I was having lunch at the Dairy Queen. The food service guy was wearing gloves. He took my order and my cash and gave me back my change and immediately began to prepare my milkshake same gloves on hands.
Just who the hell is he protecting with those gloves ?
And if I want to wash my hands before I eat at the Dairy Queen , I need a key from the counter to go around the back of the building where the washrooms are… I wash my hands and carry said key back to the counter and hope that all the previous people carring said key have all washed their hands as well.
My problem is I really like their burgers and shakes.
Oh, and then there is this food guy in Costco handing out samples and wearing a hairnet under a cap, and a beard net over his closely trimmed fu manchu. Frankly, I couldn’t se any head hair at all around the edges of the cap. What I did notice was the plushest set of eyebrows fully exposed.
The deli girls at the local Publix would diligently wash their hands, carefully slip on their plastic gloves, make my sandwich to order, only to take the price sticker out of the machine and stick it on their sweaty forearms while they envelop the sandwich with the wrapping paper, only then placing said sticker on the sandwich paper to seal it. :eek: They haven’t done it lately (and I rarely get one from them anymore in any event), but it freaked me out the first time I saw them do it-was so flabbergasted I didn’t even bother to complain to the manager.
It is not like he touches any food when preparing a milkshake. The soft serve goes directly into the cup etc. It wouldn’t bother me. To answer your question though he may very well be protecting himself with the gloves. I worked at a deli throughout high school. The constant hand washing and touching of various food items would give me a horrible case of dermatitis and uticaria. I wore gloves to protect myself. Of course I still washed my hands constantly, just with the gloves on.
The bathroom thing would be a real concern for me though.
The gloves are to protect you from the food servers germs. Bare skin contact with already-cooked or ready to eat food is usually against health laws. For whatever reason they don’t consider the germs on money to be a likely cause of food contamination. At least according to the health dept. of NY.
They do ‘recommend’ a hand-washing and change of gloves before handling food again after handling money, but don’t require it.
Personally I think money’s well grody and would change gloves obsessively, but if the health department says you don’t have to, I can see why min-wage fast food drones don’t give two fucks.
gloves in foodservice could be a good thing, but are so often incorrectly used such that they become silly.
OP points it out well - food service worker was wearing gloves to begin with, handled his money (which likely is filthy), kept the same gloves on, then prepped food. This is ridiculous.
There’re really two logically consistent positions:
People are germy as hell, but 99% of the time I don’t get sick. So I’m fine with no gloves on food service workers as long as they keep the basic necessary hygiene and food prep safety requirements
People are germy as hell. I want them to wear gloves when they prep my food. But I’m not an idiot; if they handle something as common and dirty as money they need to change their gloves immediately
Personally I’m with position 1. I know people are germy, but I’ll take that risk. A person taking position 2 - well, it’s just plain show if workers wear the same gloves ALL THE TIME. If you are going to make the show of wearing gloves, do it properly. Every time you touch something that may be dirty or contaminated, you change your gloves.
Why would this freak you out? The sticker comes nowhere near your sandwich, because your sandwich is wrapped in two layers of deli paper. And further, what in the world would you say to the manager?
What mystifies me is why at the deli they use a sheet of plastic to pick up the meat, and then they proceed to put that sheet of paper in the bag with the meat. Doesn’t that defeat the purpose, if that plastic is tumbling around on the other side of the plastic? They’re basically using the bag the meat comes in as a trash can. Every grocery store does this, as far as I can tell.
It’s not about actually protecting people - either himself or you, the customer - but following procedure and appearance. People are hung up about “appearance”, things that look “Ewww”, without thinking about what’s really a problem from a hygiene standpoint.
My organic supermarket stopped using plastic gloves for the employees in the meat and bread section after a study had found that incorrect use of gloves lead to more, not less germs than bare hands+ good washing practise.
The cite given from the Health dept. is worrying because it contradictes other hygiene practise.
Best hygiene practise, which few companies follow, is that one employee is only for the cash register, to handle the money, and the other employee(s) only handle the food; or you have one gloved hand for food and one bare hand for money (if you only have to pick and grab an item, not prepare it).
Money has been shown in tests to have a high concentration of very different germs because it passes through so many hands, and some of them are rather nasty. And it only takes a few nasty to pass from money to the hand - which is nicely moist and warm to breed - and from there to the food to make the customer well sick, esp. if the employee keeps doing it. So it’s not the germs from one banknote that all infect that sandwich, but over the day it accumulates enough to become a problem.