Restaurants and workers

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IN Chattanooga, a restaurant worker came down with hepatitis and about 1000 customers had to be tested...scary thought. How do we as customers trust eating out is safe.... I would assume most places are safe, but you never know these days with measles and such going crazy. We do not eat out much ...
 
When eating out you have no idea what goes on in the kitchen, and you never know if your waiter is sick or not. Plus you never know how fresh the food really is. It's a roll of the dice.
 
Here in the communist state of California they have state people that go to every restaurant and rate them for cleanliness and such. If you don't get an "A" people see that and stop coming in.
 
There's a balance here between incurring reasonable risk and just staying home and never coming out of the house.

I for one will be stepping out of the house.
 
Originally Posted by Chris142
Here in the communist state of California they have state people that go to every restaurant and rate them for cleanliness and such. If you don't get an "A" people see that and stop coming in.

Have you ever worked in a restaurant?
You'd want them to be inspected and graded too...
 
Inspections and grades are no guarantee. All it takes is one worker to not wash their hands after using the restroom.
 
i was my City Fire Marshal for 5 years and did pop in inspections for fire code violations. I knew where to eat and where not to. I shut one Chinese restaurant down on the spot for Ansul system disabled and an enormous amount of grease load in the hood and exhaust pipes and it took 3 days for the cleaning service to get it passable. ( I really had public health more in mind than fire lol ) . The "A" grades given by the County Health Department were pretty close to my list of places to go.
 
They do the same here and in several other states. But a large majority of them have an A grade. Still it's not a restaurant if they don't get closed down once in a while by the health department.

As the saying goes, you pays your money and you takes your chances.
 
A signs!!! not since my time in the Military have I seen an A sign. While working as a gas tech for over 35 years saw many things such as a toddler with a loaded diaper sitting on a prep table in a well liked bakery. the baker offered me a donut on the way out which I declined.
 
Honestly, a lot of this is on the individuals and a great majority of them (management and workers) know better and know how dangerous it can be to work while having a communicable disease.

Health or any department inspections are just snapshots of what's going on. This is an employee driven Hep A case. Pretty hard to figure out because it takes weeks to show symptoms.

If you want to know, these things are extremely rare. Getting into a accident on the way to the restaurant is way more likely.
 
Originally Posted by CourierDriver
IN Chattanooga, a restaurant worker came down with hepatitis and about 1000 customers had to be tested...scary thought. How do we as customers trust eating out is safe.... I would assume most places are safe, but you never know these days with measles and such going crazy. We do not eat out much ...


Hello ! News flash , very little in life is safe .
 
Oh and without getting political, this is probably why a certain president like fast food. They usually have corporate standards to meet and it's assembly line food so it's not likely the workers actually know who you are to tamper with your food. Of course certain chains that try to be trendy and deal with fresh ingredients sometimes get into trouble. Lots of sodium kills many things that makes you sick and stuff well done is usually thoroughly cooked.
 
I seem to remember 42 ducking into a MickeyD's along with his security people for a BigMac occasionally while out jogging.........
 
Originally Posted by Chris142
Here in the communist state of California they have state people that go to every restaurant and rate them for cleanliness and such. If you don't get an "A" people see that and stop coming in.

Those darn communists, always thinking of people's well being.
 
Not sure how it works in your local state but here in Ontario the health department makes regular unannounced random inspections that include taking temperatures, looking at hygiene practices, cleaning/sanitation practices, food preparation practices and for expired products. They also now require that a certain portion of the staff have a Safe Food Handling certification and to have one of these folks on the schedule at all times.

We also have in a lot of our cities a colour rating with Green / Yellow / Red and a sign hangs in the front window of every restaurant for easy identification for customers. Green meaning all clear, Yellow meaning conditional pass but issues were found and Red meaning the restaurant is closed with major infractions. You can also request to see a copy of their recent health reports and most municipalities will have the information from recent health department visits posted on a website you can visit.

Having owned/operated a restaurant in our family I can tell you that it's quite the easy process when you take reasonable care in terms of food preparation and cleanliness, although we were a bit anal in our care. (OCD in the family).
We always sent sick staff members home and when in doubt on something temperature wise or sanitation wise we would always assume the worst and throw it out or clean it again.

We still had false claims from time to time where people claimed to have gotten sick eating at our place and the health department would come in and do an inspection, take samples of food, and swab surfaces and nothing was ever found.

Most don't know that it can take anywhere from 48 hours up to 2 weeks for symptoms to develop from the typical food-bourne illness unless something is really rancid that was consumed.
That is why the health department has to investigate and wait until a pattern develops where all those sick have eaten at the same establishment in a certain number before they can confirm the source.

Even then it may not have been the restaurants fault, it could be the food products supplied that were contaminated, yet the restaurant gets the bad P.R.
 
Last edited:
Originally Posted by Alfred_B
Originally Posted by Chris142
Here in the communist state of California they have state people that go to every restaurant and rate them for cleanliness and such. If you don't get an "A" people see that and stop coming in.

Those darn communists, always thinking of people's well being.


You may be surprised, but the communists in the 80' had health inspections for restaurants and grocery stores.
People working there had to complete 2-4 years of specialized highschool / tradeschool.
I read some of my Mom's books, and they where thick, with pictures/drawings and detailed.
 
The next second is guaranteed to no man,woman or child. Could be in the most isolated location in the Nebraska sand hills(actually sand dunes covered with grass) and get plastered by a chunk of blue ice falling off an airliner at 37,000 feet. Remote chance but possible.
 
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