Sayonara salmonella

Josh and I are planning a dinner party this Friday night for the last night of Channukah. We're having the family and Lisa, Craig and the girls over. Anyways, we like to get things done early, so we did our shopping earlier in the week.

Tonight, as Josh was reading the Canadian Jewish News, he stumbled over this article and tore down the stairs. Lo and behold, we had THAT cream cheese with THAT date and THAT UPC code. We nearly plotzed.

We packed up the disease-ridden cream cheese in question with the newspaper article and went back to the grocery store. We went to the customer service counter and told them about the cream cheese. The clerk looked at the article, looked at the cream cheese and was about to ring it up. Umm, we don't want to BUY it, we wanted to return it.

We asked to see the manager. The clerk didn't want to exchange the cream cheese we had and give us new ones because we didn't have the bill.

The manager ambled down the stairs and we re-told the story. She told us that she knew about the cream cheese and that the story was actually out a little while ago. She then looked at us and said "Did you buy it here?"

It was REALLY tempting to say "no, we're part of a great cream cheese conspiracy and we walk around from grocery store to grocery store trying to return rancid cream cheese. You're onto us, lady!"

We told her that we bought it there and she said "ok, straight exchange". Fine, great. The clerk took the original cream cheese from us and was going to put it back on the shelf. The manager told her "no, it has to be destroyed".

So we went back to the shelf to pick up our new cream cheese and guess what we saw? An entire shelf full of the 'bad' cream cheese. SAME cream cheese, SAME date, SAME UPC code. We went back to the counter and told them that it was still sitting there and asked to see the manager again. This time we had to wait a few minutes because she was on the phone.

She didn't come down the stairs and Josh actually ended up talking to her on the phone. Josh told her that it was still sitting on the shelf and that she would "deal with it shortly".

Well, that wasn't good enough. I mean, we don't want anyone getting sick because of the manager's apathy or laziness.

We found the manager in charge of stocking the shelves. We showed him the article and pointed out the entire shelf of cream cheese. He told us that "it was a new shipment" and that even though it has the same date, it's not the affected product. He understood our worry and said "instead of making excuses, I'm going to personally take all of them off the shelf and call the company in the morning".

As we were talking to him, wouldn't you know that a clerk walked by with the two affected cream cheeses (from our fridge) and placed them back on the shelf. Oh yes, he did.

We didn't take the second manager at his word, seeing as what just took place. We stood there and watched them remove ALL the cream cheese in question.

So, what do you like with your salmonella-laced cream cheese?