People Who Handle Your Food Work Sick

Have you ever actually found a fly in your soup? I haven't. I've seen it in cartoons, but in real life? No, never.

Unless you're eating at an outdoor café in Calcutta, you're probably safe from rabid winged pests.

But apparently food service workers are a bigger threat to your dinner than Musca domestica Linnaeus; a new study says many food restaurant employees go to work sick, and don't get sick days.

The survey, conducted by Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, a national organization representing restaurant workers, found two-thirds of restaurant workers go to work when they're sick. Oh fantastic!

It gets worse. Nearly 90% of these brave souls serving our food do not get paid sick days and 60% do not receive any health insurance.

Sorry folks, that's just wrong. But, in the United States we have a bizarre dynamic. If you button up your white collar and don't have health benefits it's a travesty, but if you punch a clock. Oh well, get a real job loser!

In the report, a lady working in the food service for 30 years talks about being really sick one day. She had a bad cold with all the trimmings: runny nose, sneezing, cough, and a fever. But she couldn't call out, she needed the money.

However, later on she asked her manager if she could leave. She was too sick to carry on and was coughing up a storm and didn't want to make the customers sick. So her compassionate manager said, "Try not to cough, then."

Now that's classy! Listen, that can't happen. People who handle your food or who take care of sick people need special allowances, for the sake of public health. And if it requires a doctor's note, fine, so be it.

If I go out to eat and someone on death's door serves me my food, I'm going to be ticked off, so any self-respecting restaurant owner should be on high-alert for that sort of thing...same goes for doctors and nurses too.

Image credit: TheEmoSurfer

Fast Food Weird food preparation food safety healthcare 11 Comments O. on 14 Nov 2010

My dad went to an old coworkers house for lunch a few months ago. I guess he had never been to the guys house. Well anyway my dad politely ( naw, probably not!) declined to eat because the guy pet his dog then went back to cooking without washing his hands.

Reply O. on 14 Nov 2010

By the way, as a former retail worker I know that that going out in public sick thing works for customers as well as employees. I'm having flashbacks of all the Christmases I caught someones cold.

Reply Bonnie on 14 Nov 2010

A friend of mine worked in a buffet style restaurant where if you came in sick they would put you at the register. The idea was that at least you weren't handling the food, just breathing (& coughing & sneezing) into customers' faces.

The restaurant industry really needs to give sick time for employees, since they don't pay enough for them to be able to miss work.

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