"Are you trying to kill somebody?!.....Get them off the sink and on the bottom shelf below now!" That is just my guess what they would say. The state would definitely fine you big for this since they always need the money. Darn government can't keep a budget but now I am just ranting, sorry.
If I were the inspector, I might give him partial-credit for at least keeping the chemical labels on the containers.4
I have the fortune of having a federal inspector walk through my processing room and coolers.
I also have the fortune of having a manager who was an inspector a number of years ago.
I work in the cleanest most in line with the regulations-place in the world!
It's really wild to see them communicate as peers.
I know it's against the rules, but I see no harm in that. They're looking in the wrong areas. That's not the real problem. For example, I don't know if I've ever (since 1978) seen an inspector check a band saw to see if it's cleaned once in a while. Of course I'm not very well educated on the subject. Or at least I don't have a piece of paper saying that I am. A lot of that stuff, we all have in our kitchens. And the people who made those unnecessary laws probably do too.
Maybe I should have chosen the name "bad attitude" instead of Burgermeister.
I know it's against the rules, but I see no harm in that. They're looking in the wrong areas. That's not the real problem. For example, I don't know if I've ever (since 1978) seen an inspector check a band saw to see if it's cleaned once in a while. Of course I'm not very well educated on the subject. Or at least I don't have a piece of paper saying that I am. A lot of that stuff, we all have in our kitchens. And the people who made those unnecessary laws probably do too.
Maybe I should have chosen the name "bad attitude" instead of Burgermeister.
Just want to clarify the band saw thing.
I think many of us has seen our own store inspectors check the band saw. I used to work at a company that had inspectors come in after closing and check it real close. Even with cotton swabs and petri plates.
I'm talking about the genuine "health department". They don't check certain things that I think they should.
Good Morning Burgermeister, the state boy we got uses his flashlight to get down in all the parts of our saw, grinder, cuber, slicer. he swipes the inside of our grinder to see if we have ground any pork in it.
I wouldn't say you have a " bad attitude " just tried of bull **** after so many years in the business
I never had store inspectors, only State inspectors from the Health Department. They tend to do through inspections. Case temperatures, cooler temperatures, chemical storage, leaky pipes from the cooler condensers or the sinks, meat properly stored. They always opened my saw and made me take the head and plate off the grinder nozzle so they could see inside of it. Every time with out fail it would be the DELI side of the store that gets numberous write ups and while the meat dept might get one minor write up for having a cracked floor drain cover or a bag of foam trays is on the floor instead of on the shelf. Then with out fail it would be one of the meat cutters (usually me) cleaning up the Deli's mess in the coolers and their case so that it will pass the re-inspection. Every where I worked the Deli staff does not know how to clean in order to satisfy the inspectors. Was it just me?
Good Morning Burgermeister, the state boy we got uses his flashlight to get down in all the parts of our saw, grinder, cuber, slicer. he swipes the inside of our grinder to see if we have ground any pork in it.
I wouldn't say you have a " bad attitude " just tried of bull **** after so many years in the business
Thank you southern_bell,
It does seem (to me) like the inspectors look for things that aren't important. Things like having sanitizer buckets on the block, having test strips for the sanitizer liquid, no cleaning supplies except those provided by one certain company, weird things like having rubber gloves hanging by the fingertips (they drain dry better that way). Speaking of those rubber gloves, I may have said it before, we had a pair that was hanging properly, but they were never used. They had that light red mold/fungus all over them from hanging around for (a year?). You may have seen this kind of mold in some sink areas. On the wall, underneath. But it didn't matter. All that mattered was that we had a pair of gloves in sight, hanging by the fingertips. A brand new pair, no mold, laying flat, would be a violation. Speaking of mold, you all may know of the yellow mold seen in band saws. Specifically on the large gray catch bin thing that snaps onto Toledo saws. Over the bottom wheel. I see so many of those with the mold all over the inside. But for some reason, no one cares. If the moving parts, and table section are clean, the catch bin doesn't matter. I kind of think that's a little bacteria farm. I work it a lot of stores. One full time, and maybe 30 different stores, a day at a time throughout the year. I see a lot of filthy saws. In a recent store, I took the saw completely apart. The clerk said he had never seen anyone else do that. I've been told that twice now. They just spray it clean with the blade still in place. The blade wipers cant be cleaned properly that way. I see that all the time. This is not my full time store BTW. This is the large chains I work for on my days off.
I wonder if that is a CA thing. Both VA and MI State inspectors were very through in the several stores I worked in both states. We always completely broke down the machines and washed all the little parts in the sink because we were afraid of the inspectors showing up unannounced. Mold in the saw would be a serious violation.
That gloves hanging by the finger tips is bizare. I never heard of such a violation. I wonder what the inspectors are smoking over there. When I started at a new store in VA I had to scrub that blochy red mold of all the sinks and stainless steel machines because the inspector wrote us up on that. They made me clean it because I was the new guy.
I even had to take the fan blades off the cooling system and wash the dust off them a few times.
I always thought CA was strict on sanitation.
-- Edited by fdarn on Sunday 18th of January 2015 11:19:49 PM
I never had store inspectors, only State inspectors from the Health Department. They tend to do through inspections. Case temperatures, cooler temperatures, chemical storage, leaky pipes from the cooler condensers or the sinks, meat properly stored. They always opened my saw and made me take the head and plate off the grinder nozzle so they could see inside of it. Every time with out fail it would be the DELI side of the store that gets numberous write ups and while the meat dept might get one minor write up for having a cracked floor drain cover or a bag of foam trays is on the floor instead of on the shelf. Then with out fail it would be one of the meat cutters (usually me) cleaning up the Deli's mess in the coolers and their case so that it will pass the re-inspection. Every where I worked the Deli staff does not know how to clean in order to satisfy the inspectors. Was it just me?
One store that I used to work full time for, I was there more than 10 years, had rules for cleaning the saw, grinder, tenderizer, etc. Those rules said that we had to take it apart and clean & sanatize everything. Then, instead of putting it back together, we had to put every piece on the cleaned and sanatized cutting table. Quite often, maybe once a month, the stores own inspectors would come in around 2-5 AM and check to see how well it was cleaned. There would later be a written report of everything bad they found in the shop. Incomplete paperwork for temperatures could be a write up. Lots of things could be a write up. They'd even swab parts of the grinder and saw and rub the swab on petri dishes, send it to a lab and see how much bacteria grows. But the health department never looked very close.
The deli is always, or most often on the other side of the store. Not near the meat dept. If they get in trouble, it doesn't concern the meat dept. Of course the store manager and owner will have to care about that, but we, in my meat depts, never felt like the deli got us all in trouble.
