A woman eats a cheeseburger. (Smile Studio / Shutterstock)
By Amanda Thomason September 16, 2021 at 2:32pm
WARNING: This article features graphic descriptions and images that some viewers may find disturbing.
Finding — or claiming to find — human body parts in restaurant food is not a new phenomenon, but every time it comes up, it’s stomach-turning.
It just happened to a young woman preparing to enjoy a burger on Sunday at Hot Burger in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia.
Gruesome photos and a Facebook screed describe what followed.
“Good night!!” a translation of the post from Estefany Benitez reads. “I’m spreading to the branch of the Hot Burger … of San Aurelio, reason that in the magnificent burger at the time of eating and chewing I and my friend, this happened today Sunday 12-09-2021 in the night and tried to close the Branch and they shut it down and turned it off again as if nothing happened.
“To the top of it they told us he’d give us our money back, it’s like nothing happened.
“Please share.”
Photos show a burger that has been sliced into, with what appears to be a rotting fingertip placed at the edge of the plate.
Benitez had discovered the nasty item after taking a bite of the meal and chomping down on something hard.
Woman eating fast-food hamburger bites into rotting human finger https://t.co/GfxlkPpEG3 pic.twitter.com/5uUO7YMqqs
— New York Post (@nypost) September 16, 2021
She also shared video of her confronting employees about her grisly discovery and their offering to make it up to her.
“Here we are at the magnificent Hot Burger where a finger ended up in my burger,” Benitez narrated in one of the clips, according to the New York Post.
“Please tell me what you want and we will give it to you,” the employee said, adding that “nothing like this has ever happened to us before.”
They employee also offered to close the restaurant, but Benitez said it continued to serve customers.
The restaurant’s patties are prepared off-site so the local employees likely didn’t know anything about the contents of the burger — but someone clearly did.
A representative of the fast-food chain eventually admitted that a man had lost part of his pointer finger while preparing the patties and called Benitez’s find an “unfortunate incident,” the Post reported.
Edson Claure, director of the Bolivian National Police’s Special Crime Fighting Force, confirmed the representative’s story, according to the Daily Mail.
As a result, the vice minister for the defence of user and consumer rights fined and temporarily closed the restaurant.
It was unknown Thursday whether Benitez was pursuing any further legal action, but it’ll probably be a while before she can stomach another hamburger.
Amanda holds an MA in Rhetoric and TESOL from Cal Poly Pomona. After teaching composition and logic for several years, she’s strayed into writing full-time and especially enjoys animal-related topics.
As of January 2019, Amanda has written over 1,000 stories for The Western Journal but doesn’t really know how. Graduating from California State Polytechnic University with a MA in Rhetoric/Composition and TESOL, she wrote her thesis about metacognitive development and the skill transfer between reading and writing in freshman students.
She has a slew of interests that keep her busy, including trying out new recipes, enjoying nature, discussing ridiculous topics, reading, drawing, people watching, developing curriculum, and writing bios. Sometimes she has red hair, sometimes she has brown hair, sometimes she’s had teal hair.
With a book on productive communication strategies in the works, Amanda is also writing and illustrating some children’s books with her husband, Edward.
Location
Austin, Texas
Languages Spoken
English und ein bißchen Deutsch
Topics of Expertise
Faith, Animals, Cooking