Handling food orders without gloves

I went to a certain food establishment in Maplewood to order some sandwiches. The person who waited on me and another customer proceeded to make our order WITHOUT using gloves, this after touching the register and surfaces of the counter. We both cancelled our orders and received our money back. The excuse, we ran out of gloves. Really? Never again. If interested PM for the name of this food establishment.

"The NJ State Code requires that food handlers have no bare handcontact with ready to eat foods (foods that won’t be fully cooked before serving to a customer). One of the ways that this can be done is by wearing disposable gloves."

Thanks.

I hadn't known that there was a State Law regarding bare hand contact with ready to eat foods.

Although, I do wonder how we survived before gloves became the norm.

TomR

There is a case to be made for frequent use of hand sanitisers and purpose-specific utensils, but that doesn't always stop cross-contamination. And, reading various public health sites, it's obvious you've got some standard stuff running rampant just now. (We have some nasties suddenly showing up in odd places too, really unpleasant stuff that's easily avoided but that quickly spreads)

If the Code stipulates personal protective equipment, that should be used and there's no excuse for 'suddenly running out'.

I was also in a local establishment recently and the person making the sandwiches was not using gloves, and was also licking her fingers while she made the sandwiches. I wonder if we were at the same place...

If you suddenly run out of gloves...then you suddenly run out to the nearest location that sells gloves...pharmacies, supermarkets all have boxes of latex and non latex gloves..target would have them..i think i've seen them at staples.....

I have never seen anyone using gloves in a pizza place....they always pick up slices bare handed and use their fingers to put them in a box/plate

Some processes are better done bare-handed. In these places, you're not aware of it but the food handlers (chefs, cooks etc) have their hands in and out of fresh running water most of the time. As long as they're washing/sanitising appropriately around breaks, coughing/sneezing, cash handling etc, you should be OK. In a pizza place, the heat of cooking should kill anything trying grow.

Your sandwich hands need to wear food-safe gloves, especially if handling cash and sharing utensils. Because there's a Code, and we know what's safe.

country said:
I was also in a local establishment recently and the person making the sandwiches was not using gloves, and was also licking her fingers while she made the sandwiches. I wonder if we were at the same place...

Please tell me this is a joke

Did you bring this to the attention of the manager/owner of the establishment? If not, you should definitely start there. That might be the easiest way to get the situation corrected. For all you know, they had plenty of gloves in stock and the food preparer just chose not to use them.

If you didn't already, please report the incident to the town's Health Officer, including the name of the establishment, name and or description of the food handler (assuming you remember), and date/time you witnessed this. The Health Officer would likely have to witness this himself to issue a violation. However, if the person preparing the sandwiches did this once, they are very likely to do it again.

Same happened to me at a local establishment; the kid had bare hands, and a half-sticking bandaid. While I watched him make the sandwich, I didn't have the heart to say "no thanks"..so I paid for it and tossed it in the trash right outside. I must have been in a good mood that day..ETA might have been the most disgusting thing I have ever seen in the "make a sandwich" realm.

I'm not saying for certain, but if you're pizza was heated in those hot pizza ovens, you are probably going to be fine.

I'm less concerned by the lack of gloves (nbd if their hands are washed) than by the fact that the same person is prepping food and handling money. That's a big no-no, and something I see a lot. If you're wearing gloves but using them to take money and then make food without changing them, that really defeats the purpose of wearing gloves. Why is this so hard to understand? Happens all the time.

Even the teenager running the snack shack at the Cranford baseball/softball fields used one gloved hand to put the hot dog in the bun and then used the other hand to count out my change!

The money/ food prep thing always grosses me out too. The system at a very popular bagel shop in Millburn is that a every worke does the order, the prep and then rings you up. I do see them wear gloves and always marvel at the amount of gloves they must go through wearing a new pair to make every bagel and then throwing them out. It seems it would much more sanitary to separate those two roles.

It doesn't bother me if they really do change gloves each time. But way too often I see somebody take money with their gloves on, then go right back to making food without taking them off. It's like they think the gloves magically protect food from contamination.

imonlysleeping said:
I'm less concerned by the lack of gloves (nbd if their hands are washed) than by the fact that the same person is prepping food and handling money. That's a big no-no, and something I see a lot. If you're wearing gloves but using them to take money and then make food without changing them, that really defeats the purpose of wearing gloves. Why is this so hard to understand? Happens all the time.

So I take it that after you pay for your food by handling money and before you eat it you wash your hands?

How many here on MOL buy sandwiches or food from a street vendor and then wash their hands after paying but before eating? I don't. And I don't see others doing it.

spontaneous said:

country said:
I was also in a local establishment recently and the person making the sandwiches was not using gloves, and was also licking her fingers while she made the sandwiches. I wonder if we were at the same place...

Please tell me this is a joke

No joke. Looks like country and I were in the same establishment (we just confirmed with each other). Unfortunatley, the manager/owner was not there and I will give notice to Maplewood's Health Dept. Seems that this may be an on going thing.

As far a pizza goes, once prepared it goes in to a hot oven then removed by a big spatula and put into a pizza box without hands touching. I've seen this at plenty pizza establishments. It's the same when heating a slice, straight from oven to plate.

BG9, I carry hand sanitizer in my handbag and use it before eating (and at other times)

It isn't the preparing food without gloves that bothers me so much, it is @country's description of the worker licking their fingers that skeeves me out

BG9 said:

imonlysleeping said:
I'm less concerned by the lack of gloves (nbd if their hands are washed) than by the fact that the same person is prepping food and handling money. That's a big no-no, and something I see a lot. If you're wearing gloves but using them to take money and then make food without changing them, that really defeats the purpose of wearing gloves. Why is this so hard to understand? Happens all the time.

So I take it that after you pay for your food by handling money and before you eat it you wash your hands?
How many here on MOL buy sandwiches or food from a street vendor and then wash their hands after paying but before eating? I don't. And I don't see others doing it.

Yes, I wash my hands or use sanitizer before touching my food.

All this discussion is about things you actually can see. Imagine what you don't see.

H'mm. It's a wonder I'm not dead. I never thought about washing or sanitizing my hands after paying for a sandwich. And I've been doing it that way all my life, since long before we all became germaphobes and hand sanitizers were invented. And yes, now that I'm thinking about it, it does skeeve me out.

However, I do firmly believe the people handling food should adhere to the laws meant to keep us all from getting sick.

I might need to give this topic some more thought.

What about the do-it-yourself coffee bars? Hand in wallets and where ever else, then on the coffee lids.

If Daryl licks his fingers while making me a sandwich, no problem. Anyone else, no f'ing way I will eat that

I am a handwasher. I'm not OCD but I'm pretty careful about things I touch and thinking about who else might have touched it. It drives me crazy when people sneeze into their hands and then go about their business like nothing happened. I can go on and on and I'm sure everyone here has a story.

Again, There is a health code in NJ requiring food preparers to wear disposable gloves when preparing ready to eat food. Most places around the two towns do have one person handling the money. Few times while volunteering to work the concession stands at CHS events, we wore gloves. I do remember many times changing disposable gloves when we took turns covering the registers.

Like others above, I carry a hand sanitizer. I guess having a friend who use to work as a food Health Inspector for NYC, has made me more cautious.

ETA: a few years back, I got food poisoning from ready to eat food.

i am not talking about touching the pizza before putting it in the oven...i am talking about taking it OUT....of course it might still be hot enough to kill any contact germs at that point....btw..i do eat the crust that was touched..AND YES THEY DO OFTEN TOUCH IT TO POSITION IT.....this happens more with slices rather than a whole pie....maybe we go to different places...but i have seen it at a number of different places I have been to.

i saw someone sneeze into their hand in a supermarket once..and then start touching products...the thing is we were taught to sneeze into out hands....usually when we couldn't immediately wash its amazing how dumb experts were back than..common sense tells you that if you sneeze into your hand germs will transfer to what you touch....it has only been fairly recently that they are now teaching to sneeze into your arm...

i almost always pay for food with a credit card to avoid handling money before I eat..but the person that has touched the credit card would also be handling money from other customers....i also keep handiwipes with me if I can't wash before eating

I just drank half a bottle of bacteria-laden fruit-flavored juice that cost a lot of money at Whole Foods. I think I'll just skip the middle-man and grab a sandwich next time.

My sister ran a restaurant in way-upstate NY and her place was penalized by a surprise visiting health inspector for a worker not putting gloves back on before putting a slice of tomato on a burger. (You don't wear gloves to cook on the grill - I suppose the risk of melted glove on hand is the reason.) The rule up there at the time is that any food that is not going to be cooked to a certain temperature, it must be handled by someone wearing gloves. No exceptions, even if hands were just washed. You also have to change gloves between jobs to avoid cross-contamination, i.e., handling raw meat and then making a sandwich - change gloves bewteen.

I can see people handling money wearing gloves, to protect them from the filth, but definitely not to then handle anyone's food!

I'm surprised to read that someone else's handles your card; here, for security reasons, you handle your card in the EFTPOS machine, not the assistant, almost universally. Especially with payWave. And yes, I'd still sanitise afterwards.

The reason all this food safety is more important now than decades ago is because of the virulence, persistence and multiplicity of the contaminants we're dealing with, compared with back then, plus the rise of chemical sensitivities. If someone's hands still had a smear of peanut butter, which transferred to the handle of the tongs for the shredded lettuce or the knife that slices your dinner rolls, and then that contaminated hand wrapped now-tainted paper around your now-tainted sandwich, of course you'd complain if anaphylaxis resulted and no-one knew why.