The first time that I ever had like, a foodborne illness, it was from a bell pepper. A bad bell pepper. I was so sick. I graduated so hard.
Then, in 2013, I was 53 years old and living in Florida, I got sick again — this time after eating a lettuce salad at the restaurant where I worked.
Right away, I knew something wasn’t right. I immediately felt off and wondered at the time if there was something on the lettuce, like bleach or something. Later that night, I woke up dizzy, disoriented, and in a daze. Then the vomiting started. It was so violent that I couldn’t control it or make it stop. I felt like I was trapped under a spell that I couldn’t escape. And it wouldn’t let me go.
I threw up so violently that something in my neck seemed to rupture, and it started swelling. I immediately went to the hospital where I was put on IV fluids for at least five days, if not longer. Much of that time is still a blur.
I specifically told the medical staff that it was something that I’d eaten. But I don’t know if they were really listening to me because they didn’t take a stool sample, which I now know they should have done. At the time, I didn’t know the exact procedures for investigating or diagnosing foodborne illness. I just knew I had become violently ill after eating at work.
My concern wasn’t just for myself. Because I worked in the restaurant, I kept thinking about everyone else who had eaten there. What if this happened to a child? Or someone much older than me? They could have been severely ill or even died. That’s how violent the sickness was. You know it’s bad when people say, “I wouldn’t wish this my worst enemy”.
Eventually, I recovered. Then I saw news reports about a recall linked to Cyclospora. When I learned which produce supplier was involved, I realized it was the same company that supplied produce to the restaurant where I worked. I pay attention to delivery boxes and labels. It was a supplier used by many restaurants. It’s a brand that everybody buys.
I went back to work, and I talked to the manager, and I told him about it — because we ordered produce from the company implicated in this recall.
This experience taught me something important about food poisoning: it can be disguised as something else. People assume they have the flu or some kind of stomach bug — the symptoms are similar. So you recover and move on. You brush it off and don’t retrace your steps or think about what it was that you’d eaten.
Thinking back to the day I got sick, I remembered a customer returning a salad and complaining that it had made him sick. He said he was going to leave a bad review online. Later, I looked up reviews for the restaurant and found other people saying they had become ill after eating there.
When I returned to work, I told my manager, “I got sick from eating here. And I’m pretty sure it was food poisoning.” I asked him if he knew we’d gotten lettuce that was part of a major recall – if people reported getting sick. He told me, “Yes, of course,” but I didn’t trust him because of how the management generally treated people. This manager especially was in the habit of saying inappropriate things toward black people, you know, “as a joke”.
One of the managers was pretty openly racially prejudiced, but the other one I didn’t know too well at all. The environment there was pretty stifled though. So, when I went to talk to a manager about being sick and WHY I got sick, I had my phone out and I recorded the whole conversation. When he realized I was recording he became angry and told me to get out. I think he was angry with me for not just getting sick and being gone from work, but for also talking about it and trying to record our conversation.
He fired me.
I had just gotten out of the hospital. I think it’s safe to say he never came clean about having contaminated lettuce. This is a privately owned business, with three locations. So, covering up a serious problem like contaminated lettuce — that’s the part that I really oppose.
I don’t know if it’s because of my culture, who I am or who I look like, that I didn’t get the help I needed. But a lot of people don’t know what others go through or that there are people who are not getting help with things that happen to them, or people willing to take us seriously when something like this happens.
Everybody always thinks it’s about the money — that people want a payout because they get deathly ill. I knew that I was part of an outbreak, even though the hospital neglected to test for it. I called the produce company that was taking a major blow from all of their contaminated lettuce to let them know I got sick from that particular restaurant. Because, uh, I was pretty certain the restaurant manager never called. Never called.
I often think about what might have happened it I hadn’t survived. How would anyone have known what made me sick? Who would have spoken up? That’s what still troubles me. Foodborne illness isn’t always “just a stomach bug”. It can be dangerous, and for a child, an older adult, or someone with a weakened immune system, it can be absolutely devastating.
No one should have to go through what I experienced.
