Aramark’s takeover of Leo’s is just okay, despite the sublime pasta bar. It’s going to take at least a semester before we see real changes, but more worrisome is Aramark’s old habit for questionable business practices–and a more recent taste for covering it up online.

Wikipedia’s entry on Aramark has a short section on corporate malfeasance: Aramark overcharged a prison $2 million, it’s been firing people unfairly at a hospital, and it withheld tips from hotel employees. Things might be much worse, though, because someone at an Aramark IP address has been editing damaging entries from the Wikipedia page.

This news comes from Wikiscanner, a website that links IP addresses to the anonymous edits they make. It’s not necessarily an Aramark employee or company sanctioned, but who besides an Aramark employee can use their internet access? Aramark’s vandal isn’t so much sinister as clumsy–any amateur wiki prankster knows not to just delete paragraphs. One person using an Aramark computer deleted huge chunks of the corporate malfeasance section. Later, some PR boiler plate was inserted that inadvertently referred to “our” employees.

Amusing as Aramark’s antics are, Georgetown can’t afford repeats of either their corporate dirty tricks or bumbling disinformation.
-Will Sommer, blog editor

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 4th, 2007 at 9:41 am and is filed under Campus News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.