I stopped by a fast food restaurant the other day for lunch. As I waited at the counter, I noticed the employee at the drive through window receiving money, making change, then wrapping the food and bagging it. After handling money for who knows how long, how clean could his hands be. He wasn’t wiping or washing his hands after handling the money. I watched the girl taking my order do the same thing.
I have visions of that money having been stuffed down some sweaty dancers thong in some dark bar and thereafter transferring something evil to the their hands and ultimately the food. :eek:
Shouldn’t the person cooking the food wrap it…?
This is a particular hangup of mine. There’s no way I would have eaten that food, and I’d have complained, to boot.
When I worked at a drugstore, it always upset me no end when my co-workers would stash snacks behind their registers to nibble on between transactions. Money is nasty, nasty stuff.
Coulnd’t find a link to the butt pennies dude. I don’t think it needs much explaining, though.
Only tangentially related, but…
I was at a bar a couple of weeks ago, and as I was standing *alone * at the *double sink * washing my hands, a woman came out of the toilet, glanced at the sink, glanced at me, shrugged, and said “I should really wash, but whatareyagonnado?” Um, I’m thinking wash? It’s not as though there was a line, or no water, or any reason for her not wash, let alone to *comment * on the non-washing.
When I came out of the ladies room, she was touching some guys face and it was all I could do not to yell at him “She didn’t wash her hands!!!”
Seriously, I’m about the least germ-phobic person imaginable, but ew.
I just complained about that to a pizza place I used to go to. The hostess took my money then when to put raw tomatoes on the pizza without washing her hands.
I complained to the manager and they made me a new pizza. But now I’m afraid to go back there because now they’ll probably spit in my pizza. So either they can contaminate my pizza unintentionally out of ignorance or they can do so intentionally out of spite. Gah!
I was at McDonalds last week. Some lady was having a slight fit because a girl was scooping fries into the familiar red paper envelope and some of the fries bonked into her hand.
“Her hands are in the fries! That’s nasty!” exclaimed the lady.
They threw the batch of fries out and made the girl wear gloves. Lady got some new fries and all was well with the world (I was the only other person in line).
So I go up and ask the girl behind the counter if it’s extra to have everyone back there play catch with my fries. She and the manager laugh over it a little bit.
“She’s in here every week complaining about the same thing. We go by the book and we’re completely safe with our food handling procedures. She doesn’t see the guy with the chest hair sticking out, not wearing a hair net that works at the coney island!”
I then asked the manager when the last time she washed her hands was. I said that I’d be willing to bet that she washed them many times in an 8 hour shift, and complaining lady was the one that was handling money and doorknobs and wouldn’t wash her hands as many times in a day and now gets to touch her “pristine” food.
Really, if it’s incidental contact with food, isn’t that what an immune system is for?
As a side note, you don’t fuck with the people that make your food. Don’t piss them off, don’t annoy them, don’t make life bad for them. When that food is out of sight, some bad things could happen to it.*
*As a guy who has run a few restaurants, including delis and pizzerias, I have NEVER seen anyone screw with anyone’s food or heard about any employees actually doing it. Even if the customer was a complete dick, tampering with their food was about the farthest thing from most of our minds. I add this in for you, Heffy&Roo. You should be able to eat at that pizzeria happily.
A cashier at a local grocery sneezed all over her hands, blew her nose into a hanky, wiped her nose with her hand, and then reached for my produce on the conveyor. I snatched it away and said, “I don’t mean to be offensive, but I’m cooking for someone who’s ill and I want to keep the germ profile as low as I can.” She gave me a look of pure, sullen hate.
Though I appreciate the thought, you’re not really putting your produce on the conveyer without it being in a plastic produce bag, are you? 'Cause I’d be a lot more worried about that. A germy hand touching the bag - get home, toss the bags, wash your hands.
The teenager who makes sandwiches on the weekend at the corner store was carrying boxes out of the storeroom, in the middle of restocking, when I came in and ordered a hero. He put down the box, went behind the counter and reached for the bread.
When I asked if he was going to wash his hands, he replied, “I just washed them a little while ago.”
(Note: Frank, editing would have shown that you needed one more space between those sentences. 
)
OK, you’re on the list. As soon as the attendant brings me a new, clean crayon.
Hey thanks, LOUNE!! Much appreciated. I was getting a hankering for pizza. You’re still a sweetie!
But you need to keep your banana out of my tailpipe. I just had a lube job yesterday and my engine is running better than it has in months.*
As to the food tampering, I’m just hoping that I don’t live close to alice_in_wonderland’s friends in this very disturbing thread.
*Yes, I’m talking about my car and no, I’m not making this up.
I complained to my local Health Department about this one and guess what I was told…there is no law that says the employees HAVE to wash their hands between handling money and handling food. How wrong is that?
I was once in the men’s room near the cafeteria of a major local hospital. As I was using the urinal, I heard someone in one of the stalls, wiping himself, flushing the toilet and getting dressed. As I was washing my hands, he came out of the stall and exited the men’s room. It was one of the cafeteria’s food preparers. As I left the men’s room, I noticed that he was already back at his station, preparing food.
I reported him, and never saw him working there again.
I give you John Edwards.
I think we all hate the sick cashier that stores don’t send home. I will wait longer and avoid the sick person.
Now for a good story about paranoia.
My friend and her family would go to the Burlington Chocolate festival every year. Her cousin worked for Nestles, so they all spent time as booth volunteers. She always worked at the cream puff booth. They all use gloves to make the food, and serve it. One lady wanted to know if she had AIDS, because she didn’t want her AIDS.
Remind me to never eat in Indiana, then. There were most definitely regulations against this in Wisconsin when my family was running our restaurant. Touch money? Wash your hands before touching food. Touch your face? Wash your hands before touching food. Touch pretty much anything that isn’t a clean kitchen utensil? Wash your…you get the idea. And this wasn’t to be a simple dampening of the hands and limply rubbing them with soap before rinsing the suds off. No, we’re talking at least thirty seconds of good scrubbing, with regulations on how hot the water should be, what you should use to wash with–antibacterial cleanser wasn’t good enough–and how far up your arms you should go. Perhaps it’s a bit different for fast food, but I can’t imagine it’s that much different.
Of course, I recognize most people don’t actually follow all of these regulations, but they do exist for a reason.
So after she puts those tomatoes onto your pizza it goes into a zillion degree oven for what 10-15 minutes, which would pretty much kill any germs right?
Yeah, that was pretty much my question. Same for Shoshana re the groceries. If you’re cooking for someone, presumably you’re going to boil or bake or fry or otherwise blast your produce with enough heat to kill just about any germs. I could maybe understand if it were a raw dish, like a salad, but even then washing the food properly should help considerably. I just think people get too paranoid about this stuff.
Nope. That’s why I said “raw”. The tomatoes were put on after the pizza came out of the oven and right before I picked it up. She stuck her hand in a big container of raw diced tomatoes and sprinkled some on my pizza right after she handled the money.
If the tomatoes were cooked on the pizza, I might have been annoyed but I wouldn’t have complained. That actually had happened before. The guy cooking my pizza handled money, but since the pizza was cooked, I didn’t complain. I guess I should have because maybe they would have changed their food handling techniques before they handled something raw.
Something I’m seeing more of: people filling up their used Aquafina bottles at the big water cooler and letting the bottle touch the spout.
I was in the waiting room at the dentist’s office the other day when I watched as the receptionist came around the front desk with her bottle in hand and proceeded to shove the spit-and-lipstick-covered lip of the bottle around the spigot of the water cooler in order to refill it.
Folks do it all the time. And I can’t imagine that any good would ever come of me bringing it to their attention. They would just look at me with a “F*** you” glare and move on.