WIBU regarding hair in food?

[HelloMyNameIsNino]

Went to breakfast in naice local cafe (not chain)

Ordered eggs Benedict and an apple juice. DP orders breakfast and an apple juice plus toast.

I get to the last 15% of my meal and find a massive long blonde hair wrapped around my egg. Obviously not ours, both have short dark hair.

I call the lady over and she takes it away.

I go to pay the bill and no mention of hair, she asks if everything was OK with my meal. I tell her about hair. Waitress is called over to confirm.

Lady on till apologises and says that's £xx.

I tell her I'm not happy to pay full whack for the hairy meal and she says she will take a drink off.
I tell her the hair wasn't in the drink.
She says she will take the extra toast off.
Again the hair wasn't in the toast.

I ask her why she is deducting those when the hair was in the meal?
She looks a bit annoyed and deducted the eggs Benedict instead.

But is that normal or right? Surely if a hair is in a £9 breakfast you don't deduct the £1.50 drink?

Ugh that's disgusting YANBU and if I was you I would never go back there.

She's stupid, and I bet you will not go there again, so she could have saved a customer and chose to try and save £9 instead.

I'm a restaurant manager and would've taken the eggs off. Unfortunately hair can find its way past hair nets/hats but you definitely shouldn't have paid full price. It's annoying for us to lose money when accidents happen but that's not your fault!

Tbh i think you overreacted. They are not a chain and therefore losing the cost of a mwal will impact them more. Its just a hair, i would have just taken it out and not mentioned it (unless there were several).

It's kinda gross when you lift your fork and there's a till drenched hair hanging from it.

Plus I hadn't finished my meal I still had some bacon and eggs left and she just took the plate away without a word and didn't even tell the supervisor.

It just really put me off.

I understand it's an accident but when you treat yourself to a nice brekkie and there's a piece of someone else's greasy wig in it then it kinda ruins it.

DontTouchTheMoustache "Tbh i think you overreacted. They are not a chain and therefore losing the cost of a mwal will impact them more. Its just a hair, i would have just taken it out and not mentioned it (unless there were several)."

My father used to gag at the thought of a hair in his food, pretty much, and made me tie my hair back at meals. Some people are really repulsed by it. Once you have found something disguising (that is not meant to be there) in your food it kind of ruins the experience of dinning out.

The breakfast has not cost them £9 to produce and the wise thing would be to not charge and to try and retain a valued customer, and to review hygiene in the kitchen.

Taking off the price of a drink suggests the restaurant doesn't appreciate how gross getting a long hair in your food is, which is worrying to me.

"I understand it's an accident" - an accident is bringing a spoon not a fork, or saying we have three kinds of wine, when you mean four.

A hair in the food suggests that the chef or waiting staff are shedding hairs into the food. Not nice.

Meh...It's not ideal, but it was hardly a cockroach She offered to take the drink and toast off the bill, personally I'd have left it at that.

Italian you really can't stop hair from moving, we she'd hair all day every day unfortunately. Hair nets and hats stem the problem for the most part but it really is impossible to avoid it happening at all.

This happened to me recently- I was about 5 or 6 mouthfuls into my meal when I discovered a long dark hair lurking in the sauce! My meal was replaced, and free pudding and coffee thrown in. I think if it's discovered near the end of the meal, then a replacement meal isn't appropriate and a refund should be offered.

Bleurgh, I would have gagged! YANBU!

YNBU. Pethate of mine.

Sounds like they were trying to deduce the cheapest item, until you was more assertive.

I only remember my Dad pulling out a hair from his pie chips and gravy from a cafe when I was a kid and the thought still makes me gag.

You ate and assumingly enjoyed 85% of the meal, maybe you should have accepted a 15% discount on the meal. A hair while unfortunate isn't harmful a free drink is reasonable in this case.

*deduct not deduce.

I don't think you were being unreasonable at all. I've had this happen a couple of times and have always had the contaminated meal deducted from the bill, the hair was in the food not the drink. Surely that makes sense

Unihorn it may be impossible to stop it happening.

But people eat out on what they feel about a place. We once had a meal out as kids, the meal was for a special occasion and was ruined by something or other. When we told them they offered free drinks or something. My dad paid but we never went back there. I've worked in loads of restaurants, dealing with disgruntled customers is not easy and I am sure some do 'try it on', but usually restaurants want to retain the customer. Eating out is so much more than the actual food and what is important varies for everyone. Just my view.

YANBU.

Italian
Yes I completely agree, hence why I said up the thread that she shouldn't have paid. I've been a restaurant manager for 6 years and have deducted every meal with hair in that I've come across (thankfully very few!) So I'm surprised the OP had a struggle.

Maybe not quite as ewwww in a home setting, but whenever one of my kids finds a hair (usually mine) in the dinner they get congratulated on finding "the lucky hair."

Bleurgh - you were not being unreasonable at all. It's the least they could do, to knock it off the bill.

In fairness a few years back i would have probably complained but these days i have a toddler and a dog so i think my tolerance for eww stuff has gone up (or more to the point my standards have gone down). I spent a good hour on saturday cleaning up dog vom and diaryhea whilst hungover so a hair in my eggs wouldnt have phased me, but perhaps someone less gross than me might have had issue.

Yes but surely the difference is that of course you clean up after your dog as you love him. In contrast someone else's hair in your food is really gross and I wouldn't go back there because I would be imaging the cook/chef's probably greasy hair hanging loose over the food and them not having their hair tied back or covered up.

I think you handled it well.

Hair in your food at a restaurant is vile. It’s the experience of having a foreign item in your food - for me it’s as repulsive as eating meat if you’re a vegetarian etc. Everyone has a different ‘gross’ meter. Finding a random hair followed by the nonchalant way they handled it would make me feel nauseous thinking about what I already ate.

Once I was at a desert restaurant & bit down on a long bit of plastic (that you’d find attaching barcodes/pricing tags to clothes) in a Belgium waffle. So vile