I’ve got a friend who is allergic to nicotine. He has to hold his breath until he’s well over a hundred feet away. It’s literally the only thing that infuriates him - being unable to breath annoys him for some reason.
My brother’s ex-wife had that level of allergy with strawberries and shellfish.
We found out when she walked in the house soon after they started seeing each other. My mother was making strawberry jam. She made it a few steps inside the house and ran for the driveway…choking.
No laughing matter.
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While that is possible it is unlikely even for most people with peanut allergies. And while I agree people should clean up after themselves the reality is that they don’t always do that, so anyone with a severe peanut allergy that includes problems with physically touching peanuts or their residue is probably carrying wipes and swabbing down their environment anyway.
That’s another annoyance I have, and is further ignorance about allergies. Yes, there are some very unfortunate people who are that sensitive to their triggers. But most of us are not. There is not one thing I’m allergic to that I can’t tolerate brief physical/touch contact with it, and I genuinely do have some severe allergies. Probably best I immediately wash the area that came into contact with whatever (and tomato juice can give me a rash just like poison ivy) but it won’t kill me. The notion that I need to be kept in an allergen-free bubble would essentially make me unemployable, and I don’t find that an acceptable notion. Nor should it be. I can work 40 hours a week in a grocery store full of stuff I’m allergic to, including handling many items while ringing up customer orders, and do so without endangering my health. Why? Because I’ve actually been taught how to live in the world. “Allergen free zones” are probably necessary for very young kids that can’t be responsible for anything yet, but at a certain point we need to move from “isolate the allergic” to “give the allergic effective coping skills”.
Oops! That should read " . . .we can**'t** make . . ."
Then she would have been written up in a medical journal, since this would have been the first time this ever happened. My daughter’s allergist says “its almost inconceivable you could have a shock reaction from kissing someone who had eaten peanuts hours before.”
Car accidents, hangovers, pregnancy, and getting sent to rehab should cure teenage rebellion too, but they don’t.
First, I don’t know when the boyfriend ate breakfast. It’s not uncommon for kids to skip eating at home and eat a granola bar between classes. However, the consensus seems to be that it’s safe to kiss 4-1/2 to 5 hours after the partner has had peanuts because the saliva will be clear by then. Lunch was shortly after 11:00. If he scarfed a granola bar at 8 a.m. that’s well within the unsafe time period. At the time, the school nurse told me the boy had peanut particles lodged in or between his teeth. I have no idea if she knew that for a fact or it was mere conjecture on her part.
I’m well aware that some teens do stupid things. That doesn’t mean all teens do, and it certainly doesn’t mean that anaphylactic shock is comparable to a hangover or pregnancy to a teen who suffocated almost to death from consuming peanuts before.
I’m not at all opposed to kids eating peanut butter sandwiches in grocery carts. My point was merely that it’s a huge and justified worry for parents of kids with severe allergies, and that the danger of exposure is always there. Therefore, they have to be extremely vigilant.
When I was with Safeway they had the same policy. I’m sure they still do now.
Someone says they’ve never had an Oreo before? Rip a package right open and let them have some, then walk around the store and offer them to anyone who wants one. “How do I pick a good watermelon?” Tell them how, then show them a good one, then cut it open and prove you were right. Make a demonstration of it for anyone that’s around. We were encouraged to do this, even though in 12 years I never actually did it even once.
Holy crap! I’m trying this next time I need to get a cantaloupe.
And sometimes it’s a situation where they accidentally knock something off the shelf and it breaks open and, rather than tell a store employee about it, they just put it back on the shelf or another shelf behind some other things. I ran into that situation last night at the grocery store I work at where someone had apparently knocked one of those 4 packs of fruit cups off the shelf some time ago and one broke open and they just put it on another shelf behind some cans of fruit. The broken open cup was moldy and there was a nice pool of dried fruit syrup on the shelf I had to wipe up. So thanks for that to whoever the asshole who did that was.
Of course, you never know if it was entirely on the customer.
Some time back, I was getting some soft drinks for a shindig, and I dropped a 12 pack. Not far, but enough, apparently, to cuase one of the cans to rupture and start leaking.
I was done shopping, so I took my stuff up to the check-out, on the way up, I was looking for someone to inform, but encountered no one. When I got to the self check-out, I told the person monitoring about it. She thanked me for telling her, and then did nothing. By the time I had left, she had still not picked up a phone or talked to anyone else.
I felt I had done my responsibility by informing an employee, but the person who discovered it without being informed was probably annoyed by the asshole who broke it and didn’t tell anyone.
Opening this thread I assumed the question was ‘is it inappropriate to eat peanut butter out of the jar while walking around in public’. I was going to answer ‘no, as long as you use a utensil and not your finger’.
I didn’t even consider peanut allergies.
Pretty much what I would say with possibly less interest in being polite about it depending on the store. Something like a clothing store and just forget it - I will go ballistic; I don’t want someones garbage and debris around the stuff I hope/intend to buy. Same can go for most specialty shops. Food stores I can live with it, or food sections of something like a WallyWorld. But all in all its just not something I have run across often and I am not going to accept it.
Get this - I never thought of Target as being so much the same/interchangeable with Whole Foods as you do.
just a thought…why didn’t she go to the somewhat large “food court/or food island” with said sandwich? no one would of thought twice bout it …unless targets have changed its usually right off the right side of the entrance…
While I understand that you are grossed out by the thought of people eating in your general proximity, I don’t know why one would need to be rude to employees or management over what a customer is doing.
You say that it would be able to live with it in the food section of a wallyworld, but not of a target? That makes little sense to me.
You do know that target is also a grocery store, right?
Is it just that wholefoods is more expensive that eating is acceptable, or what, exactly?
Not all targets have a food court. From the story, I cannot tell whether this one did or did not. There is also the question of whether you would be allowed to loiter in that area if you are not purchasing the food that is served at their shops.
And, what reason exactly does she have to have to stop shopping, haul her wailing kid across the store, shove a sandwich in her mouth, wait until she finishes eating (probably to the disgust of people who are actually trying to eat), and only then haul her back to where she left off shopping?
I don’t get this. I don’t like kids. I don’t really like to see them at all in the first place. I certainly don’t want to see them eating. If you gave me the option of simply banning children in public, I’d vote “Yes!”. Yet I don’t get why calming your hungry child is such a faux pas.
I’d find it much more difficult to maintain my composure in the face of a kid screaming and crying because they are hungry than because they are eating. That is something that I have run across often, and I don’t have much choice but to accept it. I certainly wouldn’t be rude to employees or management over it.
Our Targets have very small and well-defined food sections basically like a candy/snack section of most department stores – think K-Mart. They are NOT grocery stores and never will be. Trying to equate the two is the thing that makes little sense to me.
As for my reaction; like I have said I have run across this behavior rarely, very rarely. Two times that come to mind was a lady and the 6 year old son she dragged along while she clothes shopped at Monkey-Wards. The kid had a bag of Cheetos to pacify himself as Mom did her thing. He was wiping his fingers after every few mouth-fulls on whatever was hanging on the nearest rack. She saw this and did nothing to correct him. I called it to the attention of the manager, he verified what was happening, and long story short is the police took her away.
Last time was a numb-nut at TSC having an apple as he wandered around. I let an employee know, he asked the man very nicely not to eat while shopping, and the guy tossed the half-eaten apple into a display of merchandise. He got to meet the local cops as well.
Basically why I love TSC and really miss Monkey-Wards. Those stores get it. I don’t want to pay higher prices for people being idiots any more than I want to pay higher prices so people can steal. Understand that and you will be getting my money for a long time to come.
That sounds more like a poorly behaved child than a problem with a child eating in general. I assume the kid is better behaved now in his foster home with his mother in jail.
I can understand why a customer may get upset about being told to not do something that he’s seen others do, and has done himself before. I am not sure if your “very nicely” is sarcastic or not, but in any case, it probably was not taken as such. I have never heard of someone being accosted for eating an apple in a grocery store, and though I haven’t done so myself, if I were to do so, I would not be highly receptive to having an employee tell me I couldn’t do something that I see done every day, even if they asked “nicely.”
In either of those cases, I would personally be mortified that I caused someone to have an interaction with the police for such a small offense, not proud. I couldn’t imagine getting the police involved over such petty things.
Not sure what TSC is. I assume you are not talking about Tractor Supply Co. (though that’s one of my favorite stores.) But, there are stores that cater to different types. If you prefer to go to a store that has very draconian rules and that will call the police on anyone who violates them, then that is where you are welcome to spend your money and pay higher prices.
People that go to lower price stores like target may not be up to your standards, but you don’t have to mill about with them.
This isn’t the Target I shop at, but it does look like this. Not sure which store the one in the article refers to, but here are some images of the Manhattan Target.. The grocery section is displayed at the bottomof the article.
In the tradition of the scarlet letter, I’d like to propose that anyone with peanut allergies be required to wear a Purple P so that everyone will know to avoid them in public.
That’s more humane than insisting they yell “ALLERGIC! UNCLEAN!” everywhere they go. And also easier on the ears of bystanders.
As a slight modification to your proposal, I’d suggest that we limit it those who want everyone around them to know about their allergies.