Bailing on a Bakery

My local supermarket just redid its bakery section, from self-service to an assistant behind a counter. It's a nice-looking redo, with wood trays, racks of bread, and that wonderful smell of fresh baking. And I won't be shopping there any more.

I took a look at the assistant – or more specifically, I looked at the assistant's hands, wearing those now-ubiquitous blue gloves.

• The blue gloves with which he picked up and paper-bagged a loaf for the lady at the front of the queue...
• the same gloves with which he held out a hand and took her cash...
• the same blue gloves which he then used to work the till...
• and the same blue gloves he used to pick a coin up off the floor when he dropped it giving her her change....
• and then he opened the next bag and with the same gloved hand picked up four rolls for the next person in line.

I  left the queue at this point.

It's not an uncommon problem. For some reason, when working on food service, assistants wearing gloves tend to assume the outside of the gloves are clean because their hands on the inside of the gloves are clean.

The baker I went to as an alternative during the rebuild doesn't use gloves. It does have hand sanitiser on all the walls, and signs to use them, but all the staff are bare-handed. Does this worry me when they pick the food up? Hardly. They use tongs. And wash them.

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This blog has moved to http://www.rablogs.co.uk/tirial where the original articles can be found.