In his experience as a restaurant worker, Jhobani Hernandez said it's not out of the ordinary to see perhaps a mouse or rat scurrying through the bushes of an outdoor dining area. But, he said, he never encountered what he saw in a food storage room at the Sky Terrace restaurant at the W Hollywood, a hotel at Hollywood and Vine.
Rats and mice scurrying among the food stored on the shelves. Bags of flour and rice covered in what appeared to be rat feces, urine, and bite marks. Rodents, sometimes dead, but often writhing and gasping for life inside glue traps.
“It was a rodent infestation,” said Hernandez, 33. “This has simply been the worst experience. Management knew about it and they just didn't do anything about it. “That was the most irritating thing.”
Hernandez is one of five workers who have filed a complaint with the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health, better known as Cal/OSHA, asking the agency to investigate allegations that Sky Terrace violated health standards by failing to maintain safety standards. facilities to prevent entry. or vermin shelter. The complaint also alleges that the restaurant operator failed to institute an ongoing extermination program.
Pest mitigation typically occurs after a county health inspection, which is conducted at least once a year on all businesses that serve food, from convenience stores to full-service restaurants. This complaint focused on the health and safety concerns of Sky Terrace workers.
A hotel management company called Mosaic LLC operates Sky Terrace at the W Hollywood. On Nov. 16, Unite Here Local 11, which represents the workers, filed the complaint on behalf of the five cooks, servers and servers currently and formerly employed by Mosaic LLC.
Mosaic LLC did not respond to the specific allegations made in the complaint. Instead, the representatives provided a written statement, defending their procedures.
“We take health and safety very seriously and follow standards that meet or exceed health and safety standards,” a Mosaic representative said in a statement. The spokesperson added that the hospitality group is “ready to assist OSHA or the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health with any related questions.”
The W Hollywood works with “a leading pest control company on an ongoing basis and participates[s] them for any specific concerns reported within the building,” Nick Rimedio, the hotel's general manager, said in a written statement.
Rimedio referred questions about the restaurant to Mosaic, but said “health and safety are always the top priority.”
The Sky Terrace restaurant has remained open.
An exterior view of the W Hotel, back left, on Hollywood Boulevard. Five workers allege in a complaint to the State that rodents continue to appear in the hotel's rooftop restaurant.
(George Rose/Getty Images)
Pass inspections
Sky Terrace's main kitchen and dining room are located on the 12th floor of the hotel. Mosaic also maintains a storage area in the basement of the W Hollywood and an additional kitchen on the first floor of the same building.
On Nov. 17, a Unite Here Local 11 representative called the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, notifying officials of the complaint and asking the agency to conduct an immediate inspection. Agency officials said they investigated Nov. 20 and found no evidence of rodents at the facility.
The results of the inspection are not so surprising to María Hernández, spokesperson for Unite Here 11.
“In the past, part of the property has been closed and reopened only for the vermin to return,” he said. “It has been an issue that has come and gone as the workers have expressed to us.”
Months earlier, on July 31, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health closed three of the storage rooms operated by Mosaic for 48 hours after finding dozens of rodent droppings at the facilities, according to documents provided by the public health agency. . Additionally, inspectors discovered that one of the three warehouses lacked a public health permit.
In the same inspection, the inspector found no evidence of rodent activity at the rooftop restaurant, and Sky Terrace received an A grade.
After a re-inspection of the closed storage rooms on Aug. 2, the public health agency found that all violations had been corrected, according to the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health.
But in their complaint, the workers allege that the rodents eventually returned. Workers continued to take photographs of what appeared to be rodent feces and claims management continued to ignore the problem, according to the complaint.
The document describes in detail the vermin problem between May 3 and October 12 of this year. The complaint also attaches photographs and videos of what appear to be live and dead mice and rats along with rodent feces and urine.
The alleged rodent activity primarily took place in the W Hollywood's basement warehouse. On multiple occasions, workers found mice and rats running through stored food, according to the complaint and the workers. They also discovered bags of flour and rice covered in what appeared to be rat feces, urine and bite marks. Workers said they reported each rodent encounter to management, either verbally or through a work messaging app.
In response, the complaint states, management set traps and asked workers to clean more thoroughly. “Rat traps and cleanup failed to resolve the rodent infestation,” the complaint alleges.
Hernandez and other workers said they campaigned for management to hire an exterminator. It is not clear whether the company did so.
In June, one of the chefs asked Hernández, a receiver at the restaurant, to bring him a large bag of flour from the warehouse to the 12th floor, where the kitchen and restaurant are located. After Hernandez delivered the flour, the chef pointed out that the bag was torn and had rodent feces in it, according to the complaint.
Hernandez said he was upset when he saw the feces and yellow marks of what appeared to be urine.
She said she was surprised when the chef told her to only throw away half of the flour because she intended to use the other half, according to the complaint.
Hernandez took a photo of the torn bag that showed apparent rodent feces. The image is attached to the complaint.
A month later, a Sky Terrace server who did not want to be identified for fear of repercussions, said he also began noticing rodents inside the restaurant.
On July 30, the waiter opened the restaurant for breakfast and a manager discovered the sideboard on the rooftop portion of the restaurant. According to the complaint, a glue trap had been placed on top of the cutlery from the sideboard that fell and what appeared to be two mice were caught in the trap. One of the mice appeared to be dead and the other alive. Management ordered servers to throw the mice in the trash, according to the complaint.
Later that morning, the same waiter found what appeared to be a live mouse trapped in a trap along the wall of the restaurant. He attached a photo of the mouse to the complaint.
In the afternoon, a restaurant guest allegedly got his foot stuck in a glue trap that Mosaic workers had placed under a dining room table, according to the same complaint.
Edward Diaz, a 30-year-old man who was hired as a cook for the restaurant, also found several live and dead rodents in the warehouse, according to the complaint.
“Nowhere have I seen rodents like that in the workplace, and the managers knew about the vermin,” Diaz said.
After the first encounter, he said, he stopped eating food from the kitchen.
