Is this grim or am I being pathetic?

[Idontwantbeans]

As the title says. Name changed as I really don’t know if it’s just me.

Went to a local garden centre for coffee with my mum today. While we were there we purchased two jacket potatoes.

I ordered bacon with cheese for my potato. I have a suspected allergy and am following a diet that removes foods. At this moment I cannot have legumes in any form among other things.

When my food came they brought beans and cheese. I cannot have this. The girl that came out asked to look at the receipt and I pointed out what I’d ordered. She seemed to have a huge issue with taking it away and giving me what I’d paid for.

5 minutes later my food returned. I could see straight away that she had scraped the beans off and replaced it with cheese and bacon.

It’s a Sunday and I wasn’t going to cause a fuss so just took it. The cafe was full by this point.

On eating the food was cold apart from the bacon that they’d just cooked. I also had to pick beans out that she’d missed.

Am I being precious or is this as disgusting as I think. If you work in food standards what would be your opinion. What if id been highly allergic to the beans or the sauce that was stuck all over the potato?

First world problem for me I know but could have been a serious issue for someone else.

I had similar in a cafe when I ordered a baked potato with tuna mayo.

It arrived covered with sweetcorn which I hate - the waitress seemed really put out when I politely raised that I hadn’t ordered sweetcorn - when it was clearly her mistake.

It came back eventually cold with just tuna mayo but a few random bits of sweetcorn were still there ☹️

At this point I didn’t have the energy to argue and did start to wonder if maybe I was being overly fussy to not like sweetcorn 😀

I had already paid at this point so I took a few miserable forkfuls and left.

The OP has done no favours to allergy sufferers by preferring not to make a fuss & just eat something that she hadn’t ordered. Clearly her mother doesn’t take her suspected allergy seriously either. To say you’re going to make a fuss by email after having eaten something that you may be allergic to and avoiding is contradictory and yes, the OP was pathetic.

it wasn’t ‘grim’. It was unacceptable customer service but aside from the allergy, a cold baked potato is not a health hazard (which the OP choose to risk anyway because her mother told her to).

I have an elderly friend who can't eat beans as they upset her stomach and another friend with microscopic colitis who can't eat beans for the same reason. It's more common than you think!

Actually quite common.
People can be allergic to anything

Sounds to me as if the OP is following the FODMAP diet or something similar, while she's figuring out what triggers problems.

I had to follow the FODMAP, following a bout of food poisoning which upset my stomach. One of the things you're advised to try cutting out would be legumes. In following the diet, I discovered that they're amongst my trigger foods, though I can chance very small quantities. I'm now dismayed to discover that I need to avoid onions and garlic.

@Kindofcrunchy beans are a legume and legume allergies are not rare. Peanuts are actually a legume - not a nut. I have an allergy to a particular type of bean.

I have an ileostomy and can’t eat beans so I would have had to send it back a second time.

Used to run food pubs, you would have had a whole new dish, carefully prepared.

There is a reason why servers often now ask "Do you have any allergies". Its to make sure that a) the dish you ordered is suitable for you and b) to make sure that there is no cross contamination, or if there is to make you aware of it.

That service is shocking and would be classed as gross misconduct and instant dismissal for any of my or the head chef's staff. Complain, loudly.

Yep this.....legumes are actually one of the 14 main allergens that all food service staff of every level are trained on. Its food hygience 101.

I'm not allergic, but I have detested baked beans for as long as I can remember.
I once ordered a cooked breakfast in a cafë, but quite clearly stipulated, "No beans".

My breakfast arrived - complete with beans. I looked at my plate, then at the waitress, and said, calmly, "I said, 'No beans.' "

My plate was returned - with the beans scraped off, and a residue of bean juice left where they'd been. 🤮

I still - God knows how - managed to stay calm, while explaining that that simply wouldn't do, and that I expected a plate completely free of baked beans in any form. Third time round, I got it.

Note to waiting staff - listen to your customers.

Does it really matter exactly why you ordered a specific food though? You paid (a LOT) and requested a specific meal. That should have been brought to you. If it wasn’t right, for whatever reason, then they had the responsibility to being the correct order.

Very bad service. I hope you didn’t pay £9.99 for a baked potato!! Imagine the returns on that rip off business!

It’s poor service. Equally, if ordering for a person with an allergy, I never trust what’s written on the menu. I state clearly that it’s for a person with an allergy and what the allergy is, then ask them to check with the kitchen that the preferred order may be prepared safely. I’d certainly never just assume and certainly wouldn’t have accepted food in the state which you did. I have sent food back with a clear explanation of why it wasn’t deemed acceptable. Allergies are life threatening for some, there’s no cutting corners.

Why would you think she ordered that?

If she ordered that, why would she have sent it back?

It's right there in the post - she ordered bacon and cheese. They gave her beans.

@DistinguishedSocialCommentator why would she have ordered it?? Strange comment.

OP this is very grim yet unsurprising. I’m a veggie and the amount of times I’ve sent back a pizza because it’s had meat on it and it’s come back to me with the meat picked off would surprise you.

Op, why on earth did you eat it when it came back? If you’re avoiding them then you should have refused it.

I don’t understand why people are referring to it as grim and disgusting. But it was poor, unacceptable service, it should have been a complete replacement.

Keep emailing if you don’t hear back from them. For this that say why didn’t you say you had a beans allergy - why would you, if you haven’t asked for that product!

Yes thats grim.

Not quite the same, as its not an allergy thing, but I once ordered a Margarita pizza. They brought out one with pepperoni on. I sent it back because I'm vegetarian. They brought it back out having simply pulled the pepperoni off - with the circles where the pepperoni had been still showing!! Just grim.

You definitely need to speak up, because OK it’s not going to kill you but it might the next person and those preparing and serving food should be aware of that.

I have the oddest of rare allergies, and during eight years of trying finding out what I had my doc wondered if I was allergic to corn, which is in anaesthetic.

I then needed an op. I’d brought it up up at my pre op appointments etc, on the day of my op I asked the anaesthetist had they got me an anaesthetic without corn and she just gave me a very odd look, I told her about my possible allergy, she gave me another odd look and went and got the hospital director, who also gave me an odd look, so I said ‘if I had a peanut allergy and there was peanut in anaesthetic you’d be right on it’. He went away and came back rather shocked having found out what could have happened if I’d have had that op. the op was cancelled.

fortunately for me the hospital director helped me get some specialist allergy testing, I wasn’t allergic to corn so I had my op and the previous eight years of hell with the allergies I did have were explained, I now have two A4 pages of foods, toiletries and household products I need to avoid. It took two years to get on top of it but I now suffer on slightly

so, if you’ve a horrendous sore mouth, many ulcers, split skin round the sides of your mouth, sore tongue, feel like you’ve a mouth stuffed full of cotton wool all day every day you may have Orol Facial Granulomatosis or OFG for short. I now follow a cinnamon and Benzoates free diet which is hard work but does work for me mostly.

Agreed. Standing up for yourself doesn’t have to mean causing a scene.

I echo that Allergy UK are brilliant. We make heavy use of their translation cards as well when we go abroad. So far we have used French, German, Greek and Italian. You call them up and order over the phone and actually speak to a real life person (and they have always been absolutely fantastic to deal with).

I also had a situation where we went to a franchise and peanut oil was apparently present in something you completely and utterly would not expect to see it. (It was after the war in Ukraine started and there was a problem getting vegetable oils from Ukraine..... some companies substituted oil from other countries and it was found that they had peanut oil contamination). I rang Allergy UK and they were totally on the situation and gave me loads of advice.

For those doubting an allergy to beans, my BIL carries an epipen as he has a severe reaction to kidney beans. He can eat any other beans but kidney beans cause life threatening swelling of his face and throat

@Kindofcrunchy

Seriously?

I think op knows what she is allergic too. A and even if it's just intolerance so what. She didn't order that

I'm intolerant to mushrooms. I won't die but I'll spend the next hour on the loo which I dont want to do particularly.

You sound very ignorant.

Legumes include pulses and peanuts, so I don’t understand why people are doubting that people can be allergic. IME both can cause serious allergic reactions and the peanut allergy is well known. The FODMAP diet, which it sounds as though OP is on, removes the food group altogether and then reintroduces individual elements to see what, if anything causes a reaction. Bean allergies can cause anaphylaxis and also severe skin rashes, and they are not recommended for people who have asthma/eczema combinations, psoriasis or dermatitis as they can also aggravate these conditions.

You are definitely not being unreasonable!

For all they know, you could have fatal allergies to what was plated up for you.

I would have sent it back again and either asked for refund, or for a fresh and correct order to be prepared.

I was under the impression that all food services have to ask about allergies etc