American businesses especially those that handle or prepare food make it a point to inform their staff through uniquitous signage urging the washing of hands. Frequently.
Cost of doing business can skyrocket if food borne illness is triggered due to unhygenic conditions caused by negligent employees visiting bathrooms for their business and not cleaning up after. Therefore the signage. Or employees who might knowingly or unknowingly harbor a pre condition or virus and share it with the guests through food prepared in the kitchen.
"All Employees Must Wash Hands" is prominently displayed on the mirrors of the restrooms as an example.
Yet in recent memory we had big and small restaurants in the US take it on the chin due to a variety of ills spreading through contaminated food as well as walking pathogen breeding humans that cooked the food or visited the restaurants.
Seinfeld once captured this situation in an episode where the pizza maker returns from the stall having presumably taken a dump and proceeds to make the dough without the necessary ablution.
In an ironic rant about too much cleanliness, George Carlin went on to describe American people as sissys who with their constant anti-germ campaigns and hand sanitizers were weak and unable to survive in the modern world. He quoted that he would eat food that fell on the sidewalk - in Calcutta and the germs would not have a chance. Reason being he swam in raw sewage growing up and built natural immunity.
Case in point was when I visited India and ate at a variety of food purveyors that may or may not qualify as restaurants. The servers at times looked like had gotten up after scratching their private parts and forced into performing the morning food prep to waiting customers. But when in India the entire ambience is such that these people blend in to the lackluster landscape and it never occurs to you that you might have just consumed a CDC forbidden fruit or gorged on a Dosa Sambar from a container that was recycled through tepid and filthy water before being used to serve.
Suketu Mehta in his narrative of Mumbai called 'Maximum City: Bombay' quoted - the city is full of shit. It is in the air people breathe. With such a backdrop who can resist the street side Vada Pav served on a warm paper containing yesterday's news?
Cost of doing business can skyrocket if food borne illness is triggered due to unhygenic conditions caused by negligent employees visiting bathrooms for their business and not cleaning up after. Therefore the signage. Or employees who might knowingly or unknowingly harbor a pre condition or virus and share it with the guests through food prepared in the kitchen.
"All Employees Must Wash Hands" is prominently displayed on the mirrors of the restrooms as an example.
Yet in recent memory we had big and small restaurants in the US take it on the chin due to a variety of ills spreading through contaminated food as well as walking pathogen breeding humans that cooked the food or visited the restaurants.
Seinfeld once captured this situation in an episode where the pizza maker returns from the stall having presumably taken a dump and proceeds to make the dough without the necessary ablution.
In an ironic rant about too much cleanliness, George Carlin went on to describe American people as sissys who with their constant anti-germ campaigns and hand sanitizers were weak and unable to survive in the modern world. He quoted that he would eat food that fell on the sidewalk - in Calcutta and the germs would not have a chance. Reason being he swam in raw sewage growing up and built natural immunity.
Case in point was when I visited India and ate at a variety of food purveyors that may or may not qualify as restaurants. The servers at times looked like had gotten up after scratching their private parts and forced into performing the morning food prep to waiting customers. But when in India the entire ambience is such that these people blend in to the lackluster landscape and it never occurs to you that you might have just consumed a CDC forbidden fruit or gorged on a Dosa Sambar from a container that was recycled through tepid and filthy water before being used to serve.
Suketu Mehta in his narrative of Mumbai called 'Maximum City: Bombay' quoted - the city is full of shit. It is in the air people breathe. With such a backdrop who can resist the street side Vada Pav served on a warm paper containing yesterday's news?
Points to ponder in the stalls and the "think tank."
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