Restaurant Workers

A fast-food worker pleaded no contest Monday to transportation of methamphetamine after sheriff's deputies arrested her last month on suspicion of selling drugs from the drive-through window of a Covina Jack in the Box restaurant. Jennifer Dominguez, 23, was sentenced to nine months in county jail and five years' felony probation, her attorney Jack Tyre said. Dominguez was arrested March 16 in her car outside the restaurant on North Citrus Avenue with the stimulant, authorities said.

Hundreds of patrons and employees of a restaurant here have received shots to prevent hepatitis A infection. Health officials announced this week that a waitress at Mimi's Cafe had been diagnosed with the virus, which is contagious but rarely fatal. Public officials advised patrons who ate during the waitress' shifts to get the shots. Hepatitis A symptoms include chills, high fever, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, fatigue, abdominal pain, dark urine and jaundice.

In a concession to the restaurant industry, the Internal Revenue Service will no longer audit restaurateurs as long as they try to comply with tax laws on reporting of tips--even if their waiters and waitresses are cheating. Instead, the IRS is shifting its enforcement focus to the employees who aren't reporting their tips, which officials acknowledge will be far more difficult to track due to lack of money and manpower.

A restaurateur held four Thai women in slave-like conditions because she was greedy and wanted to maintain a high style of living, prosecutors said during closing arguments in the trial of a woman charged with harboring undocumented immigrants. Supawan Veerapol is charged with forcing the Thai women to work up to 16 hours a day for a pittance, requiring them at times to sleep on the floor outside her bedroom.

A customer at a local bagel shop was impressed recently to see that all workers wore plastic gloves to handle food people ordered. She was far less impressed, however, when she saw the workers handling money at the cash register, wearing those same gloves. Health officials here will tell you that wearing gloves in restaurants and food shops can be both good and bad. Plastic gloves can assure that workers' dirty hands aren't coming in contact with food.

A snack bar cashier using a propane tank as a footrest may have inadvertently triggered a flash fire that seriously burned three people Sunday, including two teenagers. Los Angeles County sheriff's officials initially believed the blaze was ignited by burners when a worker knocked over a chair that ruptured a gas line inside a food preparation area at the William S. Hart Pony Baseball Field. Capt.

At Bobby's Coffee Shop on Ventura Boulevard, a greasy breakfast joint that's still packin' 'em in after more than 50 years, Mary Wood, as usual, is hard at work. She shuffles from table to table in her white New Balance sneakers, taking her orders, usually with little more than eye contact or verbal shorthand. "Ready?" Mary asks one diner. He nods in the affirmative. "The usual," he says. Two poached eggs. Wheat toast, Mary scribbles. That would be Buddy.

A Mexican restaurant has drawn complaints from an organization of short people for sending a 4-foot-4 employee around to serve customers chips and salsa from his sombrero. Anthony Soares, vice president of public relations for Little People of America in New York City, called the stunt humiliating. Nacho Mama's restaurant, which opened Wednesday, features Steve Vento serving snacks from his hat. Vento previously worked as a comic and portrayed the Hamburglar character for McDonald's.

When Sivi Stuart signed on to wait tables at Marie Callender's Restaurant in San Juan Capistrano, nobody told her the job would involve out-of-state travel. Stuart and a dozen other servers, cooks and busboys from the chain's restaurants in Southern California were shipped to Houston two weeks ago to work at the firm's newest--but critically short-handed--eatery. They were sent after Marie Callender's scoured all of Texas unsuccessfully for workers.