Today I went to Dunkin’ Donuts to buy my extra-large cup of joe and a bagel.
As the man was preparing my coffee, I watched as he added cream, the Splenda packets, and then filled the cup with steamy goodness.
Then he paused and scratched his forearm, six inches over my open cup of coffee. And it was a good four-finger scratching, back and forth several times.
In my mind I imagined a horrifying snowstorm of arm hair and dandruff falling into my open cup, and I considered asking for a fresh cup of coffee. I’m certain that more than one customer at my side had probably seen same thing I did, so I’m sure he would have given me a new cup.
In the end, I let it slide, for the following reasons…
[ul][li]I eat at this DD every other morning. Don’t want to needlessly piss people off[/li][li]The guy had a sort of surly attitude, so I figured he would not accept the criticism nicely. And he looked like he could be owner or manager, so it was more likely to be an unpleasant confrontation.[/li][li]I scratched my own forearm and observed that no great snowstorm of hair and dandruff resulted.[/ul][/li]What would you have done?
On another occasion, I watched as the woman who prepared my sandwich accepted the money I offered, with gloved hand and went on to carry out the rest of the transaction without removing or changing her gloves. In other words, the gloves did nothing to prevent getting her food-handling hands dirty from money.
Being one who hates potentially confrontational/embarrassing situations, but as I’m very good at making s##t up, I’d ask for another cup, but say something like “Eww, I saw a big green fly land on it while you weren’t looking,” or “I forgot, I’ve gotta avoid Splenda today for an allergy test - my profuse apologies”. If you’re not as cute as I am though, you might still have to pay for the extra cup
I think Angel had a great answer. I would also write Dunkin’ Donuts Corporate office. You might get something free
But certainly write the health dept as well if you feel the need. They should be using strict hygiene. There’s nothing wrong with an outside check to affirm this
As to the gloves, there have been threads and threads on misused gloves on food service workers. The concensus seems to be that they’re mostly intended to keep sores on the workers’ hands from getting into the food. They’re not really intended for “touch food only with gloves, touch everything else only without gloves.” Or at least if the second interpretation was ever the official one, it’s sure bastardized in practice.
My personal take on both your points is:
As a society, we’re waay too uptight about this stuff.
I don’t expect much culinary excellence from a DD, and this extends to their hygiene practices.
The way to change the practices you’re exposed to is to change where you go, including going home. People who are real concerned about food prep hygience ought to do all their own cooking; the reality in many restaurant or industrial skitchen would make them scream (or barf) if they knew.
You can bring it up to management as you leave for the last time. And you may have either a good or a bad conversation. But odds are they’re already doing what they think is the right blend of carefulness, corner-cutting to save money, and blind ignorance of best (or even minimum mandatory) practices. And you’re not going to change any of those three things in a way which sticks for the long haul.
As and when enough people vote with their feet the place will close. Only then will they stop scratching in the coffee & gloving the money.
I don’t think I would have noticed. I’m sure I’ve scratched my arm when it was over food lots of time without even realizing. It sounds like the kind of complaint that if I’d made it as a kid, our parents would have eye rolled at it: “Ew, Mommy, he SCRATCHED OVER ME!”
I’m a waitress and I, personally, am very careful about food sanitation. If I bus a table, I wash my hands… always. Wash after touching money, etc. There are plenty of sinks and I’m willing to take that extra 30 seconds to make sure my customer is safe, even if they don’t even realize it.
I would be grossed out. I would have called him out, I don’t care if he’s surly. I’m the customer and I deserve a cup of coffee that doesn’t have microscopic man-flakes. I can be a real bitch if I need to be. If he wouldn’t give me a fresh cup, I’d insist on my money back. I refuse to buy (and drink!) that cup of coffee.
And if I were management in this situation, I’d comp a new cup of coffee. But if similar anxieties from the same customer resurfaced, I might intimate to the customer that he or she could probably find a better fit among coffeemongers elsewhere.
It was nice of you to give us the “wouldn’t have noticed” option, but that’s kind of letting us of the hook; what you want to know is what we’d do once we did notice, right?
I hear ya. I would have been envisioning a flurry of big fat dead skin flakes, lilting down into my cup and forming a sebaceous-tinged oil slick on the surface of my coffee. Maybe a couple of inexplicably curly arm hairs/some under-nail detritus too? Mmmm-mmm!
So damn hard to unsee what has been seen. Maybe give the cup a quick shake, swirl the contents a bit? But it’s still----
wait. SPLENDA?
Eeeeewwwwww! minor7flat5, Dunkin Donuts homeboy probably improved the taste of your coffee right there!
Well, I interpreted “wouldn’t have noticed” as even if I literally saw it, it wouldn’t have registered as something to go, “Ew” about. There’s probably flakes of skin in almost everything we touch.
Coffee, definitely, I wouldn’t care about. Coffee is hot, and I would presume whatever survived my immune system could deal with. At the most, I might try to avoid that one person, but only if I saw him making a habit of it.
Yeah, unless he had some kind of disease where I could see chunks of flesh splash into my coffee, I don’t it would really register even if I did see him scratching.
There’s a reason people handling and preparing food are required to wear hair nets and such; I would have asked for a new cup. I am well-aware that gross stuff might be going on in the kitchen, but don’t do it in front of me; I won’t tolerate it.
