System Fail: ADA trumps OSHA for biggest lack of common sense

So you walk into Chipotle and order a burrito.  They ask you what you want on it, following the Subway model of sandwich building, and you walk down the line adding black beans and rice and whatever else you'd like to stuff your face with at that particular moment, uncaring as to the future state of your bowels.  Your burrito is finished for you and you take your seat and chow down.

Unless you're in a wheelchair, in which case the 45" high counter - designed at this height for the ergonomic health of Chipotle's employees and to comply with various OSHA lawsuits, along with the actual benefit of increased productivity - is too high for you to see over.  This is when Chipotle, in order to best accommodate all of its customers, actually brings the food around the counter to you, providing you the highest level of service imaginable, to ensure that you, like anyone else, can see what it is you would like to have on your burrito.

But still, that damn, counter!  That counter isn't fair.  You don't want to be treated any differently that anyone else, even though you are different.  You want to be able to shuffle through the Chipotle line three lousy inches at a time like all the rest of the cattle, damnit!  It's time to sue!  And so it goes, all the way to the Supreme Court, who refuses to hear Chipotle's claims that you are frivolous and lawsuit happy, and so the 9th Circuit's ridiculous ruling stands:

The barrier "subjects disabled customers to a disadvantage that non-disabled customers do not suffer," the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in July in a case from San Diego County. The ruling came on the 20th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which requires businesses to treat disabled patrons equally and remove unnecessary obstacles.  Maurizio Antoninetti said in his lawsuit in 2005 that a 45-inch barrier at Chipotle restaurants in San Diego and Encinitas blocked his view of the counter, where customers can inspect each dish, choose their order and watch it being prepared. 

Chipotle said it met wheelchair users' needs by bringing them spoonfuls of their preferred dish for inspection before ordering. But the appeals court said that doesn't match "the customer's personal participation in the selection and preparation of the food."

Let's set aside for a minute the absolutely ludicrous assertion that the court has rested on the idea that "the customer's personal participation in the selection and preparation of the food" at Chipotle has become a right, and focus more on the end result of this fiasco.

After the appeals court ruling, company spokesman Chris Arnold said Chipotle was retrofitting restaurants with "a new counter design that eliminates any concern regarding wheelchair accessibility."

Chipotle has over 1,000 locations, and 26,500 employees.  I can imagine a counter that will work for the end purpose for this, one that will, perhaps, display the ingredients on an angle, at a lower elevation, but that is going to require thousands and thousands of employees, every day, to bend over farther than normal, repeatedly, and perhaps far enough, over and over, to eventually cause back problems.  Perhaps this will happen, and perhaps some blood sucking enterprising lawyer will assemble a massive class action lawsuit, leaning on OSHA, against Chipotle's viciously non-ergonomic counters.

I only hope, at that time, that this lawyer will remember to include Maurizio Antoninetti and the 9th District Court of Appeals as parties to that lawsuit along with Chipotle.  Because if it weren't for them, all of those future thousands of Chipotle employees, would have been standing upright all day instead.

Deep Fried Magic

In the words of my brother, I don't know if ever before this, I've felt physically ill from reading something.

Deep-fried butter.




To make fried butter, the butter itself needs to have an outer coating, or shell, if you will — something that can withstand the bubbling cauldron of the deep fryer.

“I mean, butter by itself does not taste good,” Gonzales said. “Nobody just grabs a stick of butter and eats it. That would be gross.”

So here’s what Gonzales does: He takes 100 percent pure butter, whips it until it is light and fluffy, freezes it, then surrounds it with dough. The butter-laden dough balls are then dropped into the deep fryer.

For purists who just want the unadulterated taste of butter, Gonzales serves up plain-butter versions of his creation. For others who want a little more pizzazz, he offers three additional versions with flavored
butters: garlic, grape or cherry.

Would Sir like to meet tonight's dinner specials?

While dining at the restaurant at the end of the universe, a waiter asks the above question of Arther Dent (the last earth man in existence.. kinda). As my fellow fans of Douglas Adams' comedy SyFy series The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy will recall the waiter was referring to the fact that in order to clinch the debate of the morality of eating other animals scientists had genetically engineered special cows who not only wanted to be eaten, but who were given voices in order that they be able to actually say so.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327243.400-painfree-animals-could-take-suffering-out-of-farming.html

Which brings us to this stirringly dumbfounding article I came across during my morning coffee. The article is a quick read and poses the question - 'if we have the ability to remove the suffering of animals via genetic engineering do we not then have a moral obligation to do so?'

Cage raised chickens often have parts of their beaks removed to prevent them from pecking their neighbors to death, would not it be better if the chickens could be made not to feel the pain this undoubtedly causes? Isn't it better if the cow you're going to eat walks out to your table and amiably chats with you for a while about which parts of his flanks are getting the most tender?

My response is not the horror and salad-demanding outrage that Arther Dent felt, but more an eye-rolling Kif-like sigh. Genetically engineering something to want to be eaten solves no debate in the minds of vegetarians (or their Hezbollah-like splinter faction, the vegans [to rip a line off from Anthony Bourdaine]) because their objections are often moral and empathetic in nature, having more to do with a need to be moral demigods of the animal kingdom than actually harming animals.

The point I'm trying laboriously to get to is that changing an animal in order to have your way with it is all fine and good - selective breeding of crops and animals has been ongoing since the dawn of agriculture - but doing it in the name of morality and 'animal rights' makes about as much sense as tofu foie gras.

Three Little Pigs

Could there have been a better week for Anthony Bourdain to find what he declares "The Greatest Sandwich in America?"

At the Silver Palm in Chicago, which is only about five minutes from my office, incidentally, the bartender of this bar/restaurant came up with this monstrosity on the fly, late one night (no doubt deeply inebriated). Bourdain's commentary could be mistaken for the current stimulus bill without even thinking twice.

"This is a work of genius, in an evil way.... A two-fisted symphony of pork, cheese, fat, and starch... that sandwich is the greatest sandwich in America. This is the apex of the sandwich-making art... the sandwich that dreams are made of."

No doubt the late night, drunken hunger induced creationary process that generated this sandwich. is akin to the way that Barack Obama and his Democrat Socialist minions dreamed up the Stimulus Porkulus Bill that can only reasonable be referred to as the Generational Theft Act of 2009. No doubt this sandwich, consisting of smoked ham, a breaded pork cutlet, two strips of bacon, and two fried eggs, blanketed in a thick coat of gruyere, all on a brioche bun, is the only physical item that can compete with the amount of pork, fat and cholesterol about to clog the arteries of the American economy.

Now if you'll excuse me, the Silver Palm opens at 6:00. About time to go shove a massive amount of pork down my throat while America awaits a similar, albeit far less tasty, fate.