CALGARY, Alberta – Bendovus Energy (TSX: BENDOVER) is well-known for being a world-class integrated oil and gas producer operating within western Canada, but recent developments lead us to believe the company is not known for maintaining clean cafés for its beloved staff.
The company’s seven staff cafés in its downtown Calgary office in the Beau Building were flagged by health inspectors this week after racking up multiple infractions. Inspectors ordered all café kitchens to be closed citing potential significant harm to anybody who entered a 25m radius of them, whether eating or not.
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According to the AHS, the cafés in the Bendovus office space were being maintained in a manner permitting numerous health hazards dating back to October, 2022. Food handler education was conducted to office management staff on site and the closure order was issued immediately. The AHS reported that the kitchens were found to not be in compliance with a number of health code ordinances including food being stored and served at the wrong temperatures, but the critical infraction that shut them down was the use of ground petrified dog faeces in the coffee machines instead of coffee grinds.
The report said “all of the cafés were down right filthy with dust, particulate dog and cat faeces matter around the coffee machine, and food debris including grime pretty much everywhere in and around the cafes.” Anita Hardjohnson, senior health inspector with the AHS, included in her report the most significant infractions found while visiting the Bendovus offices on January 13th, 2023.
- A man was found on the 45th-floor café stirring a huge pot of stew with his bare arm. No spoon or anything, he was just up to his hairy elbow in beef stew. It turns out that this man was neither an employee of the company nor the third-party café operator.
- The deep fryers were filled with 65 API condensate instead of fryer oil.
- All condiments were at least 18 months past their expiry date. A jar of 3 year-old mayonnaise was labelled “for engineers only.”
- Cockroaches. Cockroaches everywhere. We concluded that there were at least 4 generations of cockroaches living in what appeared to be a structure they had built behind the fridge that resembled a set of condos.
- Two enormous tarantulas were found to be what is best described as pest control for the kitchen staff on the 37th floor café.
- There was evidence found that café staff would deliberately feed engineers coffee that was made with dilbit instead of water.
A Bendovus spokesman responded to a request from 2P News to comment on the AHS findings and kitchen closures. Gaghan Deep, the senior vice president of Bendovus’ kitchens and cafe department had the following to say.
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“We are fully complying with AHS orders and our goal is to get things where they need to be so that we can reopen before long. It turns out that man who stirred the stew with his bare arm was a contractor hired to clean the interior of the windows – not sure why he was in the kitchen. As for making coffee with ground-up cat and dog faeces, well, we heard about that cat poop coffee being all fancy, so we tried it ourselves as an extra perk. We sent a company-wide email apologizing to all engineers for the malice that was shown to them in all 7 of our cafés, but truth be told, we wanted to get them sick so that they could just work from home because everybody pretty much hates those fuckers.” – Gaghan Deep, SVP
AHS health inspectors have given the company until February 3rd, 2023 to get its act in order before revisiting to reinspect and possibly open the kitchens.