Of Cats and Kids

WWYD (What would you do?)

Posted by: Carol Lombardi

Saturday, April 1, 2006 12:00 AM

I had a rather unsettling dining experience tonight, and I'm hoping for some comments, because I'm not sure what I was (or am) supposed to think or do.

Maybe this is how it works and I've just never seen it before. I have NO experience in food service, and I'm not exactly some germ-phobic Susie Homemaker. It's not like I frequently plunge my hands into boiling water while making dinner.

Anyway, I was seated at a table with a full view of a salad bar. As a vegetarian, I spend a lot of time at salad bars; fortunately, tonight, I was not partaking. Otherwise instead of rambling on about this, I'd be worshipping in my bathroom, if you know what I mean.

The salad bar person (I'm not quite sure what the correct title would be) was not wearing gloves, which I thought was unusual in this age of the ubiquitous disposable gloves. But I'm old enough to remember when the only people who wore those things were certain types of doctors (let's not go there, ok?). So it was merely odd - not a crisis.

The salad administrator was very conscientious about replacing items, which I appreciate. I hate going up to a salad bar and finding that the only things left are iceberg lettuce and bacon bits. I was a trifle disturbed by her tendency to keep tucking her hair back in her hairnet with the ungloved hands, in between the various refills. But hey, I have three cats, so I know that a little hair in the food never killed anyone.

The raw vegetable and premade salad engineer was actually pretty fanatical about picking up stray vegetables and returning them to their rightful containers, so the area looked attractive and the flavors did not mix. That's important. I admire that kind of dedication. I hate to find unwanted vegetables (raw onions, in my case) mixed in with desireable ones, like carrots. Except the fanaticism extended to occasionally licking food from her (ungloved) fingers in between her salad-bar-keeping tasks, presumably to prevent the flavors of unrelated vegetables from mixing. Oh my God - she licked her fingers.

Unfortunately, the salad technician also had a cold or maybe allergies, but she covered her mouth when she coughed so as not to spread germs. Except she covered her mouth with her ungloved, hair-contaminated, licked fingers, before returning to her next salad bar upkeep task, because she was constantly busy, because, as I mentioned, she was a very hard worker, which is an excellent trait, and I'm not at all mocking her work ethic.

I'm trying not to freak out here. I mean, a few germs now and then only make us stronger, right? Plus, germs are "nature", and we love nature. Nature rocks. And I'm secure in my belief that the people who prepared and served MY food had squeaky clean hands the entire evening, so I guess I can just drift off to sleep now, clutching my bottle of anti-bacterial hand sanitizer and actively blocking out the part where she licked her fingers.

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