Management nightmare of the week: ‘Who’ll notice a 100-lb. carcass?’
A driver in Concord, N.C., noticed two strange things about another car on the road earlier this weekend. First, it stopped to pick up a carcass of a deer that had been struck and killed, and threw the remains in the back seat. And second, it looked very much like the vehicle that had recently delivered Chinese food to the watcher’s home.
Sure enough, she saw the car pull behind the place she had called days earlier to place her order. The vehicle with the deer carcass aboard backed up near the restaurant’s near door and went inside for some knives.
The (no doubt former) customer called the police, who alerted local sanitation authorities. They arrived as the deer was being butchered in the parking lot. The choice cuts were found in the restaurant’s kitchen sink.
The proprietor of the place didn’t try to dodge responsibility. He’d never tasted venison, and a friend told him it was perfectly acceptable to scoop up a deer carcass from the road and turn it into dinner. The operator explained to authorities that the meat was intended for his personal consumption, not for his restaurant’s guests.
Sure enough, the health authorities did nothing but set the employee straight about road-kill etiquette. No laws had been broken because the deer had been butchered outside, and none of the meat had been served, they explained.