Update: Three employees were fired in the aftermath of lettuce-gate 2012, and the Cuyahoga County Board of Health has cleared the restaurant. The scary part? In its inspection, they found it wasn't only those two containers of lettuce that were affected. The non-scary part: they caught any of it before it was served.

Via Mayfield Hts. Patch:

Three Burger King employees were fired in connection with the incident, Burger King’s corporate office said. Dave Covell, the Deputy Director of Environmental Health for the county board of health, said the store’s management found more than just the two lettuce bins affected. Covell said the store threw out all of the affected food on Saturday morning. None of the lettuce was served to anyone, nor have any illnesses been reported, he said.

Yummers.

***

The internet can be a magical place sometimes.

A (briefly) anonymous employee of Burger King snapped a pic of himself, which you can see to the right, standing on two containers of lettuce. And not so much on the containers of lettuce so much as in the containers of lettuce. The lettuce that people were going to eat.

Everyone might have deep fears that this is the sort of stuff that happens in the back kitchens of fast food restaurants, but most know disgusting Waiting-esque hijinks don't actually occur on a regular basis. At least we hope. That mental imagery ruins a perfectly good Whopper.

Anyway... he posted the pic on 4Chan.

Anonymous, the online collective famous for high-profile hackings, internet sleuthing, and virtual attacks against monster companies like Mastercard, didn't take too kindly to senor asshole's post and quickly destroyed his nameless, faceless designs by grabbing the GPS data from the picture, which our mastermind was too dumb to strip before posting. You can also sorta see a barcode in the background on a box, which would have been another clue.

It took all of 15 minutes, according to HyperVocal.com, to find out that the employee worked at the Burger King in Mayfield Heights. Phone calls and emails ensued.

Scene called over to BK this morning and chatted with Andrea, a manager during the breakfast shift. She said she had just heard about the incident recently and has been trying to get in touch with her district manager and general manager. But she assures us justice will be had.

"Whoever this is is getting fired," she said. "And whoever the manager was at the time will be fired, too."

At this point, she hadn't even seen the picture yet. When Scene directed her toward the snapshot, she quickly said: "Oh, I know who that is. He's getting fired."

And there you have it, folks. Don't fuck with people's food or the internet.