A diner was left ‘absolutely disgusted’ after finding a fake fingernail in her Domino’s pizza after initially thinking it was part of her tongue piercing.
Ebony, from Mt Annan, in Sydney’s south-west, ordered four pizzas for herself, family and friends from her local Domino’s in nearby Narellan on Sunday evening.
However, after biting her incision, she felt something hard and took it out of her mouth.
Ebony, she discovered that the hard object she had chewed was a false fingernail.
The Domino’s customer initially thought the ball on her tongue piercing had dislodged and become loose, she said Yahoo News.
Ebony, from Mt Annan, south-west Sydney, ordered four pizzas for herself, family and friends from her local Domino’s on Sunday evening but was “mortified” to discover she had chewed on a fake fingernail.
‘I was absolutely shocked and disgusted. “I immediately gagged at the idea that was in my mouth,” she said.
Ebony posted on a local community’s Facebook page to warn others about the incident, which also included finding a “huge clump of hair” in one of the other pizzas she received.
The restaurant called her local pizzeria but got no answer, so she drove back to the outlet to inform the manager.
According to Ebony, the manager didn’t seem to care. The customer also said she saw an employee sitting on a workbench.
“(The staff member) was sitting on the prep bench checking her nails and smugly said, ‘Oh, it’s not mine’, which annoyed me, so I asked whose nail was in my mouth at the time,” she said.
“And she said, ‘Ehh, I don’t know what color it was,’ so I mentioned the color, and as soon as I did, she jumped off the couch and hid.”
Other guests also found the incident ‘disgusting’ and encouraged Ebony to report what happened to the New South Wales Food Authority.
“They will investigate and probably randomly send an inspector to conduct on-site sanitation, safe food handling and storage inspection,” one person wrote.
‘That’s disgusting. Call the main office,” said another.
“Unfortunately I had a bad experience there too,” a third person wrote.
The Domino’s store has apologized to the customer and refunded her money. Domino’s has reminded all its stores of its ‘rigorous food safety procedures’ (stock image from a Domino’s store)
The incident prompted others to call for gloves and hair coverings to be made mandatory in food preparation areas to protect people from a similar incident.
On the New South Wales Food Authority website, regulations for food handlers show that gloves are not always mandatory.
‘The Food Standards Code does not require food handlers to use gloves. Even when wearing gloves, it may be preferable in many situations to use utensils such as tongs or spoon,” the report said.
It does remind people to avoid unnecessary contact with food and to ‘tie back long hair’.
A Domino’s spokesperson confirmed to Daily Mail Australia that they were alerted on February 4 that a customer had found a ‘foreign object’ in their pizza from the Narellan store.
“At Domino’s, food safety is our top priority, and even one incident like this is one too many,” the spokesperson said.
‘The Domino’s Narellan store apologized and refunded the customer’s order once notified and collected a sample of the pizza for further testing.
‘In addition, we have sent an important reminder to all our stores about our strict food safety procedures.
‘We take our responsibility as a food company seriously and are proud to deliver thousands of delicious pizzas that our customers love every day.’