I bought a pack of mixed italian salad from Woody's. I opened it, grabbed a few leaves, washed them and put them in a salad.

I left the packet on the side as I ate my dinner.

When I started to clear up, I noticed this:

A big snail had crawled out of the salad box and was exploring its new country.

Pretty grossed out,(and pausing only to take a couple of grainy photos with my phone) I immediately took the salad box back to the shop to show to the management.

The man behind the counter laughed when I showed him the salad box with a snail on it.

He said 'Why don't you throw it away? Pick up another one from over there" whilst chuckling at the funny snail.

I went looking for another member of staff. I found a couple closing the freezer. I showed them the salad box, with the snail still attached.

"Oh" said the woman. "Well, you can get another one". I explained I didn't really want another one.

"It's not our fault," she said. "Anyway, some people eat them."

I looked at her.

She looked at me.

That was clearly the end of the conversation.

So I walked out.

I'm pretty grossed out and I'm appalled at the customer service. So I'm not going to there again. I've been a reasonably good customer of theirs, but that's done.

Let's not forget that the Black Sea BBQ (formerly Woody's Grill) was massively fined for having rats living in the oven.

So should I take it any further? If so, what should I do?

I suppose it is not Woody's fault unless it is Woody's branded salad.

If not, then who made the salad?

You should sue them for damages or report them to the council and ruin their humble, snail loving livelihoods.

And unless it's carrying the bilharzia parasite I thing the health risk is minimal.

And Bilharzia snails are tiny.

The quality in Woody's is rubbish anyway though, both service and produce.

The only good thing about it is that it's not Tesco.

Ditto. At least you know the greens were fresh. That snail looks quite robust. I’d be more upset if it was dead.

If you still have the lil guy I’d gladly adopt him or her

I picked some nettle tips on the Granville spinney to eat and had to wash them for about an hour there were so many little flies and things on them - I have much sympathy for organic farmers.

Please don't go off on a comsuming dog wee tangent.

Markets are great if you are buying stuff for that day - otherwise they are rubbish.

I've gone on about it before, but Riverford deliver a great vege box, and that lasts the week, generally.

I keep meaning to try the bike cum organic veg market towards Archway, but keep forgetting.

Urgh. I had the same box of mixed leaves from Woody's for dinner last night. I usually do a Woody's shop on Monday after work when tesco's is always so packed it looks like everyone is preparing for a nuclear holocaust. No snails for me. *must check fridge when I get home from work*. I didn't even wash mine...

Are you 100% sure the snail came from the salad and not from somewhere else in your kitchen? It looks to me like he's climbing into the box rather than out of the box, is all.

We've been keeping the windows open recently to enjoy the weather and have found all manner of creepy crawlies around our flat.

As for Woodys - they offered another salad. Perhaps that's as good as an apology in Turkey? I look at that as their admission of fault, even though it clearly wasn't.

A package I had sent from the USA was lost, and I dream it happened in a similar way.

Our postman is rubbish

If you're unhappy with your postman, don't even think of complaining to Royal Mail.

We used to have a problem with the early morning postman who delivers parcels. He never, ever rang the bell. We're almost always home in the mornings, but we still got a couple of those red card each week. When we arranged to have the parcels redelivered, he still wouldn't ring the bell. (And yes, we've checked the that the bell works.) So we had to have them redelivered to the post office and pay 50p each time for what is supposed to be a door-to-door service. This went on for months.

So I sent an e-mail to Royal Mail. Silly me. Two days later, the postman rang the bell. My husband opened the door. There was no parcel, but the guy wanted to interrogate him as to why we filed a complaint.

WTF?!

I phoned RM and had a bit of a spazz over them telling the postman that we were the ones who complained. After that, we got a new postman, who always rings the bell and never threatens members of my family. So it's all good.

We had a sneaky squirrel climbing in our bedroom window the other morning, the cheeky thing, I'm sure it didn't pop out of a (horribly overpackaged) salad bag.

While we're on the postman thing, I had a card popped through once saying I had a lovely parcel, got up early on Saturday to beat the queue at Green Lanes only to be told they couldn't find it.

They were unable to trace anything and said I should contact whoever sent it (I wasn't expecting anything). Beyond that there was no recourse at all, so whoever sent me a lovely parcel, thanks and all that, but what was it?

David and katiejane, I said it looks like it was climbing in half way through my last post.

And none of this "it's organic/it's not been treated" argument stands up.

Just because "organic/pesticide free" food might have snails in it, doesn't mean that if it's got snails in it it's not been treated with anything.

Tsk, did no-one else study necessity and sufficiency in formal logic?

Sack of cack.

"A big snail had crawled out"

what's ambiguous about this?

armchair detectives, the lot of you.

@ Colette - I bet you'd have sauteed it in garlic and added it to the salade seeing as you're french and all

Does the snail have a name yet?

Of course it could have climbed in while you were having your dinner and decided to climb out again which was when you saw it.

A fe-snail?

Regards posties (this thread's about snail mail yes?) I'm lamenting the loss of Everton our postie, it was his last day on Friday, he's gone "back on the vans" after 10 years of doing great service to the Hanley Road area. He was the perfect postie, even kept our parcels in his trolley for us when we were away, so we didn't have to go through all the admin of getting stuff re-routed. Looks like we'll be back to using our work adresses for deliveries now...

@ Colettte: Most. French. Comment. Ever.

Andy - you are right. Anyone else is to varying degrees wrong, apart from those that absolutely agree with you. Hopeless service at that place - not surprised this happened at all.

@ Colette - you spelt Andy wrong! You, of all people!

I’m both bemused and perplexed by the reactions as well.

I know many or most of the people reading this are probably flat-dwellers and are unlikely to have gardens but have we become so divorced from nature that such a small creature can provoke such a reaction?

If you grew your own vegetables you would be confronted by snails popping out of your greens on a daily basis – would the solution be to rip out all the plants and throw them away? We’d all starve.

I’m with tosscat. I would have taken Sue out and set her free – but only after I finished my salad.

Also, I'm with Tosscat and JoeV, in case that wasn't already very obvious. I vote snail.

I live on the second floor, but grew some lettuces in my window boxes last year. I found a snail in one of them, quite a few weeks after I'd planted them. Clever snail.

Why not grow your own in the garden or a window box, very easy, no food miles etc although I was once eating a sandwich at work with rocket from the garden in it. I put it down to talk to some for few minutes and small slug crawled out much to the amusement of everyone!

One thing I have noticed in Woody’s is that a stick of Rhubarb cost 50p each

Now this you could really complain about:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7399649.stm

@colette - argh! video needed a warning - hates them.

So Lucy, do you live with Andy? I get confused quite easily about who does and who doesn't know each other in real life. Are Andy and David brothers? Etc etc

I still think the snail wasn't even from the salad.

And I think Woodys is pretty good all round. I do miss the headless lamb, though

I'm not sure I want to join this one, but I did have a question to Andy: did you title this thread in way that would do extra damage through search engine indexing? Cyber-terrorist!

Even though she may deny it in a court of law, I would like to point out Lucy knows me as well.

it didn't hurt.

*sniff*

Yes who, who?

I've worked it out.

Sharpens Yoda-like internet stalking skills

Katiejane and Tosscat are siblings.

Fact.

The 'who knows who' guessing game deserves its own thread.

All I'll say is you've seen the photos, how could David and I not be brothers?

@ tosscat - damn! And I was trying so hard to be right on and not say Siamese. I would have checked with you, but you were snoring away.

@ tosscat - your train's about to arrive in BAD TASTE CENTRAL young man.

Did you take it to Woodys and complain?

What?