Back in March, I reported on a story from Shanghai about two teenagers who decided to spice up their dinner at a Haidilao, a popular hot pot chain in China. They did so by standing on the table and peeing directly into the hot pot broth.
The chain didn’t discover it until days later, when a video of the event spread across Chinese social media. Because yes, these dips***s filmed themselves peeing into a pot of broth in the middle of a restaurant.
Haidilao offered a generous refund of a customer’s full bill plus 10 times the refunded amount to any customer who had placed any one of that specific location’s 4,100 orders taken between January 24 and March 8.
Today, we get word of the fate of the boys who evidently did not have a pot to p*** in, so they took full advantage when they were presented with one.
Two Teens in China Peed in a Hot Pot and Now Their Parents Owe $309,000
A Chinese court has imposed a 2.2 million yuan fine on them—well, their parents, really. That’s roughly $309,000 US, for context. China doesn’t f**k around.
For anyone unfamiliar with hot pot, think of it as a fondue-style dish, but for soup. The center of your table contains a bubbling cauldron of broth, sometimes a variety of them. Diners are then given a variety of raw meats, vegetables, and accoutrements that they can cook in the broth. Urine is considered a nontraditional hot pot ingredient.
Not only did Haidilao offer over 4,000 customers full refunds and tenfold cash compensation, but they also swapped out all the hotpot equipment and did a deep clean. By March, Haidilao was seeking over 23 million yuan in damages, citing customer payouts and brand trauma.
Last week, a Shanghai court handed down its judgment. The teens had committed “acts of insult” against the company and its customers, according to the court. Their parents were found liable, too, for not properly supervising their hellspawn.
Here’s how the fine breaks down: 2 million yuan for business and brand damage, 130,000 yuan for tableware and cleaning, and 70,000 yuan in legal fees.
The only thing the court was a little hesitant to make the parents pay for was the refunds and bonus compensation Haidilao offered to customers, deeming those as a “voluntary business decision.” Fair enough.
Hopefully, after all of this, the kids have learned that if you want more broth, you can’t just pee out the broth you’ve already drunk. That’s not how it works.
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