Unsafe Food Service Workers
By Lacie Thrall

People that are motivated to do their jobs well are certainly our goal in a food service environment. Motivation is a fleeting characteristic for some, but when food safety is the risk, we cannot afford to have slip ups. Frequent food safety training, knowledgeable managers, a teamwork atmosphere, recognition programs, and encouraging feedback can help keep that motivation up. No one wants to prepare or serve food that is unsafe for customers to consume (if they are thinking clearly). However, did you know most foodborne outbreaks are the result of at least two mistakes or more? Sometimes it only take one mistake, but when food safety investigators research outbreak scenarios after the fact, usually there are at least two major errors that occur along the way as the food product flows through the steps to its final form.

When you create an atmosphere of food safety consciousness through training, you protect not only the food, but the employees. Turnover should be less if your organization actively supports and encourages the crew to learn new tasks and safer methods to do them. Food safety training must be both general in nature and specific to the tasks that crew member actually performs. Every food safety training program must have elements of what we call “the big 3”. In training and actual practice you must cover the main points of 1)personal hygiene/handwashing, 2)time and temperature control of foods, and 3)cross-contamination prevention.

The Sins of Cross-contamination & Food Workers -- Cross-contamination happens via three routes: 1) hands to food; 2) food to food—such as raw food touching or dripping on ready-to-eat food; and 3) equipment to food. In any case, a human has something to do with any of these routes burning a path to your kitchen or prep area. Sometimes, just being lazy feeds at the trough of all sanitation routines and that behavior can eventually cause one of our major mistakes in the tiny increments of poor procedures. Managers or employees unwilling to minimize the chance of a foodborne illness disaster should not work in the food industry. It’s our job to excise those bad apples or first, make every effort to change their behavior. We know how hard behaviors are to change...right?

The Unsafe Food Worker List –For starters, here’s some food safety examples of poor practices to think about and correct:

1. Not washing hands thoroughly, often enough, or without soap.

2. Not washing hands visibly in the kitchen after leaving and returning to the prep area for any reason.

3. Forgetting to use utensils, disposable gloves or change gloves when handling ready-to-eat food.

4. Wiping hands on aprons, wearing an apron into a restroom, or dropping it on the floor.

5. Wearing a dirty uniform or poor personal habits (smoking, spitting, chewing, scratching, coughing, sneezing, blowing the nose, etc.) while working with food.

6. Not wearing appropriate hair restraints or not covering the hair / beard thoroughly enough.

7. Not training all workers how to use thermometers, calibrate them, and sanitize the stem before use.

8. Not using or maintaining temperature charts of your perishable foods and hot/cold holding equipment.

9. Not inspecting food shipments upon arrival for temperature and condition or not labeling and rotating them correctly.

10. Not properly labeling squirt bottles of chemicals.

11. Mixing different cleaning supplies together expecting better results.

12. Mixing tools across work table zones (salad prep vs. raw meat prep) or using dirty tools such as cutting boards, knives, tongs, spoons, etc.

13. Not breaking down, cleaning and sanitizing in-place equipment (such as a food processor, mixer, or electric slicer) often enough – at least at a minimum of 4 hour intervals.

14. Using filthy mops, brushes and other cleaning equipment or neglecting to change the mop water.

15. Rendering cleaners and sanitizers useless by improper concentration or not changing the solution frequently.

16. Skipping sanitation procedures to save labor.

17. Leaving the door of the walking cooler or refrigerator ajar causing the temperature to fluctuate.

18. Neglecting to designate specific equipment by color-coding (storage containers, cutting boards, utensils, etc.) or invest in sufficient equipment to allow proper color coding.

19. Allowing sick employees to work in food prep or any areas of your facility. Bottom Line: This list can go on and on. These mistakes should not be, but sometimes are tolerated in food facilities opening the door to a potential disaster. Having written food safety guidelines, good standard operating procedures, training employees about the “big 3 of food safety”, and monitoring these factors are all important to your success as a safe food worker, a good manager and a well run organization.