The fast food chain was worldwide,
incorporated, franchised, and, on paper, a 96 year old woman residing in Togo.
Their actual offices were in Illinois; that’s where all of their actual office
employees worked. The CEO, CFO, and other acronym’ed bosses all spent eight to
twelve hours a day there, and a single 22 year old woman manned a lonely desk
in a nearly empty room on the other side of the planet in case anybody ever
called or sent a fax.
She
spent most of her time surfing the Internet and taking online classes. On the
rare occasion the phone rang, she answered it and transferred the call back to
the Illinois offices. On the even rarer occasion that a fax came through, she
checked it and either dropped it directly into the shredder, or re-faxed it
(again, to the Illinois offices).
She
knew enough English to know what words to scan for on faxes and determine
whether to shred or forward them. Words like “FDA,” and “Investigation” and
“Safety” always gave her pause, but unless the message also contained a keyword
like “Lawsuit” or “Unsafe,” the faxes went into the shredder.
This
is why the following fax was read (poorly), and ultimately shredded.
From: FDA
Scientific Analysis Team
To: [Unnamed fast
food chain]
Re: Safety
Testing and Research Findings
Dear Sir or Madam,
In conjunction
with US Federal Safety Standards, we have completed our latest analysis of your
ingredients and related food-preparation materials and can find no measurable carcinogens
or additives, which would pose a serious health risk to your patrons. There
were a number of other potential side effects found, as our test subjects
showed a variety of radical physiological changes when fed certain combinations
of your materials, but they do not (yet) appear to be physically harmful, and,
as such, we will not be pursuing further actions against you at this time.
Thank you for your time and
attention in this matter, we trust that you will pull any potentially harmful
or unstable materials from your product lines until further testing can be conducted.
Sincerely,
Patricia Cronin, PhD
Chief Scientific Advisor, Federal
Food and Drug Administration
On
the other side of the world, back in the Illinois office, on the 23rd
floor, there was a very important meeting going on.
Doctor
Ralph Quinlan was showing his latest creation to a selection of the board of
directors. Doctor Quinlan’s official title was “Head Chef,” but he didn’t
actually cook anything in the traditional sense, he spent his time mixing and
matching assorted chemicals and compounds to create food-like foods to use at the restaurants. Real pickles were expensive, for
example, but Doctor Quinlan had created a faux-pickle in his lab that had the
vague texture and taste of pickles, while costing only a quarter of the real
thing.
He
had also done this for their burgers, chickens, bacon, tomatoes, breads,
mustard, ketchup, and mayonnaise.
The
only ingredient offered by the fast-food giant that could still be called food (without
having to put quotation marks around the word) was the lettuce, which was why
lettuce was only used on their “premium” burgers. The premium burgers cost
roughly three times as much as a regular burger to recoup the cost of having to
use real lettuce (despite the fact that a single leaf cost the business less
than a penny).
Today
he was showing them a gelatinous white orb containing a laundry-list of
polysyllabic chemicals found nowhere in nature and entirely “grown” in his lab.
When dried, it could be diced into flakes that were reminiscent of onions.
“I
even engineered it to induce tears, like a real onion!” he proclaimed to the
board. “Best of all, this will cost us a tenth of what a genuine onion does.”
The
assembled members of the board nodded and made appreciative noises but didn’t
actually say any words; they were already calculating the additional profits in
their heads. When the head of the company was satisfied with his calculations,
he said “Carry on, doctor,” then turned to leave, pulling the rest of the board
into his wake.
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