene. Sure, you may get what you think you want, but at what cost? You've shown your inability to act like a decent person overshadows your understanding that we live in a world populated with things and people we find inconvenient at times.

If there are bugs in something like a salad (ie ladybugs that naturally live in fields, and not something like a cockroach or other "invasive species"), it means the lettuce was not prewashed as well as it should have been. On the flip side, this also means your lettuce is not treated with as harsh of pesticides as most produce, which many people view as a positive thing, but your opinion is your own.

 This may come as another shock to you, but our produce is handled by human beings who can be less than perfect. Have you caught your breath from that surprise yet? Good. Now before you make any problems for yourself and get yourself blacklisted from every restaurant in town, I suggest you take a minute to put things in perspective. Judging by your description, yours is the life I want to have someday. I REALLY wish that the biggest inconvenience in my life, the MOST MAJOR THING IN THE WORLD THAT WAS CAUSING ME SO MUCH GRIEF was that I was in a place where I could readily afford to have someone not only cook for me, but bring me my food and drink and wash my dishes, and I found a small problem with my food. Because let's be honest; it's not as though she found a shard of glass or something TRULY dangerous. Are ladybugs undesirable on your plate? Absolutely. Would she have died had she ingested it? Most likely not.

I'm not saying the problem was well-handled, but I AM saying your solution would have caused more harm than good. Health departments publish reports regularly, and Red Lobster has its own internal health inspections between to ensure all restaurants are up to snuff. Wait until your restaurant fails a full inspection before trying to take food and money away from hardworking people who are just trying to get by, OK?

Thanks for reading.

"A diner injured by shards of glass at a Red Lobster in 2009 does not need to prove negligence on the part of the waiter who dropped a plate and injured her, New Jersey personal injury attorneys report. In Clark v. Darden Restaurants Inc., 11-cv-1056, a federal judge ruled that New Jersey resident Darryl Clark had a reasonable expectation of safety while dining in the restaurant. In addition, the server who dropped the plate had a duty to avoid dropping breakable plates on a patron’s table, creating a potentially dangerous situation.

Clark was having lunch with a friend at a Red Lobster in Lawrenceville when a server, Stephen Harrison, dropped and broke a plate on their table. The plate shattered, and glass shards became lodged in Clark’s eyes. He was treated by paramedics immediately following the incident, and later underwent surgery to fix his damaged corneas. His ophthalmologist claimed that Clark’s injuries were almost certainly caused by the “glass foreign bodies related to the restaurant.”

With the help of New Jersey personal injury lawyers, Clark sued Red Lobster in federal court. He claimed that not only did Red Lobster owe him a duty of care, but also that the restaurant and the server were negligent in safety matters. Under the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur, the plate was under the control of Harrison, a Red Lobster employee, and Clark contributed nothing to his own injuries. The federal judge agreed that the restaurant was negligent, noting that Harrison testified that the plate had felt greasy or slippery when he picked it up, and that he had rarely dropped anything else while working as a server.

New Jersey personal injury attorneys for Clark pointed to lawsuits where diners sued restaurants after injuries with hot plates or beverages. Harrison’s act of dropping the plate falls in the same category and U.S. District Judge Freda Wolfson ruled that his actions constituted negligence on the restaurant’s behalf. The lawsuit is now headed for trial, as Clark and the restaurant cannot reach a settlement."

This, of course, is posted by an ambulance chasing law firm.