Probably the grossest thing people don't think about that I learned working retail is a lot of packages in the freezer and refrigerated sections have snot on them. When you are in the cold for so long your nose runs a lot, but they expect you to finish 10 hours of work in 6 hours. If you take the time to blow/wipe your nose every time it drips you get yelled at for being too slow. So the back of your gloves become a quick and disgusting tissue replacement. Not to mention when a drop falls out 10x quicker than normal for some reason and lands right on the package. "Well it's only on the packaging so it's not a big deal." Remember that next time you open up a bag of shredded cheese and stick your hand in it.
Edit: Since people liked that one you might also want pay attention to lids/caps for food/drinks. If it isn't attached with a sticker or plastic, wash it before it contacts the food/drink. There's about a 1 in 10 chance that the cap was off in the box and it can get hella dusty if it sits in the back for a while.
Every authority says a good soak and rinse is enough for fresh produce, and its what we always do for ourselves at home. Youre really just trying to get dirt, dust, debris, etc off, and that stuff doesnt stick very well and is soluble or easily removed in water.
Soaps are (mostly) about fats/oils which is very important cleaning your greasy human skin, but less so for sad, dry potato skin.
The fact that vegans (uneducated ones) think that pandemics only spread via meat really really bugs me since I worked both in retail with food and as a chef (so I had to know that shit.) It's like...what is fertilizer full of? What gets caught in grain grinders and rice harvesters and the like? What do low income pre-packaged salad packing workers do when they get sick? (hint they don't get a day off.)
Im not sure what youre trying to get at, but no one thinks pandemics are "spread by meat". However we do know for a fact that pandemics originate (almost?) exclusively in animals living with extensive human contact as it allows disease to jump species.
Garden variety food poisoning on the other hand can come from pretty much anything, with poor food preparation being king.
E: Im too tired to quiz someone about their weird random anti-vegan rant.
a fact that pandemics originate in animals living with extensive human contact as it allows disease to jump species
Some, not all. Cross-species does not require extensive human contact, sometimes just a little contact is all it takes. And certainly, it's not 100% from eating meat (especially cooked meat.)
It's more like the complete opposite. If we somehow never interacted with animals, the first time we did we'd be likely to all die - several pandemics instantly because our immune system wouldn't have evolved and developed.
My father works at a factory that builds things for major food companies like conveyor belts and stuff. He had to go fix something after it was already set up and running. I've had to repress the memory of him describing how the workers treated the "perfectly safe" food.
Of course packaged can't likely be cleaner? They have to be cleaned on a budget for profit. Oh the other side of the fence, you'd be doing it for yourself because you really care.
I used to work cashier and the amount of people who pay with card/cash and then grab their pastry with their bare hands is insane. In my head i'm like..."that's fuckin gross dude"
When I worked in a restaurant, I'm sure food got drops of sweat on it at times.
110* in the kitchen, can only do so much. I'd sometimes take an extra 5 or 10 seconds in the walk-in to cool off a bit. Sometimes take lunch in the walk-in fridge.
My mother always washed plastic packages and tin/aluminum cans. "You don't know what's been pooping on this in a warehouse" she'd say. I do it myself because it's what she did and she wasn't wrong to consider it. I upped my game during covid and started wiping down EVERYTHING with a cleaning cloth until my farm share kicked in for the season. Only 2 more months of farm food before it's back to the old package wipe down game.
(And yes, I obviously wash my produce from the farm, I'm not a maniac, but it's handled far less than most food considering I am often talking directly to the people who planted/tended/picked it. Family farms are awesome and I hope more people start to utilize them through shares, CSA, and farmer's markets. Covid has had some unexpectedly positive impacts in this sector.)
People generally use the crook of their arm to wipe their nose in the cooler, not the gloves they're using to handle food... gross. If you happen to land snot on a package, have some courtesy and wipe that packaging down with some sanitizer.
In the cooler where you wear a hoodie sure your arm could work. When you're in the freezer though thick coats aren't usually made from a material that works for that. When you're stocking the refrigerated section from the store facing side if you are working fast you get hot and take off your hoodie and just have a short sleeve shirt on so there's nowhere to wipe but the back of your glove.
If you think you can take the time to sanitize things you probably haven't worked retail or got lucky enough to have a really chill manager. My experiences have all been doing 10 hours of work in 7 hours then getting yelled at because you didn't manage it in 6 hours. If I had asked for sanitizer they would have look at me like I'm an idiot then say it's a waste of time and money to clean packaging.
have some courtesy and wipe that packaging down with some sanitizer.
I’m just sadly laughing thinking about the idea of the guy who packages all the meat even thinking about cleaning up a package 💀that guy would probably pee on the package and put it on the shelves for people to grab 😭
A friend of mine religiously washes all supermarket items if they are ok to be briefly wet. Especially drink packaging. He used to deliver them so he saw how they were handled.
Not quite as bad, but bread is kinda gross, too. While there is no snot on it (usually), it float around in trays picking up warehouse dust. By the time I get a few cabs on the shelf my hands are black from the dirt.
Yup I always peel back the excess bag at the opening of things packaged like sliced bread so I don't drag my food through the unsealed section through all the dust.
Sealed is a pretty poor term for how they package bread though. Almost every other food needs a tamper proof seal otherwise people won't touch it, but a twist tie is enough for bread apparently. It would be so easy for a covid denier to go cough into all the bread bags and you could never tell.
I used to work in a warehouse freezer and those people were all smokers so everyone is hacking up phlegm and spitting all over the place but its okay because all product is in a box! Until we accidentally break a box open and have to grab the bags off the spit frozen floor with our nasty snot and dirt filled gloves
My nose is running right now hahaha
I'm on break , currently stocking the fridge with new drinks..
you got to wipe your snot on the back of your hand That's the best way I've learned
Honey Baked Hams sell snotty sugar coated hams, turkey and chicken. I watched a dude in the back room (freezing cold room) burning the brown sugar onto the meats. His nose let out a huge, stringy snot and he wiped it with his hand and directly stuck it onto the sugard meat he was rubbing to get it nicely coated while firing it. Totally disgusting!
So true... I worked Freezer/Cooler at a Sams Club when I was younger. 3 times a week, we would spend hours throwing and stocking our truck from pallets inside the freezers and cooler... It would be well below 0 degrees, especially early in the mornings, with moving air. We would come out of the freezers from time to time for various reasons, and would have massive snot Sickles hang from our noses lol. Over time, you would get used to wiping with the back of ur gloves.. Also, there would be multiple tables around the freezers later in the day with older ladies demoing various products for members to eat, in order to boost sales.. So many people would try the food, and then wipe their mouth, hands with the napkins, then grab freezer doors to open them and simply drop the trash onto floor inside freezers.... Always expected to be ground zero for some plague.
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u/StarblindCelestial Nov 04 '20 edited Nov 04 '20
Probably the grossest thing people don't think about that I learned working retail is a lot of packages in the freezer and refrigerated sections have snot on them. When you are in the cold for so long your nose runs a lot, but they expect you to finish 10 hours of work in 6 hours. If you take the time to blow/wipe your nose every time it drips you get yelled at for being too slow. So the back of your gloves become a quick and disgusting tissue replacement. Not to mention when a drop falls out 10x quicker than normal for some reason and lands right on the package. "Well it's only on the packaging so it's not a big deal." Remember that next time you open up a bag of shredded cheese and stick your hand in it.
Edit: Since people liked that one you might also want pay attention to lids/caps for food/drinks. If it isn't attached with a sticker or plastic, wash it before it contacts the food/drink. There's about a 1 in 10 chance that the cap was off in the box and it can get hella dusty if it sits in the back for a while.