Wendy’s Employee Arrested for Pooping in Chili-Fiction!
Summary of eRumor:
A Wendy’s employee has been arrested for pooping in several hundred batches of Wendy’s chili over a two-year period.
The Truth:
A fake news website is behind this false report.
Now 8 News, a fake news website designed to look like a local TV news channel, started the rumor with a report that appeared under the headline, “Employee Admits to ‘Pooping’ in Wendy’s Chili For Over 2 Years.” According to the report:
A Wendy’s employee is now under arrest after he admitted to “pooping” in several hundred batches of chili since 2013. Brian Casper, 28, had been an “on time and reliable employee,” according to the manager and coworkers at the Mobile, Alabama location. The fact that this happened was a shock to everybody at the restaurant, including the several thousand customers who may have consumed Casper’s feces.
When the story aired yesterday that the chili may have been contaminated, several loyal customers stepped forward. “I’ve been eating at this Wendy’s for at least seven years,” said Sharon Day, of loyal Wendy’s customer. “I used to order the chili all the time, but I don’t know… it started to taste weird. It had a taste that I couldn’t put my finger on, I don’t know what exactly it was. Now I know and I am absolutely appalled.”
Within days of being posted, the fake report had been shared thousands of times on social media. Taken out of context, many readers were duped into believing the report was true, but it’s not. Now 8 News publishes stories submitted by its community of readers, and the majority of them are fake news reports.
Of course, lots of these fake news stories are loosely based on reality. There’s an infamous case from 1995 in which an employee at a Taco Bell in Salt Lake City served a boy a soft shell taco filled with excrement.
And more recently, in 2008, a family was awarded $40,000 after an employee at a Taco Bell/KFC combo restaurant urinated in a beverage cup, the North Platte Bulletin reports.
But still, there’s no truth whatsoever to reports that a Wendy’s employee “pooped” in hundreds of batches of chili over a two-year period.