My manager asked me to strain the fruit flies out of the liquor tonight.

I’ve only been working here for a couple weeks. We have really stupid cheap liquor spouts that let EVERY fruit fly in. We keep the cap on most bottles but the really sugary liquors with spouts (crème de cacao, melon, banana etc) had a decent collection of extra protein floating in them.

Asked manager what to do as we had a party tonight and I knew people would want some fancy shots. He told me to use a coffee filter to strain out the bugs.

I started doing it, got partway through one bottle and was so disgusted with myself that I just hid all the fruit-fly-infested liquors under the bar so no one could have the option to even order them. No China Whites, no King Kongs, I refused to serve those liquors.

I suggested some better fly-preventing spouts to my manager ($20 on amazon for a pack of 6) and he pretty much dismissed me in a very annoyed fashion. It’s an extremely small, rural backwoods town so there aren’t a lot of jobs available, so quitting this one would be rough on me, but I feel so gross about this. I can’t serve anyone something I wouldn’t drink myself.

I think this is more a rant than anything because I’m frustrated as heck, but does anyone have a similar experience? How did you handle it?

I’m thinking of either having a serious conversation with the manager (who is very grumpy and insists on every money-saving tactic, so I don’t think he’d be okay with me refusing to serve those) or just straight up quitting (which I can’t really do unless I have another job lined up). I’ll figure it out soon but I just can’t serve drinks with dead animals marinating in them.

ETA, from Google’s AI: “Fruit flies can carry bacteria like salmonella, E. coli, and listeria, which can cause food poisoning. Fruit flies can lay their eggs in ripening fruit and sweet fermenting liquids, like open liquor bottles. The larvae will feed on the overripe food or sugary liquids once they hatch.”

UPDATE: I’m sitting at the bar drafting up my email to the local health authority, along with some pics I discreetly took. 😎 thanks for listening to my rant and helping me out everyone!