Have you ever noticed how horrendous the food safety practices are for 90% of the cooks on food network? That dingbat Rachel Ray will tell you how important it is to wash your hands after cutting raw poultry. Meanwhile, she’s already contaminated everything in sight. She then rinses her hands for about 2 seconds with no soap before grabbing her veggies she washed when she got home from the store. That’s safe - It’s not like the bacteria will multiply on wet veggies in the fridge. :rolleyes:
I know I’m a little over-careful with this stuff, as I have microbiology lab experience, but they should have some standards. I can barely stand to watch it.
One day I was standing in line as I did every day before work to get my coffee and either an apple croissant or a bagel, depending on how I was feeling. This was at one of many vendors in a food court in my office building.
Suddenly a small mouse appeared on top of the Bunn-O-Matic. The girl behind the counter, who was Scandinavian, screamed and leaped over the counter. The customers at the front of the line also screamed, and some of them stampeded away from the counter. All this noise caused the mouse to run back into the bakery section of the store, whereupon the Scandinavian climbed back over the counter and assumed her position at the cash register.
By this time there was no line, so I had no wait at all to get my coffee & croissant.
While grocery shopping a while back, I was picking through some apples. One rolled oof the top and on to the floor. I wasn’t sure what to do with it. Leave it for someone to trip over? Set it on a counter somewhere? Give it to an employee? My dilemma was solved by a rather attractive young lady who walked over, picked it up, and put it back in the bin. “And that”, I told her, “is why we wash produce before eating it.”
So bad story:
I used to work at a deli. In the ceiling were flourescent lights, and perpendicular and beneath them were wooden beams. One day, during the lunch rush, one of the bulbs fell out and onto the beams. It shattered, and bits of glass fell into the meat and condiments. We tried to find every bit we could (and contemplated throwing everything out), but the manager insisted that we keep making sandwiches.
My husband and I were at Minute Maid Park (Astros baseball) on $1 Hot Dog Day. We witnessed a hot dog packager, while wearing plastic gloves and a hairnet, blow into a foil sleeve to open it up and place a hot dog in it. Yum!
We went to the other side of the park to get our hot dogs.
I was pushing a person in a wheel chair in front of a McDonald’s in downtown Atlanta. It was one of these places with a limited menu, and no seating-just take away. There were about 8 or so people in line parallel to the side walk. What should be running around on the sidewalk next to the line but a shameless pair of rats. I think some of the customers must have seen them; maybe the line was a lot longer before the rats came by.
My mom helped sue a Po Folks restaurant. The fridge had broken, the chicken spoiled. Po Folks kept on serving. It gave a whole new meaning to the name.
One local TV station has a segment they call “Food For Thought”, where they report on health inspections for the week. I remember one “critical violation” in particular that one restaurant received (as I recall, it was one of 13 critical violations): “ground beef thawing on roof of restaurant.”
And this is why I don’t eat at cheap Mexican food restaurants on the highway out of town. Ugh.
It’s nowhere near as gross as these stories, but there’s an “all you can eat” Chinese buffet near us. Shortly before they opened, there was a report (from a reliable agency) that they were allowing frozen meat to thaw at room temperature (not in a refrigerator). This was about 15 years agho now. We’ve still never been there on account of that.
I have nothing against such buffets – I’ve eaten at several of them. But this one report was enough to keep us away.
I spotted a small bird flying around the interior of a local supermarket. Helping itself to produce, shitting on things, etc. I told one of the employees about it; she told me its name was “Jimmy”.
McDonalds again: That reminds me of the time we found a stray kitten in the parking lot. We popped him into a cardboard box and put him in the crew room with more Chicken McNuggets than a kitty should ever have to eat. After a while, I went out to the lobby and turned the corner towards the restrooms, where I was faced with tables full of customers shooting silent daggers from their eyes. From just behind the door connecting the crew room to the lobby came a piercing sound, "mew…mew…mew…mew…mew…mew…"
Jeeze, my food safety horror story is lame compared to some of these. :eek:
I ordered a bagel at the local food court; the server dropped it on the floor in front of me, wiped some of the floor pepper off, and then proceeded to hand it to me. She was somewhat shocked when I said, no thanks, I’ll take a fresh one. I’ve worked fast food; I know what those floors are like. I wouldn’t walk barefooted on them, much less eat food that’s been dropped on them. And I’m not particularly fussy; I have no problem with the five-second rule at home.
That’s not rare. They get in sometimes, and the store I worked at didn’t try to get rid of it until the customers were gone. You’re sure to end up with someone bitching you were too cruel to the poor birdie. We used a big fishing net if they wouldn’t fly out the open doors when chased.
For them to have named it, the bird must have lived there a while. That’s not acceptable.
A lot of these represent actual health risks, but some of these are mostly about cooties. That said, I’d like to thank you borderline-paranoid folks for providing a strong market incentive for sanitary food preparation.
It’s not necessarily all that bad, it’s just forbidden by many food hygiene regulatory bodies.
So I suppose it could be argued that a kitchen showing disregard for that rule might not be too hot on keeping to some of the others - the ones that really do make a big difference.
)