Demerits for restaurant servers.
I took my girls out to dinner the other night. While relaxing and listing to their elementary school dramas I couldn’t help but notice a lady coughing at a table near us. She coughed, wheezed, and then hacked up a lung. As she blew her nose a placenta sized boogie squeezed out her nostril and wobbled into her linen napkin. As I listened to her and many others unite in a coughing symphony I realized this was the germy twilight zone.
There was a bus boy with a horrible cold and he was coughing all over the table he was setting. He would wipe his nose on his sleeve, adjust his (dirty) belt, smear a soggy wash rag across the table, fold utensils into a clean napkin and place it down on the fresh dirty-dish-ragged table top. When he took the tray of dirty dishes off to be washed it hit me. Dear lord, the person who clears the dirty tables also sets the table. And he was the one who set the table we were sitting at. This realization made me feel faint and nearly black out. If I were my usual self, I would have gathered my children and ran for cover. But the fatigue from a long day (motherhood) kept me in a fog and stuck to my chair. Quickly I started to dig though my purse for some antibacterial hand wipes. I wiped down our table, silverware, and bread plates. Hyper ventilating was inevitable and when the waitress brought me a knife for my chicken I considered picking it up with a rubber glove and tossing it across the room while screaming “fire in the hole!” Staring at the knife I wondered “did she wash her hands, is she waiting on the sick lady?” Just think of all the things she has handled! Money, credit cards, napkins. . .
Let’s discuss the napkins; I already witnessed one being used as a tissue. But just think about it! They are used for wiping mouths and gathering gristle! And then when the server gathers the used napkins, or dinnerware covered in regurgitation (snot, mucus, or denture puss) from another table, they don’t think twice about slicing your bread or bringing you a dessert fork, hopefully they wash their hands before, but I doubt it. People, this is too much cross contamination!
I could write an entire entry discussing why the bus boy’s belt bothered me, but do we really need to bring up fecal matter? Even if the Bus boy is hygiene efficient it is not likely he washes his hands before he pulls up his pants and locks his belt. Do you see where this is going? People, don’t touch your pants and then hand me a soup spoon, I may slap ya.
Comments are closed.