If you grab the bagel with your fingers, obviously not touching any others, the other buffet patrons will glare at you with opprobrium. If you take a napkin and use it to hold the tongs, you might hear sotto voce “I thought Howard Hughes didn’t have any offspring.”
Proper etiquette only grants the impunity to do what everyone else is doing.
Sure it does. Nobody has pristine hands, but the hands of the employee who just washed and then touched the door handle have fewer bacteria and viruses on them than the employee who didn’t wash and then touched that same door handle. Hands aren’t in some binary clean/not-clean state; it’s a matter of reducing overall risk of disease transmission.
There is coliform bacteria everywhere, yes. But if you want to claim that casually touching my waistband transfers as much bacteria to my hands as wiping my freshly beshitted ass, you’re gonna need to make with the cites.
The signs are usually required by law, couldn’t tell you why though. Also, some health inspectors strongly encourage you to put in the type of faucet that either uses peddles or the long handles that you can shut off with your elbows.
This discussion always reminds me of that Seinfeld episode though. Unless Jerry followed the cook into the kitchen, he has know way of knowing whether or not he just washed his hands in there, which makes more sense, it’s what I do at work. Why wash my hands in the bathroom, then touch the gross door know.
FTR, they do teach us in our food safety class to turn the knob with the paper towel and throw that away after exiting the bathroom.
I’m not. But people who fear my unwashed hands will foul a doorknob more than they foul their own clothing are deluded.
I’m a store cashier. I’ve had people wipe the counter down with a wet nap before putting their items on it. Because you know other people’s items are so fucking disgusting.
I guess my point was that after two hundred patrons touch those same surfaces after varying degrees of hand washing, it doesn’t make any sense to wash twice and then touch the exact same surfaces.
Ah, I missed that your focus was on the “twice.” Yeah, I don’t understand why washing your hands twice is any better than washing them well once, either.
And back to the topic of gloves: I think they’re largely for public reassurance, and some studies have shown that they may well lead to more cross contamination than the old hand washing regimen. I’m glad I’m no longer in the food service industry – I don’t think I would tolerate using the things well.
Why was she chewing gum in the first place? When I worked fast food, we weren’t allowed to chew gum when working.
OTOH, those conveyor belts at supermarket checkouts can get grotty, in between wipe-downs.
I save brown paper bags and bring them with me to the store, to re-use them. Just doing my part to save the earth. But I also put them down on the conveyor belt and pile my food stuff (especially the less heavily packaged items) on them.
Why is this bathroom different from all other bathrooms?
In all other bathrooms, we wash just once,
but in this bathroom we wash twice.
You’re missing the point. Nobody’s arguing that grabbing your potentially crap-contaminated waistband isn’t going to contaminate your fingers.
What we’re saying is that ok, so you pull your pants up and contaminate your pants. Got it… your pants are contaminated where you pulled them up.
That doesn’t decontaminate your hands. You can still wipe crap on the door handle, coke machine, coffee pot, keyboard, etc…
So wash your hands. Then the only contaminated spot will be your waistband, which I’m guessing you don’t really finger all that often anyway.
I think people sometimes use tongs needlessly because they think it’s “right.” I once saw a woman try to eat bacon with a fork. She did finally cut through a slice but watching her balancing it across the tines was a hoot. There’s no limit to the ends people will go to try to appear genteel.
I think it’s weird people get squicked out about sharing a toothbrush with the person they have sex with.
All this BS with regards to clean is so overboard that having weak & infective immune systems is now normal.
IMO
YMMV
Remind me never to shake hands with Fear Itself.
Why I no longer eat at salad bars:
Back when I was working nights in NYC, I used to stop at the Korean grocery before work, and pick up some salad bar. Until the time when a homeless man came in to the grocery, stuffed a whole hard-boiled egg into his mouth . . . and replaced it in the bowl. The Grocer watched him. and said and did nothing.
Bacon really isn’t considered a finger food outside the US, maybe she was European?