Huckleberries Online

Poolman: To Eat Or Not To Eat

Posted by DFO

March 16, 2009 8:12 a.m. • 9 comments

If you have been seated in a restaurant and after having ordered coffee and maybe taken a couple sips of water the waiter walks up and coughs into his/her arm and shows obvious signs of a cold - running nose, cough, etc, is it ok to just bail out? I don’t want to catch that hideous thing. Who knows how much he/she will germinate my meal between the kitchen and my booth – and the bill at the end - the extra napkin - I could never enjoy eating a meal knowing 10 days of chills, sniffles, coughing, and headache could follow. Just wondering how others handle this type of situation. I bit the bullet and stuck it out/Poolman. More here.

Question: What would you do if you were being served by a waiter/waitress who obviously was quite sick?

Nine comments on this post so far. Add yours!

JeanieSpokane on March 16 at 8:33 a.m.
I would ask for the supervisor and I would decline to eat any food from that restaurant at that time. Sick people working for a public facility that caters to people one-on-one as part of their business should stay home. Period. But high on my list would be restaurants and nursing homes. Employees of any outfit that serves people food or has to work with a person one on one (dentist, nurse, doctor) should stay home or at the very least, wear a mask.
Liz on March 16 at 10:47 a.m.
eeeewww
Liz on March 16 at 10:51 a.m.
Actually, studies have shown the the nastiest place to pick up germs is the ole computer keyboard. Along with grocery cart handles. The reality is that you are exposed to far more germs without knowing it than you are from the server with the sniffles.
That said, the server in question is just gross. Sometimes, you just really don’t want to know…
cantyoureadthesigns on March 16 at 11:38 a.m.
While health departments, good sense, and protecting the public suggest that ill food service workers stay home from work, this almost never happens, as such workers are typically low wage, barely surviving, are not afforded “sick pay”, and therefore can’t afford to take the day off from work. Unless they’re in the UFCW, which is rare.
Escapee on March 16 at 9:57 p.m.
I haven’t encountered any sick waitresses/waiters (none that I know of), but there have been some times when I’ve gotten sick after eating a restaurant meal and I’ve often wondered if some germ from somewhere, got into the food while it was being prepared. Cook? Dishwasher? Etc…

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D.F. Oliveria is a columnist and blogger for The Spokesman-Review. Huckleberries Online was judged the best 2008 Idaho newspaper blog by the Idaho Press Club. And the best 2007 news blog in the Pacific Northwest by the Society for Professional Journalist. Print Huckleberries is a past winner of the Herb Caen Memorial Column contest by the National Association of Newspaper Columnists. The Readership Institute of Northwestern University cited this blog as a good example of online community journalism.