"Waffle House Have A Dirty Cup, You Send It Back...They'll Bring You A Dirtier Cup"
"We know it's dirty," the guy continues in the video -- the hilarious video at the bottom of this post.
Or, as I would put it, "Extra bacon, please. Maybe the slices that didn't get dropped on the floor...twice."
Jeffrey Tucker writes at FEE about a report in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution "that would shock absolutely no one": "Atlanta Waffle House fails health inspection."
According to the report, an employee did not properly wash their hands before donning new gloves to prepare food. Officials also reported food held longer than seven days and food debris inside reach-in coolers.
Tucker continues:
That's it? That's the great scandal? Surely there are more, hundreds, thousands of violations, at most any Waffle House. They are set up so that every customer can see exactly what is happening in the kitchen. We can see it all. We are not astonished to learn that certain sketchy things are happening.We are talking about a restaurant where most people pay cash, and no Waffle House accepted credit cards until 2006. Sometimes the clanging of plates, and banter among staff, is so loud you can't talk. The jukebox plays 45 rpm records. There is a major genre of home-made films that show fights among the staff, all taking place in front of the customer.
...There is indeed something preposterous about Waffle House being hectored by bureaucrats and heckled by stuffy newspaper reporters.
And a little perspective from Tucker:
We accept some compromises with our food so that we can pay far less, a huge point to the poor that the rich snobs among the governing elite and journalists can't begin to fathom, whether it comes to tube socks at Wal-Mart or All-Star Specials at Waffle House. As for his health analysis, it is not crazy.There is nothing regulators can do to improve our experience. Indeed, the opposite is the case.
In that sense, this video is deeply subversive and reaches to the core history of deep-state control over American life.
After all, how did all our troubles with regulatory control begin? In food inspection. The first major federal intervention dealt with the meat-packing industry. It's why we still say that no one wants to see sausage being made: it's basically a smear of a great industry.
Three things to remember about the meat-packing case of 1906. 1) The frenzy was not created by consumers but by the dominant player in the market in order to impose high costs on the competition. 2) Health standards in the industry actually declined after regulation because the mandates themselves were rooted in an unsanitary practice. 3) Upton Sinclair's The Jungle is socialist fiction.
The reality is, all restaurants are dirty and have all sort of health violations. If this creeps you out, eat at home, where it's probably also dirty and has all sorts of health violations.
Guess what: That has been the deal throughout human history, and it mostly hasn't killed us.
via @Overlawyered
Hilarious. Waffle House is disgusting. And delicious.
This is like those articles that break down Taco Bell food and talk about how unhealthy it is. No one thinks it's healthy. They have giant blue drinks that are liquid sugar and dye. My stomach hurts every time I eat there. But it's delicious. I know what I'm getting into.
(And our kitchens probably aren't as clean as we want to think.)
Insufficient Poison at July 12, 2017 6:02 AM
Probably no 'actually used' home kitchen would pass a health inspection. No food past expiration date, did you wears hair net, wash hands and wear gloves. Kitchen work and cutting hair are two jobs everyone has the basic skills to actually do, so they have the most red tape to make sure everyone doesn't do them.
Joe j at July 12, 2017 6:35 AM
This. I've done my time working in a restaurant. There was probably nothing happening at that Waffle House that you wouldn't find here and there in restaurants all around the industry, including some high-end ones. Dirty (literally) little secret: it is simply impossible to keep a commercial kitchen completely clean. There is always something that could have been cleaned better, and something that needs cleaning but is difficult to get at, like underneath a make table or the bottom of the ice bin. You can never stay completely ahead of it. If you ever own a restaurant, make sure you take pictures of the kitchen the day you open, because it will never look that good again.
Now, there is no excuse for things like employees not washing their hands. But how you do on a health inspection can depend a lot on exactly when the inspector shows up; almost any restaurant will fail if they get inspected in the middle of a rush, even though the kitchen might have been spotless 30 minutes earlier. And some of the rules are ridiculous. We once got docked five points because someone left a bottle of chlorine bleach on a shelf that was above a shelf where metal cans of sauce were stored. We asked about it. The inspector said, "Well, the bleach could leak, and then it would eat through the cans and contaminate the food inside them." Okay, first of all, chlorine bleach has a strong smell. If it had leaked, we would have smelled it. Second, we always inspected the cans before we opened them (because the delivery service frequently dented them and would occasionally punch a hole in one). If the top had been eaten off the can, we would have tossed it.
Lots of people have gotten sick from eating in restaurants that passed their health inspections. I'm not saying that health inspection shouldn't be done, but the regs needs to be simplified and made to focus on the serious hazards, and not worry about trivial crap like which shelf the bleach is on.
Cousin Dave at July 12, 2017 6:46 AM
What Cousin Dave said last.
Argue as you wish to drop all standards because some don't meet them: they are still lifesavers.
WHEN, not IF, you get sick at a commercial venue, you have means for redress due to these standards. Otherwise, you'll have to get someone to sue in civil court after you survive.
And of course, it is not inspection itself, but the standards which make commercial food possible.
Radwaste at July 12, 2017 7:46 AM
I'm not eating there. If I did I'd likely give it back.
jdgalt at July 12, 2017 9:04 AM
http://alphahistory.com/pastpeculiar/1886-paris-bakery-extract-water-closet/
=== ===
In 1886 a German doctor named Gustav Jaeger described a Paris bakery, popular for its fine breads and pastries – but also notorious for its odious smells:
“The neighbours of an establishment famous for its excellent bread, pastry and similar products of luxury [has] complained again and again of the disgusting smells that prevailed there, which penetrate into their dwellings.”
=== ===
The finest bread in Paris, plus one interesting fact.
Andrew Garland at July 12, 2017 11:51 AM
Not to mention that city, county, and state health codes are usually contradictory and a kitchen that passes one will invariably fail one or more of the others.
"Slidey" is now my new favorite word.
Conan the Grammarian at July 12, 2017 12:44 PM
(And our kitchens probably aren't as clean as we want to think.)
Boy howdy. I had my mothers carpets cleaned last week. A few days later she got stung by a scorpion, so I got her one of those black light flash lights.
She is practically OCD about cleaning, but the shit I saw with that blacklight . . . even after a cleaning the carpet looked like a Jackson Pollock painting of pet stains. Aerosolized urine stains on the cabinets around toilets.
That clean house was fucking disgusting, even clean people are incredibly gross
lujlp at July 12, 2017 3:59 PM
The things that could be said about Chinese restaurants..
Sixclaws at July 12, 2017 5:27 PM
Cousin Dave - "the regs needs to be simplified and made to focus on the serious hazards, and not worry about trivial crap like which shelf the bleach is on."
So true! In my younger days, I also worked in food service - in a private company's cafeteria. So, you had better believe that if employees got sick from the food the company would have heard about it!
We, failed inspection once because we had a small closet out in the hallway (no where near food) that we used for the mops, etc. Inside it had a sink with a single faucet, which was hot water only. Guess what? we failed because the faucet was NOT labeled hot or cold! The inspector's comment was that someone could get seriously scalded.
While that might be somewhat true; it was unlikely as the only ones who used that closet and faucet were those of us who worked there. And we only used it for one thing - to fill up the mop bucket.
charles at July 13, 2017 4:59 PM
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