Reading Anthony Bourdain's Typhoid Mary while suffering from an annoying, sinus-agonizing cold forces me to take pause with regard to restaurant dining.
If picturing your friendly chef or kitchen help with a cold or some other contagious disease isn't bad enough, then consider this:
Doctor John AMR of the New York State Health Department states flatly, 'I don't know anyone who washes their hands 100 per cent after going to the bathroom.'
One has only to ask a health inspector to demonstrate, for instance, the proper method of hand washing for a manicured kitchen worker, then watch the professional mime furiously the scrubbing (with brush) of the undersides of the nails, top to bottom, finishing with an impressive hands-up doctor-style flourish, to get a cold chill down your spine. You'll never eat a Caesar salad again.
My one and only foray into the food and service industry occurred when I was a senior in high school. Employed as a "salad girl" at a family chain of pizza restaurants in Sonoma County, my responsibilities consisted of making a three-bean salad mixture which would be used for up to a week and preparing garden salads, salad dressings and garlic bread.
I took my job very seriously and tried my hardest to follow the golden rule as it applied to food prep.
Sometimes, my intentions weren't good enough.
Such as the time I realized, four months into my job, that I was supposed to wash the vegetables before I used them in the salad. How was I supposed to know the celery was dirty? It wasn't in my walkthrough.
Or, when I accidentally fixed a salad without noticing a clear plastic cup-lid had fallen into the middle of the lettuce. A waitress returned my blunder with the lid ever-so-subtlety protruding from the mound of iceberg and onions.
Naturally, some misunderstandings and mishaps are unavoidable. It's the sneaky stuff that really serves to bother.
I can't described how traumatized I was, as a consumer, to discover that the waiters and waitresses at my place of employment reused the bread brought to people's tables. If you didn't eat it, chances were very good that it would soon return to a new table to be consumed by an unwitting patron.
Of course, most troubling is the realization that I, like so many other restaurant workers, worked even through illness. No matter how many times someone washes their hands, you don't want a sick person touching your food. This is a given which is often ignored as busy managers try to fill shifts during the cold season. Managers don't care if your sick. They just care if you show up.
Mary Mallon showed up and look where it got her.
Have you worked in the food industry?
