The thing with Restaurants/eating out....

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There's one local restaurant that I wouldn't eat in if it was free. Even if they paid me.

It's a Chinese place. The foods not bad, but the sanitary conditions of the place are pathetic. Especially when the manager takes food off of tables after the diners have left and scrapes it back onto the buffet. You're not safe to order from the menu since anything in your order that can be filled from the buffet is filled from the buffet.

I figure if they are that pathetic where people can see what they're doing, they are probably far worse in the kitchen where you can't see what they are doing.

Wow...just, wow...they should be shut down for that.

I have heard of pizza places where if they are tossing the dough, and they drop it on the floor, they just pick it up and use it anyway.

I've also heard of restaurants where they don't know they are supposed to clean out the beverage fountain. At one place they finally did it, and the smell of all the crud coming out was so bad, the employees were gagging and vomiting.

I will NOT drink a fountain drink anymore. Anywhere.

I don't think about these things too much when I go out to eat. Waiters here are paid pretty decently and many of them love their jobs. Our favorite restaurant has a server on Sundays who's actually our son's school teacher who has a second job. We love chatting with her there and certainly would never consider her inferior. All people working hard doing their jobs are respectable. And those who take pride in getting jobs well done almost always advance fast. I thought aspies tend to view all people as equals. Of course this may be my East Asian root speaking. I was taught every job can be honorable and to strive for excellence if possible. It sounds like you really don't like your job, might be the best to try a different one.

Ideally, people in restaurants choose to work there. I wish they were paid more, and I wish no one were ever in a situation where they're forced into a service job, but I don't think service jobs are inherently bad/wrong/unequal.

Years ago at a former company, the president of the company and I stopped at a convenience store for something to drink. I got a Gatorade. He wanted a fountain Coke but the ice machine was empty so he told an employee of the store. The employee dumped out the mop bucket and used it to get ice and put in the ice machine. Surprisingly, after seeing that, the president of the company went ahead and got the drink!

After we left and were driving down the road, I was watching out of curiousity to see him drink it. About a mile down the road he took a sip. A bit later, he opened the window and poured it out. When he did that I said that I was wondering if he was going to drink that. He replied that he figured they do it all the time so it must be okay, but the Coke tasted like Pine Sol.

For what it's worth, a couple of years earlier my younger brother had told me about seeing another convenience store do the same thing so after that I never again got a fountain drink at a convenience store.

At a Subway I used to go to quite often the ice always had little green flecks in it. You couldn't taste any difference, but they were there. It turned out that the employees used the lettuce bucket to fill the ice machine and those little green flecks were bits of lettuce since they didn't wash out the bucket first.

From what I understand, in most bars and cantinas in Mexico, you should never drink a beer out of a glass at all or any mixed drink because you will never know what may have been added. The only acceptable drink is a beer in a bottle that is brought to you with the bottle cap still on.

Many bars there have some kind of special that you can drink on all night long for a fixed price for the entire night. Don't go for it. At best, they have a big vat of the cheapest tequila with some sliced fruits tossed in. From what I have been told by people who live in Mexico, it is not that unusual for the bartender to also empty any glasses into it that the customers did not finish.

Before I order food when I go to a new restaurant, I use their toilet, the kitchens are usually close by and I can get a look at the staff plus food preparation area, if it and the nooks and crannies in toilet area are clean, I'll order anything from the menu, if not I'll only eat something that has been deep fried.
I worked in a kitchen before, it was safe and hygienic, but there were still some practices that were disgusting. I remember the contents of a mixed grill being dusted off after it fell on the floor, then it was served up as normal, gross.

It would be great if open kitchens in restaurants were more common so that customers could see how clean it is.

When I lived in Houston, I would regularly go eat breakfast on Sunday morning when the weather was good (since I was on a motorcycle) to a very small breakfast place just off the freeway. The entire building was only about 600 square feet and a counter was the only separation between the customers and the cook area. All customers ate at the bar. You could see how clean the place was and watch how the cook made your breakfast. And, instead of waiting for a waitress to bring you your food, your food was set in front of you immediately after it was plated.

One thing I like about Subway is that you can get something of an idea on their cleanliness because you watch them fix your sandwich and can see how clean things are.

At one Subway once, I ordered a tuna sandwich. The employee reached into the sink and picked up a dirty scoop and used it to put the tuna on the sandwich. I made him throw it in the trash and changed my order to either a turkey sandwich or a roast beef sandwich.

At a busy Subway in a suburb of Houston, the one with the lettuce bits in the ice machine, they had two women working on Friday and Saturday nights for a month or two. They didn't clean anything up. By halfway through the evening, the preparation area was piled high with things that had fallen off of sandwiches as they made them. It was a really big mess. I'd wait in line only to see the condition of the prep area and would turn around and leave.

I don't know what's worse, the employee doing that, or the customer thinking it was ok. lol This is a fine example of what's wrong with the world as we know it.



That would be good...the noise would be too much for me though. I'd like to be able to see the kitchen through a huge, soundproof glass window.

In places I have been with a kitchen/food prep area in the open, they were usually pretty quiet. Considerably less noise than in the dining area.

Some of my worst experiences in restaurants have been at places with open kitchens. They are usually very loud, much more so than restaurants with closed kitchens.

I don't remember the cooking being very loud, the extractor fans were loud though. I worked during the day time doing basic prep work, with 2-3 other staff, the disagreements in the kitchen were by far the noisiest thing.

Material inequality, which is a necessary condition for the preservation of civilization. Of course, when it comes to fast food restaurants, sometimes there isn't much of a difference between the economic situations of the employees and the customers.


Yes.

Just look at those poor blokes ! !! It breaks my heart, the suffering they are enduring ! !! !

Sarcasm?

There are lots of great seasonal seafood places along the CT/RI/MA/ME shoreline--as far as I can tell many of the workers at these places really enjoy what they are doing.