Why I’m Not Eating Out Anymore

My last trip to a restaurant was very interesting. I went to the Hamburger Inn here in Sioux Falls. It’s known for its eggburger. An employee I had never seen before was working the counter. He wrapped up an order with another customer by scooping up the dollar bills left on the counter. He used his fingers to straighten out the wrinkled bills and then placed them in the cash register. He then got a pen and offered to take my order. ‘I’ll have an eggburger and fries please!’ He writes it down, puts down the pad and pen and goes right to the meat, folding and mashing it with his bare hands.

What’s missing here is a stop to the sink to wash the hands that touched all that dirty money along with god knows what else. I was amazed. How was this person so clueless as to be that uncleanly in a food service environment? Perhaps it was an oversight. So I pointed his error out. He looked at me dumbfounded and got angry. He had no words for me, but you could tell he didn’t think it was a big deal. So I walked out.

Am I the only one that takes this kind of thing seriously? I see many in food service doing disgusting things with their hands and then touching the food. Other customers see it and usually say nothing. They don’t want to cause a fuss I guess.

There is nothing wrong though with pointing out bad service. Being dirty around food should not be tolerated at all. With all the foodborne illnesses that are present today, we should take matters like this much more seriously than we do. Tell a manager or write the main office of any restaurant that fails to be sanitary. Restaurants that fail to adhere to being clean shouldn’t have our business.