What triggered this post was an article about a TikTok video posted by a health inspector… somewhere too far north. I read the article, but I passed on the video. However, the link to both is at the bottom of this post. Enjoy.
In 1983 my ex-spouse had found a job in Arkansas and I was living in Tulsa, by gawd, Oklahoma. Deciding I needed to be in Arkansas also meant I needed a job. A position as a County Sanitarian (Health Inspector) was available in the rural county she was living in. It had been open for a while as the State of Arkansas paid so horribly. However, if you have no job, practically any job can be acceptable. After being there about a year, the gentleman who was also a Sanitarian plus Administrator of the County Health Unit (so called as they were a division of the Arkansas Department of Health, ADH) retired. I stepped into the Administrator position while also continuing my duties as Sanitarian. Just to give you an idea of the pay scales, when the State of Arkansas increased the Arkansas minimum wage in 1988, 75% of my clerical staff received raises.
The first thing ADH did was send me to Little Rock, Arkansas for 6 weeks of training. After I came back from this educative mission, I was sitting at the kitchen table while my ex-spouse was preparing dinner. I casually remarked to her, “You know what you are doing is a 5 point violation on a restaurant inspection form…” Her quick reply was. “Go ahead, go ahead, condemn my kitchen, I’ll never cook again.” Needless to say I kept my mouth shut about such things after that. If I had internalized the zippering of my mouth about other areas, the trajectory of my life might have been different. Or not.
A brief aside, for some reason I seem attracted to women with quick, sarcastic wits, who often using that ability to good avail upon my comments and actions. I don’t know if I need to see a therapist about that, or not?
From six years of inspecting restaurants I came away with some of the same conclusions as TikToker toofar_north. One big red flag is the bathroom. If the public rest room is not clean, if they are not taking the time to maintain a part of their establishment so in the customer’s face, you can bet the kitchen is as bad… or worse. We had a favorite Chinese carryout restaurant several years ago. Going to pick up an order one evening, upon arriving there, I used their facilities. It was my last order at this restaurant.
One restaurant I inspected was a chain steak house with a big buffet line. The buffet line scared the franchisee to death. He worried all the time that someone was going to dump something poisonous or infectious into an offering on the buffet line. During this time I received lots of information on various studies on public health related issues. One such study was about people’s behavior while using food distribution centers such as buffet lines. It was not pretty, and soured me on buffet lines every since. If nothing else consider that the utensil that is used to serve the food is touched by every person that has also selected that comestible. We won’t even go into how often people circumvent sneeze shields, how folks will sample as they go down the line, restaurants not maintaining proper food safety temperatures…
Back when I was inspecting restaurants the statistic was that a worker, on average, stayed in a food service position three months. This meant that the restaurant was in constant training mode, including sanitary practices. If the staff is not happy, a high turnover rate can be expected, and employees will not be taking pride in their jobs. It is just not an atmosphere conducive to maintaining proper food handling and sanitary procedures.
Back in the 80s it was less common for restaurants to have a lot of prepared meals that just needed zapping (did they even have microwaves back in the Stone Age), but it is something I am going to think about next time I see a huge menu. Not that this food cannot be good, but who wants to pay premium prices for TV dinners.
Enjoy your next sojourn into the world of fine dining or the buffet carryout line at many area supermarkets.
Health inspector shares her restaurant red flags: ‘I couldn’t agree more’
And so it went back in the day.