Health Dept

Having worked for nearly 20 years in the "biz" as a manager, cook, bartender etc I thought I had seen them all. Today in my small town, paper (Crawfordsville Journal Review), they had the listing of restaurant inspections.
 
I noticed that the Applebees was hit for a Critical Violation for:
 
Observed the person washing dishes handling dirty plates. Sending through diswasher and then picking up the clean plates, without washing his hands between the dirty and the clean dishes. 
 
So the diswasher is supposed to load the dish rack, run over to the hand sink, wash his hands (finger tip to elbow) for 45 secs,
run back to the dish machine, unload the racks and repeat this oh say 50 times or more a shift? Has a health inspector ever actually worked in a restaurant before?
 

I happen to agree with your health department. There is no excuse at all for handling clean dishes with dirty hands.

Has a health inspector ever actually worked in a restaurant before? Most have not and that is a blessing and a shame. It's a shame because they don't have a clue as to what we do and what their rules require. It's a blessing because they don't understand what we do and therefore don't make rules based on that. If they understood, the rules would be worse. It's truly a double edged sword.
 
But I have to say I think our health department is pretty fair and I enjoy working with them, but they do have a couple of rules that make no sense.

it's more like 16-22 seconds... 45 seconds is too long and yes... i would not eat at a place where someone handled my clean plate with dirty plate hands...
 

It happens EVERY DAY!
 

what bugs me is...i've never ever seen a McD's or fast food worker with gloves on or a hair net or.hat etc. where ta hell is the health inspector there!! finger nail polish on ..long nails, no gloves,no hair restraignt, rings, braclets, etc, etc,

Really? I've never seen a McD's worker without gloves and hair restraint (usually a visor, which to me is not adequate, but it is all the law here requires). From what I've seen, the national chains do a great job around these parts... but local mom and pops are the worst. There is just not adequate enforcement. I've had so many employees, managers, and owners give me blank stares (or worse) when I refuse their food because they didn't wash their hands or put on gloves or because their hair was raining down on my plate as they worked or whatever. We have a local store that sells cut slices of watermelon, unrefrigerated, on the front checkstand. I've told them repeatedly that this is not ok. I even printed info about the dangers of cut melons off the usda web site. They still do it. Their excuse? "The lady from the board of health didn't say anything about it so it must be ok." Yeah, right.

The Health dept doesn't care how you do it, they just want it done. How would you ever challenge this violation, would you be able to stand in front of the health inspector and say, " I feel it's ok for my dishwasher to handle plates with dirty contaminated hands"............I bet the dish person will be washing their hands during the next inspection..............I always pick my battles with the health dept, this is a battle they will never win, and shouldn't win....pnwc
 
Buck says:
 what bugs me is...i've never ever seen a McD's or fast food worker with gloves on or a hair net or.hat etc. where ta hell is the health inspector there!! finger nail polish on ..long nails, no gloves,no hair restraignt, rings, braclets, etc, etc,
Buck ae you sure that was Mc D's sounds more like a Hooker Hotel!!!!!!!!!!
 
 

Sorry, but I'm with Buck on this one. What I learned from the food managers class and reality tends to be totally different. I would rather they didn't handle my clean plate with dirty hands. And when I worked in a conference center (in SC), I DID wash my hands after loading the dishwasher before handling the clean stuff. But I did that on my own, no one told me to. We used to frequent a Huddle House (24 hour diner in NC) and the waitresses would clear a table, wash the dishes, load the sterilizer (owner was too cheap to put in a dishwasher), make a salad with their bare hands, all without washing their hands. And wearing jewelry etc. The long hanging hair usually didn't last too long. Waitresses tended to work a couple of days with their hair down and then put it up just to keep it out of their way. We were picky about what we ate, who cooked it and who served us. Going to another restaurant wouldn't have helped. The waitresses in town just rotate thru all the restaurants in town.

PNWCHEF


The Health dept doesn't care how you do it, they just want it done. How would you ever challenge this violation, would you be able to stand in front of the health inspector and say, " I feel it's ok for my dishwasher to handle plates with dirty contaminated hands"............I bet the dish person will be washing their hands during the next inspection..............I always pick my battles with the health dept, this is a battle they will never win, and shouldn't win....pnwc

Buck says:
what bugs me is...i've never ever seen a McD's or fast food worker with gloves on or a hair net or.hat etc. where ta hell is the health inspector there!! finger nail polish on ..long nails, no gloves,no hair restraignt, rings, braclets, etc, etc,
Buck ae you sure that was Mc D's sounds more like a Hooker Hotel!!!!!!!!!!

oops!! my mistake sorry.....now that explains that "chocolate shake" he he he

I just had my trailer inspected for Oregon. I was talking to the inspector about all the bare hand contact that I see in town, she said that you are to minimize contact, but that gloves are not required until next year.

When I managed an OG we had 2 people in the dish pit.
One on the clean side and one really in the pit.  The guy that got stuck being in the dirty side almost every time was a very nice young man who was totally blind.
 
He worked his arse off.  He worked harder than ANYONE in that place.
 
One day I had a gentleman complain that the silverware he had gotten was not clean.  I apologized got him a clean set and offered him free desserts.  I explained that we had a blind dish washer and that sometimes he helped roll silverware.  The gentleman called me a liar and all sorts of other names, but gladly accepted the free desserts.  15 minutes later at the bar we were out of glasses.  I called the bOH mngr and asked the Mike bring the new rack to the bar.
Mike did and as he walked to the bar area (carrying the glasses) he passed a person leaving, and asked him if he (mike) was close to the bar doorway, the guy smarted off "what are you f***ing blind".  MIke smiled and simply said "yes I am" and found the doorway and delivered the glasses.  The smart a$$ was the same guy I comped the desserts for.  ON his way out the door he poked his head in and apologized for calling me a liar.  He never would have thought we would actually hire a blind guy to work in the dish room.
 
Our policy was for the dirty person not to touch the clean dishes, but if they did have to touch them they were to wash in the handwash sink first before touching anything on the clean side.
 
I always laughed to myself, we made them wash their hands but, they still carried all those clean dishes by holding them to their dirty aprons.

CajunKing
  The guy that got stuck being in the dirty side almost every time was a very nice young man who was totally blind. He worked his arse off.  He worked harder than ANYONE in that place.
I always laughed to myself, we made them wash their hands but, they still carried all those clean dishes by holding them to their dirty aprons.

 
Great story thanks for taking the time to post it. On the apron thing, I see people walking to work all the time in full uniform including apron. And from time to time I see someone from the B.O.H. in GFS picking up food items in apron with a sweat towel still hung over their shoulder. Both a no no in Illinois. But I also see a lot of fast food restaurants back door wide open when the weathers nice or taking delivery's.
 

I get food safety where the public is concerned, I get also that from a business perspective it's in my best interest to comply with regs and to stay on the good side of the health dept.  But....do we all wear latex gloves, sanitize everything before touching anything else, etc. at home? Why not?  How many get ill from failure to follow all the regs to the letter as a percentage of all served? I have one health inspector saying always wear gloves, another telling me no, too much temptation not to change them often enough, use wax tissue instead to avoid bare skin contact.  Sometimes it's too much.   Just saying.....

And on TV no one would even consider "avoiding bare skin contact."
 

 
And the food trend of stacking one food item on top of another with tiny onion straws or some other ingredient sticking out like a flagpole requires a tremendous amount of food hand contact. Not to mention cleaning the edge of the plate with a towel, that was last used for god knows what?  LOL
 
 

Another true story from our local chinese place
 
the are in a shopping plaza that fronts to a creek.
The place opened and everytime i went in there the back door was standing wide open.
 
I didnt do it, but the local HD was called and the day they got a surprise inspection, the local HD inspetor got a surprise too.
 
He went into the store room and was greeted by an opossum.
 
I have always wondered since just what the strnge meat on a stick actually was.  Rat, chicken or opossum?