HAIRY PLATTER

As if the world isn't already wild and crazy enough, a cook at a West Bend, WI Texas Roadhouse restaurant decided it would be an appropriate and logical response to allegedly stuff a customer's steak with hair after the manager of the restaurant decided to offer the customer another steak to replace one that had been overcooked. Worse, though it's not been made clear yet, it was reportedly pubic hair that he stuffed it with.

It begs one to ask the question, 'just exactly what is wrong with the world today?' What's more, the 24 year old cook, Ryan Kropp, even told a co-worker what he was going to do before he did it, telling the co-worker "these are my pubes." He made an opening in the steak and stuffed it, then turned it on its opposite side so as to hide the cut he'd made.

The customer ultimately went to the police with his find, and whether or not the co-worker informed anyone of the incident before or after the police became involved is unclear. What is clear is that the customer indeed had his steak served to him, and that the restaurant manager was totally unaware of the hair-raising experience (pardon the pun) the customer was undoubtedly headed for.

An incident like this suggests to me that something has gone terribly wrong. It suggests to me that there is a growing segment of people in our society who have somehow become disconnected and confused about what's right and what's not. There were two people involved here and neither apparently felt this was not an okay thing to do. In this case the cook felt perfectly justified in committing the act because, according to him, he was angry and thought that the customer was just "trying to get free stuff." The co-worker must have agreed with Kropp's reasoning as he obviously didn't find this to be disturbing enough to let someone know that a customer was about to be served food that had been recklessly tampered with.

Kropp now faces a maximum term of 3 years in prison and up to a $10,000 fine if he is ultimately convicted of felony placing of foreign objects in edibles. The judge ought to impose a reality slap upside the head as well for just being plain stupid.

The bar has been risen beyond the point of reason, and perhaps even to the point of no return. Consider another recent case where a 33 year old woman drank sodium hydroxide, a bleach-like substance used to strip aluminum from copper, for $20, given to her by a 20 year old man whom she told police had pestered her for days to drink it, and further claimed she thought it just smelled gross but wouldn't harm her. She nearly died.

Both cases seem eerily like something straight out of the pages of Jackass.