Current Events > CDC ties 40% of restaurant food poisonings to sick workers.

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.ketv.com/article/sick-workers-food-poisoning-outbreaks-cdc/44045526

Food workers who showed up while sick or contagious were linked to about 40% of restaurant food poisoning outbreaks with a known cause between 2017 and 2019, federal health officials said Tuesday.
Norovirus and salmonella, germs that can cause severe illness, were the most common cause of 800 outbreaks, which encompassed 875 restaurants and were reported by 25 state and local health departments.

Investigators with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention called for better enforcement of comprehensive food safety policies, which emphasize basic measures like hand washing and keeping sick workers off the job

Although 85% of restaurants said they had policies restricting staff from working while sick, only about 16% of the policies were detailed enough to require workers to notify managers and to stay home if they had any of the five key symptoms including vomiting, diarrhea, and sore throat with fever.
About 44% of managers told the CDC their restaurants provided paid sick leave to workers. Thats a problem, according to Mitzi Baum, the chief executive of STOP Foodborne Illness, a nonprofit advocacy group.

She said it means workers are forced to choose between earning money or showing up sick or there's social pressure not to leave fellow employees short-staffed.
If there's a positive food safety culture, you're not penalized for illness, Baum said.
It can be hard for consumers to know when sick workers might be on the job, she said, but there are some signs to look for: Is your server sniffing? Are they sneezing? How are they handling the utensils?

About 48 million people a year in the U.S. are sickened by foodborne illness, including 128,000 who are hospitalized and 3,000 who die, according to the CDC.

Salmonella is only contagious from person to person if you literally eat their shit

I remember back when I was a teenager working at McDonalds and I'd have a bad cold or something. I'd call in sick and the managers would almost always try to convince me to come in anyways, I'd push back with food safety requirements and they'd stop pushing but the fact that they'd push back every time tells you a lot of kids would go in even though they really shouldn't.

So yeah, this is completely unsurprising. Restaurants really should get far more surprise inspections from the government. People who work in food service should absolutely never go in to work sick. It should be a huge liability for the restaurant.

I dont go to work sick now, but I used to when I worked in hospitality and catering because I couldnt afford not to.

Super awesome how restaurant managers and owners force workers to go in sick, and you know, serve people food.

I used to have a job where sick days and vacations came from the same 15 days I accrued each year.

Given this, I went to work with pneumonia. I'll be a horse's ass if they think I'd give up earned vacation days to stay home sick with pneumonia

Fucking America

DeepFriedSquid posted...

I went to work with pneumonia

i don't work but i had it before. couldn't breath well :(.
had to take extra precaution not to overexert myself.

I call in sick for no reason sometimes, best believe I'm using sick time if I feel sick

yeah not really surprising

I worked in a supermarket deli for a while and they really didnt like callouts so I went in sick one day. at one point some snot dripped from my nose onto some person's turkey while I was slicing it and I was like ok time to go home

Irony posted...

Salmonella is only contagious from person to person if you literally eat their shit

Or they don't wash well their hands well enough

Unsuprised_Pika posted...

they don't wash well their hands well enough

lavate las manos.

Irony posted...

Salmonella is only contagious from person to person if you literally eat their shit

You know that sign that says "employees must wash hands after using restroom"?

Well this is exactly what happens if they don't do that (or don't go a good enough job of it)

I get paid to be sick so I do my job well

Tyranthraxus posted...

You know that sign that says "employees must wash hands after using restroom"?

Well this is exactly what happens if they don't do that (or don't go a good enough job of it)

I had to tell a 16 year old this week to wash his hands. He said he washed them in the bathroom. I had to convince him, yes, you wash them again before you start making things people will put in their mouths. Apparently when he took his computer based training he just skipped through as much as possible and no one ever called him on it.

ChocoboMog123 posted...

I had to tell a 16 year old this week to wash his hands. He said he washed them in the bathroom. I had to convince him, yes, you wash them again before you start making things people will put in their mouths. Apparently when he took his computer based training he just skipped through as much as possible and no one ever called him on it.

I heard a story, don't know if it's true or not, that a hospital instituted a mandatory wash hands policy before any procedure at the insistence of one obstetrician, and as a result childbirth related fatalities went down by 50%. And that the policy was very controversial at the time it was made.

Can't verify it but it sounds realistic TBH.

Tyranthraxus posted...

I heard a story, don't know if it's true or not, that a hospital instituted a mandatory wash hands policy before any procedure at the insistence of one obstetrician, and as a result childbirth related fatalities went down by 50%. And that the policy was very controversial at the time it was made.

Can't verify it but it sounds realistic TBH.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis

Despite various publications of results where hand-washing reduced mortality to below 2%, Semmelweis's observations conflicted with the established scientific and medical opinions of the time and his ideas were rejected by the medical community. He could offer no theoretical explanation for his findings of reduced mortality due to hand-washing, and some doctors were offended at the suggestion that they should wash their hands and mocked him for it. In 1865, the increasingly outspoken Semmelweis allegedly suffered a nervous breakdown and was committed to an asylum by his colleagues. In the asylum he was beaten by the guards. He died 14 days later from a gangrenous wound on his right hand that may have been caused by the beating. His findings earned widespread acceptance only years after his death, when Louis Pasteur confirmed the germ theory, giving Semmelweis' observations a theoretical explanation, and Joseph Lister, acting on Pasteur's research, practised and operated using hygienic methods, with great success.

DrizztLink posted...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis

Dude they literally beat him to death just for asking people to wash their hands

Tyranthraxus posted...

Dude they literally beat him to death just for asking people to wash their hands

Is that really so hard to believe today? Look at how people act when you ask them to put on a fucking mask.

Chronic understaffing and asshole mangers is exactly why "I'm sick as hell" means "come in anyway or you're fired"

Tyranthraxus posted...

You know that sign that says "employees must wash hands after using restroom"?

Well this is exactly what happens if they don't do that (or don't go a good enough job of it)

Something that slips under the radar at times is people watching things on their phones in the bathroom. They wash their hands but their phone remains contaminated.

Questionmarktarius posted...

Chronic understaffing and asshole mangers is exactly why "I'm sick as hell" means "come in anyway or you're fired"

In a country with functional employee protections that would be grounds for an unfair dismissal suit, so I assume in the US it happens all the time and goes unopposed.

Soon:

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/1/5/3/AAEhCpAAEh1R.jpg

Dark_Arbron posted...

In a country with functional employee protections that would be grounds for an unfair dismissal suit, so I assume in the US it happens all the time and goes unopposed.

It's a point of pride for a lot of them.