I know there’s inherently something wrong about finding humor in someone else’s grief, but it’s not every day that you find out that a person died on account of them falling partially into a Publix deep fryer. Sure, the article’s headline is misleading, and the title of my post is as usual exaggerated for irony, and ultimately it really makes me wonder how a person dies from just their leg getting deep fried, but it’s still an incident involving a person and a deep fryer with unfortunate results.
Before I proceed, I will say that if there was ever an opportunity to put into writing about how good Publix fried chicken is, this is as good as any, ironic as it might be. No seriously, I put Publix on the Mount Rushmore of fried chicken, along with Royal Farms and Stroud’s, and I will fight anyone on their behalf who questions their honor as a legit best fried chicken contender.
But anyway, a story about a man who died because he accidentally deep fried his leg. As sad as it is for his family that they have suffered the loss of a member, I can’t help but feel that it’s one of those Murphy’s Law scenarios where the victim in question, was kind of a dumbass. I mean, sure it was his job to clean kitchen vents, but he also made the decision to stand on top of a deep fryer full of hot cooking oil in order to access the vents.
Sorry, I refuse to believe that this is standard operational procedure for accessing the ventilation system. I’ve assembled the SOP manuals for countless companies, and they’re typically geared towards the lowest common denominators of the working world, and there’s a tremendous amount of safety and idiot-proofing that companies everywhere integrate, in order to prevent people from getting hurt and deep frying their own limbs.
As far as the lawsuit goes, I think the victim’s family isn’t going to get the results they’re hoping for, because I’d wager money that the victim was not operating in a manner he should have been, and put himself into a situation where he could fall into a deep fryer and subsequently did.
Now I agree that something seems fishy about a man dying on account of having a deep fried leg, since there are thousands of people in the world with missing limbs living just fine to this very day. Then again, there are stories of people dying from spontaneous blood clots or staph infections at high altitude, so when it comes for a person’s time to go, never say never, at any possibility.
But for the sake of this story as a whole, from a far-away outsider’s perspective: dude accidentally fried himself to death. Fucked up way to go. I wonder how many people out there wondered what that leg tasted like after taking a bath in a magical Publix fryer, one likely shared with their god-like fried chicken?
