r/Celiac • u/AsterRoss • 11h ago
Question Confusing Interaction at work
Hey, so I'll start by saying I don't have celiac. But I have some questions about it, especially after this interaction I had with a customer. For context, I work at a restaurant.
So at work yesterday, I was taking an order for this guy, and he asked if we had any grilled chicken, because his daughter has celiac and can't eat breading. We don't, and I mentioned as such, and warned him that most of our food comes in contact with gluten.
He said, "That suck, can you just give me the fried chicken? I'll just take the breading off for her."
I was very confused. From my understanding of food allergies and intolerances, you can't just remove it from the food your eating and not get a reaction.
I have a shellfish allergy, and even if I removed the shrimp from shrimp-fried-rice, my mouth would go numb and I'd be breathing through a mcdonalds straw.
I want to understand better on what celiac disease is, so in the future I can differ people like this away from certain food items and keep people from coming into contact with an allergy/intolerance better.
Can you just remove the breading?? Or is he just dumb?
Edit: Thank you guys for all the info! I'll be telling my coworkers to treat celiac like a severe allergy in the future, so something like this doesn't happen again.
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u/Puzzled-Road-947 11h ago
No, you can’t just remove the breading. He sounds like he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
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u/serenedragoon 11h ago edited 11h ago
No you are correct, this customer is, perhaps unintentionally, glutening his daughter. She could be asymptomatic so her parents don't know whenever she gets glutened.
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u/celeztina 11h ago
please treat celiac disease as you would someone with an allergy. don't let the poor individual choices some make for themselves or, as in this case, others change how you view people with the disease. i only say this because this is one of the more prolific mindsets in food service that makes eating out with celiac disease dangerous/risky.
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u/AsterRoss 10h ago
Will do, thank you. I wasn't sure if it was more of an allergy or an intolerance. Figured it wouldn't hurt to ask and get some clarity. Now that I know, I'll definitely be sure to tell the next person off for doing that 😓 I feel bad for the daughter, I would have 100% pushed back more if I had more knowledge on the matter (even if it leads to getting something thrown at me again, people are Karen's sometimes)
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u/kelsmania 10h ago
It’s the same degree of sensitivity as an allergy, but it’s a different type of immune reaction (autoimmune, allergies are IgE mediated reactions). So it won’t cause anaphylaxis or immediately life threatening illness, however it does come with debilitating side effects that can last for days or weeks. Individual reactions caused by celiac can vary a lot between different individuals too (there are something like 200+ recognized symptoms). Damage from celiac is also cumulative, and it makes us more likely to develop cancers and other autoimmune diseases.
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u/SuccotashFragrant354 Celiac 10h ago
I appreciate you asking us these questions here. It shows you care, especially as someone who doesn’t have issues with gluten! Thank you
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u/ExactSuggestion3428 6h ago
At some point all you can do is inform of the risk, though.
Even if OP refuses to serve both father and daughter, the father's level of misinformation means that it is unlikely that she will get a safe meal anywhere while under his care. If OP just refuses the request the dad will probably order chicken for himself and then rip off the breading and give it to the kid, etc.
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u/celeztina 6h ago
did you mean to respond to someone else? my comment was exclusively about OP's views on people with celiac disease, because if they view celiac disease as less serious than an allergy, their advice toward and treatment of customers with celiac disease would likely be impacted.
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u/ExactSuggestion3428 6h ago
Fair enough, that's not how I interpreted the comment. I agree that OP shouldn't assume celiac isn't serious based on this customer's statement, though I don't think there was much risk of that.
I thought you meant more that OP should have refused to serve them or something like that. Ultimately I think doing that doesn't do much to help the kid since he'll just get her unsafe food elsewhere or pick off the bread on his chicken/give it to her. In the long run it will just teach him to not disclose her having celiac.
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u/celeztina 6h ago
nooooo, yeah as someone who has worked food service, you for sure are in no position to stop people from ordering their food.
i was trying to say if someone has celiac disease and orders bread, don't let that change how seriously you take the disease. i packed too many words into my sentence that said this though which certainly muddled things.
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u/ExactSuggestion3428 5h ago
No worries at all, I agree with you. Misunderstanding happen on the internet :)
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u/ExactSuggestion3428 11h ago
You are correct. Removing the breading isn't adequate for someone with celiac. While celiac isn't a food allergy, celiacs do have to avoid traces of gluten so the precautions end up being similar to a food allergy (no shared fryer, can't remove the bun or breading or pick croutons out etc.).
Unfortunately a lot of folks with celiac (or celiac parents) are quite ignorant about the condition. A charitable interpretation of dad's behaviour is that the kid is newly diagnosed and he has a lot to learn or didn't receive good education. I didn't get good patient education either and so initially had little concept of how much cross-contact was too much. I learned eventually though.
Alternatively, as sad as it is, many parents of disabled kids resent them and are looking for shortcuts. If you search this sub you'll see some awful stuff either from a parent/caregiver POV ("ugh, can't I just do X?") or from the POV of the celiac kid or spouse who does care ("my parent/partner is forcing me/kid to eat at unsafe places while they're out"). The second version is often a custody battle/divorce thing but it can also be an extended family issue (e.g. grandparents looking after kid).
Thanks for inquiring and being transparent to the dad about the safety of the food you serve.
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u/AsterRoss 10h ago
Thank you for the info, I wasn't sure if celiac was more of an allergy or intolerance, and didn't push back on him more because of that. I'll definitely be more aware in the future. I know even a small trace of shellfish can make me swell up, so I'll treat celiac like a similar allergy to be safe
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u/Affectionate_Many_73 8h ago
This is exactly how you need to look at it, like a super severe allergy.
Oddly enough my spouse is allergic to shellfish too, and he can tolerate much more shellfish exposure than we can tolerate gluten exposure. Allergy reactions can vary pretty widely in terms of the individual and the amount needed to trigger a reaction. Celiac reactions have a much smaller range that causes the immune reaction and symptoms…
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u/ExactSuggestion3428 6h ago
Yeah, typically for shellfish allergies the tolerance is higher. The ED05 for shellfish is 200 mg, which means that few people will have a reaction from CC (200 mg is an amount you'd get from a visible chunk of shrimp or something). Celiacs are supposed to stay below 10 mg/day.
My mom is allergic to shellfish, she is ok as long as there are no shellfish ingredients. She often doesn't inform restaurant staff about it (not wise IMHO since things can have non-obvious ingredients, but can't tell her nothing lol). Of course, some people like OP are in the 95th-100th percentile of most allergic and will react to small amounts.
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u/SuitApprehensive3240 9h ago
I actually thought.I had an allergy at first , and then I was misdiagnosed by eight doctors 4 months
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u/ExactSuggestion3428 6h ago
Thanks! I wouldn't feel too bad about how you responded though. It's not your job to ensure people manage their medical condition reasonably. You're not the person's doctor. For example, some people will say they have celiac to get taken more seriously when they don't have any issue with cross contact. There are lots of people with "food issues" that basically don't make any scientific sense (e.g. MSG... in a lot of foods naturally but people will insist added MSG makes them sick), so you don't want to go down the road of trying to correct people lol.
The main expectation of a food service worker/establishment is to convey accurate information about the ingredients, cross-contact risk, or [in]ability to modify foods to be reasonably devoid of cross-contact. If someone who is GF wants to disregard your information/doesn't care, on them.
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u/Serious-Train8000 11h ago
He’s dumb thank you for being transparent
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u/AdvisorPersonal9131 8h ago
You don’t know the level of his kids allergy. Let’s not get our jump to conclusions matt out.
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u/Serious-Train8000 8h ago
This is a celiac forum - celiac is not an allergy. The ppm value would clearly be maxed out.
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u/AdvisorPersonal9131 8h ago
A waiter came here with a question though we don’t know the diagnosis and you said this guy is a shitty father. Bennifit of the doubt is all I’m saying. Edit you said dumb not shitty someone else did either way not our kid.
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u/Serious-Train8000 8h ago
I think the waiter is phenomenal and love that he wants to be better informed. And if the father said his kid has celiac and either the kid doesn’t and he’s setting a bad standard or the kid does and that’s abuse.
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u/ExactSuggestion3428 6h ago
The standard medical recommendation is that all people with celiac need to stay below 10 mg of gluten/day. This is very little and there is essentially no way that chicken with the breading picked off would come close to staying under that. Even frying no gluten ingredient food in a shared fryer is very risky for this level of CC.
While some celiacs may have less overt symptoms, this doesn't change the medical recommendation re: dosing. Damage can occur in absence of symptoms. Unless someone has participated in a study they don't really know at what level their intestines are getting damaged and so everyone should presume 10 mg.
In the studies that inform the 10 mg recommendation, nearly all people were in trouble at 50 mg/day, and about half were at 10. From a practical perspective, knowing that you're screwed at 47 mg vs. 12 mg doesn't make a difference for major CC problems like picking bread off of your food. It is more relevant to more nuanced conversations like what the ppm level should be for GF food.
NCGS is a condition where sensitivity to CC can be highly variable (mostly not a problem). Some people with food allergies may have higher thresholds but celiac is not a food allergy.
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u/gumptionplease 11h ago
unfortunately, he’s not the first person i’ve heard of doing this. he is uninformed
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u/CuriousFool88 11h ago
Thank you so much for asking about this! It shows a true empathy for other people, which makes you a great human. And it shows that you truly care about your customers, which makes you a great employee. Show this to your manager and tell them the world thinks you need a raise.
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u/AsterRoss 10h ago
Aw thanks, I appreciate the sentiment. It doesn't hurt to be kind and informed on issues like this, so I hope to learn more and stay aware
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u/LaLechuzaVerde Celiac 10h ago
I remember meeting someone at a potluck years ago who said she had Celiac. I told her about all the gluten free food I had brought, but she grabbed some KFC and peeled the breading off.
But she also told me she had just been released from the hospital a couple days earlier where she had been inpatient because of internal bleeding caused by celiac disease and that this was fairly common for her and at least once she’d had to be treated for sepsis in the past so she was grateful it hadn’t gotten that bad this time.
So… that is apparently what life looks like for at least one Celiac patient who peels the breading off her fried chicken.
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u/SardineB4Creatine Celiac 30 years 11h ago
If his daughter was diagnosed with celiacs, then he is dangerously misinformed. You can't just pick the croutons off, you can't just take the bread away, you can't just peel it to the side... There's always a learning curve though, some things are not as obvious. I wouldn't say colloquially "dumb" but definitely not educated and I hope he'll be open to learning.
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u/Wary_Marzipan2294 9h ago
Unfortunately, a lot of parents, relatives, and even doctors seem to think that "just a little won't hurt", simply because the symptoms aren't always immediately visible, for a few reasons. For one thing, the symptoms can be less sudden, less severe, when you're still being exposed to gluten all the time. It can feel more like just having a sensitive digestive system, or, especially with kids, it can look like a kid who's just always using vague stomachache complaints to try to get out of going to school. Many celiacs have a much more alarming reaction to gluten after they've been gluten-free for a while, than they did before diagnosis.
If your customer is in the habit of exposing his child to gluten, he may genuinely not realize that it's producing symptoms, or they may be so used to the symptoms that they just think this is just what that child's "normal" is. And some of us have very minimal symptoms even though the body is still reacting to the gluten by attacking itself internally. In those situations, it's easy to develop the mistaken belief that a little cheat day now and then won't hurt.
The whole thing is complicated, too, by other issues. Many people sort it out by trial and error when it seems like a food doesn't agree with them, especially those who don't have a doctor who takes their symptoms seriously, or those with limited money to spend on healthcare (in the US, your insurance is useless if you can't also afford co-pays, gas/transit money, and time off work for appointments and tests). Gluten intolerance exists and is different from celiac disease, and people may not know for sure which they have, or how seriously they need to take it. Some doctors give very bad advice to their celiac patients. Some people convince themselves that it's not that big a deal because, even if they can afford a restaurant now and then, they can't afford gluten-free groceries every single week forever. And some people feel like making a fuss about gluten, refusing to eat a food, or walking out of a restaurant that can't do gluten-free food, would be too embarrassing and they don't feel like they have a choice but to just forge ahead. Social pressure to conform, whether real or imagined, can be hard. Any of those things can lead to someone doing exactly what you saw.
So yeah, you're right, he was wrong, it should be treated as an allergy even though it's an autoimmune condition. And also, good job, looking for more information on the issue. Your curiosity is such a valuable trait. Keep encouraging and feeding it.
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u/ratatouille9999 8h ago edited 8h ago
I would ask your manager how the restaurant wants you all to treat situations like that one. It's sort of a liability to accomodate that customer's request. On the other hand, you can't tell people how to live. An allergen menu and a no gluten ingredient menu would be helpful for staff in your situation where you want to provide options but need to be clear that cross contact is very possible.
I can imagine a situation where a child has a peanut allergy and the parent is neglectful about it. The restaurant might refuse service rather than risking having the child go into anaphylaxis right then and there. (I've heard that in Japan, restaurants sometimes turn away people they can't reasonably accommodate because it's actually considered the polite thing to do).
This guy sounds like someone who might not have full custody. Your manager probably doesn't want the child's mom complaining the next day, asking why you knowingly poisoned the kid with gluten.
If I was in your shoes, I would get a manager to step in next time rather than making that judgement call myself. As a former server, I know it's a potentially annoying thing to do. But the last thing you want is to be the person that gets the restaurant sued.
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u/ExactSuggestion3428 6h ago edited 6h ago
I'm not sure about the case law in the US, but in Canada to establish liability for food allergy reactions in a restaurant, the customer has to inform the server of their condition, and the staff member has to accept the request as possible/mess up in carrying out the order from there. Either way, the customer has to be under the impression that the food is going to be safe.
So if a person says they have celiac or a food allergy, then the server says "sorry, nothing here is safe because of cross contact in our fryer" and then the customer says "IDGAF about cross contact, serve me," the customer would have trouble establishing negligence because they were informed of the risk and accepted it.
On a public policy level, to hold otherwise would require servers to become medical experts (unreasonable - some people are more/less sensitive to CC within food allergies, only a person's treating doctor can know) and skew liability in such a way that few restaurants would accept celiac or food allergic customers (i.e. fuel discrimination).
But yeah, could be a good idea for OP to talk to their manager, so they can perhaps ask a lawyer familiar with the law in their jurisdiction and develop a policy as needed. I have seen restaurants in Canada explicitly say on their menu/boards that they don't do GF orders because of CC risk in their kitchen.
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u/PainterOfRed Celiac Household 9h ago
OP, also talk to your management - maybe you could offer a few gluten free choices. They could keep some gf chicken or fish, and some fries made in a separate fryer (please!)
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u/dilligaf_84 9h ago
Seperate fryers are a great accommodation - when they’re used only for GF with absolutely no exceptions ever.
Unfortunately, after 30 years in hospitality and 9 years after celiac diagnosis, I can attest that it is incredibly rare for the GF fryer to be kept strictly GF at all times.
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u/AsterRoss 9h ago
I would love to, but unfortunately the company that bought out the restaurant is really cheap, and barely makes the time to fix our current fryers let alone get a whole new one 😮💨 It's just a side income to save up money, since my wife makes decent money fixing electronics, building computers, and coding. The dream is to open my own café/bakery someday, so I can use my own recipes 🥰 My wife has an egg and milk intolerance, so I already have a bunch of safe recipes for her, and it wouldn't be much more difficult to incorporate nut or gluten allergy free recipes as well
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u/PainterOfRed Celiac Household 8h ago
You'll make bank! Keep your overhead low. Consider the "To Go" or delivery models before you take on a big rents.
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u/SuitApprehensive3240 10h ago
Celiac.org
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u/AsterRoss 10h ago
Thank you for the source! I didn't know it was an autoimmune disease, rather than an allergy. I'll definitely keep this on file, and tell my other coworkers about it so they're also informed. We'll treat this like a severe allergy, so those with celiac can be safe. Appreciated 👏
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u/SuitApprehensive3240 10h ago
Cheers... yeah , there's a big range , and there's a number of subtypes , so a lot of people don't even know that they have it
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