Facts

Food Delivery Driver Harasses Female Customer Via Text Messages

just eat LucaLorenzelli / istockphoto.com
Taylor Rock|

A 33-year-old in the U.K. is alleging that a food delivery driver sent her unsolicited text messages after dropping off her order. Michelle Midwinter, from Gloucestershire in England, posted screenshots of what she claims to be the WhatsApp conversation between her and a Just Eat driver.

He said he was "a fan," inquired about her relationship status, called her "baby," and said "see you next time when I get your meal," followed by a kiss emoji.

At first, the alarmed Briton was hesitant to complain about the man's inappropriate behavior out of fear of repercussion from the driver, who had her name, address, and phone number.

"If he ended up getting fired over this, who knows what he would do with my information as he clearly had no qualms over using it in the first place," she wrote on Twitter.

Eventually, she reached out to Just Eat over the app's live chat, where a customer service representative named Trixie simply offered a £10 coupon (roughly $14).

"We are appalled by the way this was handled when the customer initially made contact with our customer care team. This lacked empathy and does not reflect our policies or the way Just Eat would expect something like this to be dealt with," Just Eat told The Daily Meal. "We have established procedures for dealing with customer complaints including escalations and compliance teams who will step in if an issue is not resolved satisfactorily on first contact."

Of the intrusive delivery driver, the company said: "This driver has acted in a way that does not represent Just Eat and our core values. We are investigating this with our restaurant partner and are also speaking to this customer offline and if the customer decides this is a criminal matter and reports it to the police, we will of course assist the police with any investigation."

Midwinter confirmed on Twitter that a Just Eat managing director phoned her for a "very long chat" about the incident.

"They are indeed accepting responsibility and are deeply apologetic about the way this was initially handled and it has 'shaken them to the core,'" she wrote. "We spoke about the big changes there will be and how these will be implemented. I believe they are taking this extremely seriously and I hope this will pave the way for national changes to the way our data is protected, and more importantly how females are protected."

As upsetting as the incident was, after her post went viral Midwinter learned that her situation is not as rare as she might hope. "I've been contacted hundreds of times with similar stories," she tweeted. "It's happening EVERYWHERE!"

For more accounts of indecency in the food world, here are the 9 most memorable crimes that went down at fast food restaurants.

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