As to handling food without gloves – I never worked anywhere where anybody wore gloves. That was in the days before everybody was a raging germophobe. Not one person ever died because the person topping their pizza didn’t wear gloves. That paranoia about oh noes bare hands is just so much hogwash.
To be fair, gloves are only required when handling “ready to eat” foods (that is, food that is going to be served directly without cooking, ala cold sandwich fixings, salads, etc.) [Caveat: this is in the state of Washington]. Food that’s going to be cooked before serving doesn’t require the use of gloves, and in any case I’m unlikely to handle your hot steak with my hands anyway - I’m using a spatula to transfer it directly from the broiler to your plate. Even so, I tend to wear gloves these days when handling raw meats, just because I don’t like sticky juices all over my hands. And I just hate handling raw chicken.
One problem I have with requiring gloves, though, is that I feel their use has resulted in a lowered appreciation among the rank and file of simple handwashing. I recently actually had a server compliment me when he saw me sneeze, remove my gloves, blow my nose, and then wash my hands thoroughly before donning new gloves. Apparently he’d seen too many cooks simply change their gloves in that situation. But then, I’m crazy about handwashing. My sister actually called me obsessive-compulsive about it when I was visiting her one day and she saw me wash my hands several times. Nope, not OCD, just pure force of habit from being a cook for so long. Though believe it or not, I’ve had a couple bosses in the past complain about my going through too many paper towels. But they didn’t really have anything else to say once I pointed out, “Well duh, it’s because I wash my hands frequently like I’m supposed to.”
I agree about the handwashing. It bordered on compulsive for us back then too. We didn’t wear the damn plastic gloves 20 years ago, but we washed our hands constantly.
I’ve worked in a fair number of restaurants and bars over the years. I always hear about horrible things done to food via a friend of a friend who works at a different place. I’ve never seen it or heard about anyplace I’ve worked. I suspect it happens, but it’s mostly UL.
I have seen hamburgers dropped on the floor, picked up, wiped off, slapped back on the grill for a second, then served. Not on purpose.
Someone told me once if you put a couple drops of eye drops in someone’s drink they’ll get the running shits. They heard there was this one waitress who’d do it to bad customers. Again, FOAF, and I have no idea if there’s any truth to it.
Once, while I worked at a Pizza Hut in the '80s, a coworker got pissed at a customer over the phone. As he was making this customer’s pizza, he grabbed a rag from the rag bucket, where the water was almost black, and wrung it out over the pie.
I used to clean the fryers at McDonalds, and they nearly always had surprises at the bottom. Usually Happy Meal toys, but once it was a lizard.
I’m trying to remember what incidents I saw with my own eyes. Sometimes, if I hear a story and picture it vividly, after a while I think it’s my own memory.
One I definitely saw was a co-worker counting out a twenty-piece Chicken McNugget: “Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen” (turns to the trashcan full of old nuggets) “eighteen, nineteen, twenty.” He wasn’t being vindictive; just ran out of nuggets during the rush.
Mostly, lots of stuff gets mishandled or dropped when it’s very busy. I would never order a cheeseburger at McDonald’s during lunch on those fifty-nine cent days or whatever.
I had a roomie that managed a Hardees. He got a complaint from a customer that she had spotted one of the employees in the back arranging a hot dog so that it was sticking out of his fly. She was especially disturbed since she had just ordered a hot dog for her son. My roomie knew even before the description which employee it was.
I did awful things to food when I worked at 7-11. I was a young, angry shithead.
Joe
Based on this and a few other comments, I’ve strengthened my resolve to avoid fast food during a rush.
I worked at T.G.I. Friday’s for five years. Over that time, I developed pretty good relationships with the cooks and got some “insider information.” Anyways, it turns out that the cooks wouldn’t care too much about sabotaging the customers’ food so much. However, when employees, particularly people from the waitstaff, ordered food for lunch or dinner during breaks, cooks would sometimes spit in the food.
I worked with a lot of bitchy prima donas who would often chastise the cooks relentlessly. They were extremely rude, and although they certainly didn’t deserve to have their food spit in, I can honestly say knowing this didn’t keep me up at night.