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How Restaurant Health Inspections Work · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works
0:04
Speaker 1: dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
0:14
Speaker 1: There's Charles W Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry Rowland. Put
0:18
Speaker 1: the three of us in the room together with some
0:20
Speaker 1: raw chicken and some old mop water. You got yourself
0:24
Speaker 1: stuff you should know? So gross, So actually, Chuck, before
0:28
Speaker 1: we get started, we have a very special guest here
0:31
Speaker 1: with us today, our good friend and colleague, Jack O'Brien. Yeah, so,
0:37
Speaker 1: first of all, say hello Jack, Hi, guys, thanks for
0:40
Speaker 1: having me. Sure, as as a little means of set
0:43
Speaker 1: up here, we want to let everyone know what how
0:45
Speaker 1: this kind of came about. We are expanding our podcast network,
0:49
Speaker 1: which is great and fun and awesome for everyone here.
0:52
Speaker 1: And um, one of the super cool things that happened
0:56
Speaker 1: is is uh, our our boss or company owner said, hey,
1:01
Speaker 1: guess what we have just got Jack O'Brien away from
1:05
Speaker 1: Cracked dot com to come over to our network to
1:09
Speaker 1: kind of launch the comedy wing of our network. And um,
1:13
Speaker 1: I think that the people need to hear about your
1:15
Speaker 1: first efforts here a show that I think is great
1:19
Speaker 1: called and it's quite a challenge to but tell everyone
1:22
Speaker 1: about the Daily Zeitgeist. Right, So the Daily Zeitgeist is
1:26
Speaker 1: a daily news, uh pop culture podcast. Basically we're trying
1:33
Speaker 1: to uh get a take a sample of what's going
1:37
Speaker 1: on in the big kind of national cultural unconscious. So
1:43
Speaker 1: we talked about news, we talked about pop culture. Uh,
1:48
Speaker 1: we discussed things like that. We've look at tabloids because
1:54
Speaker 1: those are news sources that more Americans see than just
1:58
Speaker 1: about any others since everybody needs to buy milk. So yeah,
2:04
Speaker 1: that's that's the sort of stuff we look at as
2:07
Speaker 1: well as, you know, the actual news. And like Jack,
2:11
Speaker 1: you said something that I think probably past a few
2:14
Speaker 1: people by this is daily like Monday through Friday. You
2:18
Speaker 1: guys research and record and release a new podcast Monday
2:24
Speaker 1: through Friday. Right, that's what we do. It's actually been
2:28
Speaker 1: fun and I think we're kind of hitting our stride
2:30
Speaker 1: getting into a bit of a rhythm. But uh yeah,
2:34
Speaker 1: it's uh, it's just a lot of fun to kind
2:37
Speaker 1: of I get to read really interesting ideas and really
2:42
Speaker 1: interesting news articles and talk about them every day. So
2:45
Speaker 1: I couldn't ask for a more fun job. So, um,
2:49
Speaker 1: where can everybody find this? Jack? Where's the Daily Zeitgeist? Well,
2:54
Speaker 1: if you know how to spell zeitgeist. You can uh
2:58
Speaker 1: search the Daily Zeitguy on just about any podcasting application. Uh,
3:04
Speaker 1: I would recommend Apple podcasts. Uh, just the Daily and
3:09
Speaker 1: then type in Z and we should pop up and
3:12
Speaker 1: you you guys send a five dollar bill to each
3:15
Speaker 1: new subscriber for limited time, right, that's correct, every single
3:19
Speaker 1: one of them. Cool. Yeah, very limited time, very limited.
3:25
Speaker 1: We want to wish you an official welcome to the family.
3:27
Speaker 1: We you came to atlant and we hung out something
3:29
Speaker 1: and then we met briefly out in l A at
3:33
Speaker 1: that podcast conference. But it's just really awesome to have
3:36
Speaker 1: you guys aboard and I look forward to see what
3:38
Speaker 1: else comes out of the comedy Wing here. Appreciate I
3:41
Speaker 1: guess thanks for coming on, Jack, thanks for having me.
3:44
Speaker 1: Lifelong dream, long time listener, first time caller, see Jack.
3:49
Speaker 1: But all right, man, well let's get on with the episode. So, Chuck,
3:55
Speaker 1: have you ever like been to a restaurant and seen
3:57
Speaker 1: something that you weren't supposed to see and been like,
4:00
Speaker 1: I just ate here. I used to work at restaurants,
4:04
Speaker 1: as you know, and uh, you know, some of them
4:07
Speaker 1: are pretty gross. I worked at a couple of myself
4:10
Speaker 1: and I never saw anything that was like this is wrong,
4:13
Speaker 1: but it I realized over the years that that I'm
4:16
Speaker 1: in the minority in that sense. Dude. My first job
4:20
Speaker 1: as a as a bus boy, that was when I
4:23
Speaker 1: saw some of the most horrific things in my life,
4:26
Speaker 1: mainly because they had Oh man, it was the people
4:32
Speaker 1: that worked there. They were dirty folks. They were dirty folks,
4:36
Speaker 1: and they were just um. They were people that didn't
4:40
Speaker 1: care about their own personal health and hygiene or in
4:43
Speaker 1: any way. It was all gross, gross. Gross. I saw
4:48
Speaker 1: a guy one time, should I even say this, yes, please, dish,
4:53
Speaker 1: and you're talking about kids working in the kitchen that
4:55
Speaker 1: are gross, like drop high school dropouts, and hey, I'm
5:00
Speaker 1: not knocking you. If you dropped out of high school,
5:02
Speaker 1: go get that G E D and and keep at it.
5:04
Speaker 1: But these were not those people. They couldn't they couldn't
5:07
Speaker 1: even spell G E D. They're like, I didn't get
5:10
Speaker 1: my kid. Yeah, So these people, they were gross people.
5:14
Speaker 1: And I was thirteen and I couldn't speak up. I
5:16
Speaker 1: didn't know, like, I'm not gonna go to the owner
5:18
Speaker 1: of the restaurant at thirteen because he didn't care. But
5:21
Speaker 1: I saw one of these dishwashers go into a walk
5:24
Speaker 1: in cooler, and he was so mad about the schedule
5:27
Speaker 1: that they put him on. He took the lid off
5:32
Speaker 1: of a big, you know, fifteen gallon pot of Brunswick
5:37
Speaker 1: stew and he put his his shoed foot and leg
5:43
Speaker 1: into it all the way to the bottom and then
5:46
Speaker 1: took it back out. And let me tell you, man,
5:51
Speaker 1: those shoes. I've never had more disgusting clothing in my
5:54
Speaker 1: life than the clothes that I worked in at a
5:57
Speaker 1: barbecue restaurant. I know. They're like the whole reason box
6:00
Speaker 1: are in business is because it's the only thing that
6:02
Speaker 1: won't slide across the greasy during the floor of every
6:05
Speaker 1: single restaurant in every single city in the entire world.
6:08
Speaker 1: Everything about that job was disgusting. They would drop meat
6:11
Speaker 1: on the ground and say good catch and laugh and
6:14
Speaker 1: then pick it up off the floor. It was like
6:18
Speaker 1: it was like Upton Sinclair's uh the Jungle, the Jungle,
6:22
Speaker 1: like right before my little thirteen year old lines I
6:24
Speaker 1: grew up on that job. In many many ways, the
6:28
Speaker 1: only way that it could have been more like the
6:30
Speaker 1: Jungle is if somebody actually died in the Brunswick stew
6:34
Speaker 1: and they just kept him in there. It was so foul. Dude,
6:37
Speaker 1: that's growdy. Man. You don't even know what our restaurant
6:39
Speaker 1: inspection score was. I didn't even I saw nothing like
6:43
Speaker 1: that at the restaurants I worked out. I worked at
6:45
Speaker 1: a handful of them, nothing like that. Yeah, I worked
6:47
Speaker 1: at a bunch more and it was nothing like that.
6:49
Speaker 1: This was so that was the worst of the worst.
6:51
Speaker 1: Oh my god, they're all burning in hell now. So
6:56
Speaker 1: I drove by that place the other day on the
6:58
Speaker 1: way to Emily's parents and in a different route. And
7:00
Speaker 1: now it's like a cheat cheese a title max okay,
7:04
Speaker 1: which I don't even know what that is. You com
7:06
Speaker 1: pall in your car title there for extremely exorbitant interest rates.
7:10
Speaker 1: Got what were the ghosts of of redknecks passed dwell
7:14
Speaker 1: within those floors? Wow? Man, was the barbecue any good?
7:18
Speaker 1: I guess it's a moot point, right? I still ate there,
7:22
Speaker 1: Oh dude? After the shoe thing, Yeah, man, I didn't.
7:24
Speaker 1: I was a kid. I didn't know. I mean, I
7:25
Speaker 1: didn't have brunsicks due that day wherever. Again, I don't know.
7:31
Speaker 1: I just I didn't know any better. I was dumb.
7:34
Speaker 1: You ate the Brunswick stew checked in. I got a
7:36
Speaker 1: lot smarter after that. Well, um, again, I've never seen
7:42
Speaker 1: anything in person, but I have I've been on the
7:44
Speaker 1: internet and seeing things like that guy who pete in
7:47
Speaker 1: the coffee apparently every day, but I think that was
7:50
Speaker 1: at an office, not a restaurant. There's like this um
7:53
Speaker 1: laundry list of fingers being found in food. I saw
7:56
Speaker 1: an article I think on like MPR something and it
8:00
Speaker 1: was like just basically the top five times fingers were
8:04
Speaker 1: found in food at restaurants and it happens a lot. Yeah,
8:10
Speaker 1: just quickly, I should say that there. I feel bad
8:13
Speaker 1: for a restaurant owners sometimes, especially at places like that
8:16
Speaker 1: that it's not like some nice kind of place in town.
8:20
Speaker 1: You can do all you can do, but you still
8:22
Speaker 1: can't account for some little jerk employee that's mad about something,
8:29
Speaker 1: that wants to spit in someone's food on camera. You
8:33
Speaker 1: know you can't just you can't watch everyone the time.
8:38
Speaker 1: And that's usually what is a case like that, Like
8:41
Speaker 1: this dumb dishwasher kid, he just goes in the walk
8:44
Speaker 1: ins is watch this right, and there's there's I saw,
8:49
Speaker 1: um like there's a case to be made then for
8:52
Speaker 1: not hiring young people. Yeah, you hire people who have
8:56
Speaker 1: like built a a background for themselves, like a career
9:01
Speaker 1: for themselves. Alright, those are called good restaurants. That's the difference. Yeah,
9:05
Speaker 1: I guess that is the difference. So in a sense
9:07
Speaker 1: that it's very much the owner's fault for being a
9:09
Speaker 1: cheap bastard and hiring people who put their shoed foot
9:12
Speaker 1: in the Brunswick stew Um. Okay, So my point is this, chuck,
9:17
Speaker 1: that the shoed foot fingers in the and and at rbs,
9:22
Speaker 1: like all these little things that that are just horrible
9:27
Speaker 1: and horrific and disgusting would be vastly worse and vastly
9:33
Speaker 1: more frequent were it not for a lone group of people,
9:37
Speaker 1: the thin blue line between us and utter chaos when
9:42
Speaker 1: it comes to restaurants. The Health inspector, Yeah, this was
9:46
Speaker 1: I'm so excited about this episode. Yeah, it's gonna be
9:49
Speaker 1: a good one. Man, Like, I don't know when you
9:51
Speaker 1: send it over, I was like, all right, but then
9:53
Speaker 1: I started reading and it was interesting and awesome and
9:56
Speaker 1: there's history to it. Yeah, and one of these consumer
9:58
Speaker 1: advocacy shows that we loved to do. Uh, we're doing
10:02
Speaker 1: our little a rough nat or impression. Man, I love
10:05
Speaker 1: that guy. He's the tops. So restaurant health inspectors are
10:12
Speaker 1: something of a newish invention. They're certainly not really old, UM,
10:20
Speaker 1: because at least in the United States, it wasn't until
10:25
Speaker 1: that book you mentioned, The Jungle was published that people
10:31
Speaker 1: like really sat up and took notice, and Congress acted
10:34
Speaker 1: almost immediately past the Pure Food and Drug Act the
10:37
Speaker 1: next year. That's the impact that ups in Sinclair's The
10:40
Speaker 1: Jungle had, Yeah, rightfully so. And in the book, I mean,
10:44
Speaker 1: he went undercover. He was a muckraking journalists and God
10:48
Speaker 1: bless him, and he went undercovered to basically just take
10:52
Speaker 1: notes on all the horrible things he saw in the
10:54
Speaker 1: in the meatpacking industry and slaughter houses, and he chronicled
10:58
Speaker 1: all the inhumane things that he saw and the way
11:00
Speaker 1: the animals are treated. But he also saw that in
11:03
Speaker 1: humane ways the workers were treated. But this, his book
11:06
Speaker 1: had this impact and UM and Congress actually acted and
11:09
Speaker 1: they created the Pure Food and Drug Act. And one
11:12
Speaker 1: of the things that came out of that was UM
11:15
Speaker 1: what came to be known as the Food Code. And
11:18
Speaker 1: the Food Code is basically like, here are the things
11:20
Speaker 1: that you should be doing in your restaurant to prevent
11:23
Speaker 1: from running a foul of the law or um creating
11:28
Speaker 1: food borne illnesses. Yeah, and like previous to the states
11:31
Speaker 1: were kind of taking care of their own health issues
11:36
Speaker 1: as best they could on their own. But then when
11:39
Speaker 1: when that book came out, people were like, wait a minute,
11:42
Speaker 1: their shipping meat across state line. So the states aren't
11:46
Speaker 1: taking care of it themselves. This meat is going out everywhere. Uh.
11:50
Speaker 1: So it became a federal a federal thing to be regulated,
11:53
Speaker 1: and they made a federal case what they did, and
11:56
Speaker 1: along with the Pure Food and Drug Act, very importantly,
11:59
Speaker 1: the Federal Meetings Action Act was passed in that same year.
12:02
Speaker 1: And um, because I think everyone, I mean even back then,
12:05
Speaker 1: like if you're grossed out in six then, uh, they
12:10
Speaker 1: weren't as sensitive as we are today. So there was
12:12
Speaker 1: some gnarly stuff going on. Dude, a guy falling into
12:16
Speaker 1: like a hot dog grinder. Come on. So the food code, um,
12:21
Speaker 1: the early food code that is was was sort of
12:23
Speaker 1: the kind of the same stuff that we see today generally. Um,
12:27
Speaker 1: we have refined everything over the years with science as
12:30
Speaker 1: to what's truly dangerous and not and how it gets dangerous.
12:34
Speaker 1: But even back then they were concerned about like proper
12:38
Speaker 1: meat storage and food storage, and temperatures of things, and
12:42
Speaker 1: the hygiene of employees and and the premises themselves. Yeah,
12:46
Speaker 1: because you know, basically what constitutes good practices hasn't changed
12:52
Speaker 1: all that much. But to to respond to changes that
12:57
Speaker 1: do come about, um, that do change best practices or
13:01
Speaker 1: our understanding of the science of like food board, nillessis
13:04
Speaker 1: the the food Code was republished every year starting in
13:09
Speaker 1: every two years they updated it and republished it. Uh,
13:12
Speaker 1: and then in two thousand and one they moved it
13:14
Speaker 1: to four years. But that that to me is like that, friends,
13:19
Speaker 1: is the reason we pay taxes, so that there are
13:23
Speaker 1: people who are going around finding out the most cutting
13:26
Speaker 1: edge understanding of how we get sick from foods at restaurants,
13:31
Speaker 1: and then also finding out the exact ways to prevent
13:35
Speaker 1: this from happening, publishing it into a book, and distributing
13:38
Speaker 1: it to the states who then put it into practice.
13:41
Speaker 1: It takes money to do this kind of thing, but
13:43
Speaker 1: that's why we pay taxes. And the next time somebody
13:46
Speaker 1: tells you that they don't care about government regulations and
13:49
Speaker 1: that we live in a n any state. You remind
13:52
Speaker 1: them of what it would be like if they ate
13:54
Speaker 1: out at a restaurant without this kind of stuff. Those people,
13:59
Speaker 1: we don't need regulating stuff, all right, sir, Then you
14:02
Speaker 1: will be eating eyeball. Right, you'll be eating human eyeball
14:05
Speaker 1: in your next Frankfurter. I will feed it to you myself. Uh. So,
14:13
Speaker 1: the food Code today, just like the very first one
14:16
Speaker 1: back in UH, is voluntary. UM. It is not federal law.
14:22
Speaker 1: It is still up to those states to go out
14:24
Speaker 1: and write their own rules. It aligns generally with the
14:28
Speaker 1: federal regulations and what the FDA recommends. UH. And then
14:33
Speaker 1: it gets a little more confusing because when it comes
14:35
Speaker 1: down to actual restaurant inspections, there is no federal or
14:39
Speaker 1: state inspector that comes in there. It's the city or
14:42
Speaker 1: the county who's going to be carrying this out, and
14:45
Speaker 1: they work with the state and then in turn the
14:47
Speaker 1: federal government to kind of all be on the same page. Right. Yeah.
14:51
Speaker 1: I think it's almost kind of like the government's the
14:53
Speaker 1: one who has the funding to go actually look around
14:56
Speaker 1: and survey and find the science and put these best
14:59
Speaker 1: practices out. But it's the county or the city where
15:02
Speaker 1: the where the the rubber meets the road the shoe,
15:05
Speaker 1: the shoe meets the pavement, more like where the shoe
15:08
Speaker 1: meets the Brunswick stew. That's so right, and not the
15:12
Speaker 1: Brunswick stew. That's like one of the best things I
15:14
Speaker 1: had at Barbecuh. Let's take a break, shall we. I'm
15:19
Speaker 1: gonna go brush my tongue with a toothbrush, okay, and
15:22
Speaker 1: I'll be right back. All right, okay, and we're back
15:54
Speaker 1: and chuck. Let me smell your breath. How's that? Man?
15:57
Speaker 1: That's nice? Streen? Yeah, if I do detectives at Tom's
16:02
Speaker 1: toothpaste you used no, okay, what toothpaste do you use?
16:10
Speaker 1: I use Uh, I'm using Crest right now? Which one
16:14
Speaker 1: the orange one? No? Yeah? So the the the color
16:21
Speaker 1: of the packaging is orange. But the type of mint
16:25
Speaker 1: it's like called citrus mint. But you would never if
16:28
Speaker 1: you didn't see that, you wouldn't be like, oh, this
16:30
Speaker 1: is citrus mint. It's just its own type of very
16:33
Speaker 1: pleasant mint flavor sensation. Yeah. I just used the regular uh,
16:38
Speaker 1: not not the white, but I think it's like the
16:40
Speaker 1: blue crests right now. And pro health I think, yeah, yeah,
16:45
Speaker 1: pro health. And then a dude, use the listerine. Now.
16:48
Speaker 1: I've been on that for a solid couple of years
16:51
Speaker 1: because it's six and one six benefits in one. Why
16:55
Speaker 1: are we talking about this? I don't know. Man, we're
16:58
Speaker 1: not even getting paid for that. Maybe mine is Maybe
17:02
Speaker 1: mine is Aqua Fresh. It's either Aqua Fresh or Crest,
17:05
Speaker 1: which everyone makes. Citrus. Man, that's what I used. But
17:07
Speaker 1: do you remember aim? Oh? Yeah, what was that? So
17:10
Speaker 1: that stuff? I think it's still around. It actually doesn't
17:13
Speaker 1: do anything as far as brushing your teeth goes, as
17:16
Speaker 1: far as toothpaste goes. But remember it came out in
17:18
Speaker 1: three different colors like green, red, and white, and it
17:23
Speaker 1: was just pretty. But it's bad toothpaste. I don't I'm
17:27
Speaker 1: not a big fan of it, but I love looking
17:28
Speaker 1: at it. How about that? I remember that? All right?
17:31
Speaker 1: So back to food inspection, now that our mouths are clean. Uh.
17:36
Speaker 1: There are usually three kinds of food safety inspections. You
17:40
Speaker 1: got you got your rag. The one that's done in
17:43
Speaker 1: the rag, it's known as a routine inspection, and that's
17:46
Speaker 1: the one where they come in. Might be every six months,
17:49
Speaker 1: might be every year and a half or so, depending
17:51
Speaker 1: on some stuff. We'll get to here in a bit.
17:54
Speaker 1: And that's the one where you go in and you
17:55
Speaker 1: just see the thing on the wall that gives it
17:57
Speaker 1: the score. That's the one where you're working in the
17:59
Speaker 1: restaurant hunt and the and the owner and the manager
18:02
Speaker 1: freak out. They're like, oh God, no, no, they do
18:05
Speaker 1: the second they walked through the door. Although I will
18:08
Speaker 1: say in New Jersey, where I worked at the store
18:11
Speaker 1: in basking Ridge, New Jersey, we were always great and
18:14
Speaker 1: they took it really seriously. Every time the inspector came by,
18:17
Speaker 1: they were like, come on in, and that's the way
18:20
Speaker 1: it should be. A big shout out to the store
18:21
Speaker 1: in basking Ridge, New Jersey. Way to go to the store.
18:24
Speaker 1: That place is great and that's how. And they had
18:26
Speaker 1: a restaurant group and they have like six restaurants and
18:28
Speaker 1: they're all done the right way. I don't think you
18:30
Speaker 1: could really have a restaurant group without approaching food inspection
18:34
Speaker 1: and health standards in that way too. Yeah, I mean
18:37
Speaker 1: it's just dumb, not too and from what I saw too.
18:40
Speaker 1: Um we also kind of did you read that mental
18:42
Speaker 1: fass article I sent? Yeah, So one of the things
18:45
Speaker 1: it's called twelve Secrets of restaurant health inspectors. One of
18:48
Speaker 1: the things they point out is that usually the bigger
18:51
Speaker 1: the chain, So whether it's a restaurant group on up
18:54
Speaker 1: to a global chain like you know, like one of
18:57
Speaker 1: those guys oh wow cheeks, but um, you're probably going
19:03
Speaker 1: to see something close to a hundred every time. And
19:07
Speaker 1: the reason why is because they have a lot of
19:09
Speaker 1: skin in the game. They have a lot to lose,
19:11
Speaker 1: right if, like they pointed out with Chipotle, like there
19:14
Speaker 1: were one or two locations of Chipotle's where um that
19:18
Speaker 1: some bad cilanto got some people sick with the cool I,
19:22
Speaker 1: but all Chipotle suffered as a result of people just
19:25
Speaker 1: stopped going. They lost hundreds of millions of dollars and
19:28
Speaker 1: um came probably pretty close to to going under there
19:32
Speaker 1: for a little while. And I think they're still definitely
19:35
Speaker 1: calling their way out from under it. So they don't
19:37
Speaker 1: just rely on state, county, or city health inspectors. They
19:42
Speaker 1: do their own. They hire their own third parties to
19:44
Speaker 1: come in and and carry out health inspections much more
19:48
Speaker 1: frequently than the government's doing, just to make sure that
19:52
Speaker 1: they're up to standards. Yeah, so your your local fast
19:55
Speaker 1: food chain is more likely to be super clean than
19:58
Speaker 1: the mom and pop and in theory, but in my opinion,
20:02
Speaker 1: you're also more likely going to find the kid in
20:04
Speaker 1: the kitchen that goes, hey watch this. Yeah. Yeah, it's
20:07
Speaker 1: definitely trade off, and that's that's it. Yeah, because it's
20:09
Speaker 1: definitely not to say that, you know, mom and pop
20:11
Speaker 1: places are are inherently unstafe. If it's a family business,
20:16
Speaker 1: you're you have just as much skin in the game
20:18
Speaker 1: as a global global restaurant chain because this is your
20:22
Speaker 1: family's livelihood. So yeah, you're gonna take it seriously. So
20:25
Speaker 1: getting back. The other two types of inspections real quick,
20:28
Speaker 1: besides the routine are the follow up um investigation where
20:32
Speaker 1: they do say like, all right, you need to fix
20:34
Speaker 1: these things. I'll be back next Thursday, UM, or I'll
20:38
Speaker 1: be back tomorrow depending on what's going on, or I'll
20:41
Speaker 1: shut down your restaurant while you fix the stuff it's
20:44
Speaker 1: so bad. Uh. And then their inspections that are triggered
20:47
Speaker 1: by a consumer complaints. Yes, that's the one where they like, um,
20:52
Speaker 1: use the bat signal, but instead of a bad it's
20:54
Speaker 1: like a fork in the sky and then the restaurant
20:57
Speaker 1: inspector swoops in. It's like I'm here. I'm here. Everybod
21:00
Speaker 1: aretady calm down. Yeah. So I mentioned that people restaurants
21:03
Speaker 1: will be inspected maybe every six months, maybe every year
21:06
Speaker 1: a year and a half. They are. It's not willy nilly.
21:09
Speaker 1: They are assessed a risk factor as an establishment by
21:14
Speaker 1: the county or or the you know, whatever local municipality
21:17
Speaker 1: is carrying this out. And that has to do with
21:20
Speaker 1: a bunch of things. Um. Sometimes it's the kind of food.
21:24
Speaker 1: Like if you're serving sushi, you might get inspected a
21:27
Speaker 1: little more sushi shushi because you're serving raw fish. I
21:31
Speaker 1: didn't say sushi that done, shushi that done today. No, no,
21:33
Speaker 1: oh no, that's steep rule. Steep rule. I thought you.
21:39
Speaker 1: I thought it was my tooth. Um. Or if you're
21:43
Speaker 1: cooking meat or whatever, raw meat, you might get inspected
21:47
Speaker 1: a little more than a deli that just has you know,
21:50
Speaker 1: pre prepared meats and foods. Yeah like that. Those cold
21:54
Speaker 1: cuts are already cooked. It's not like you're they're serving
21:56
Speaker 1: you raw turkey slices like it's already cooked. They're just
21:59
Speaker 1: putting it together onto a sandwich. That's a low risk
22:03
Speaker 1: um restaurant comparatively speaking. Yeah, you know, always gets me,
22:06
Speaker 1: even though I love a euro is when I see
22:08
Speaker 1: the see the thing on the spit next to the
22:11
Speaker 1: heat lamp rotating around right, I always just think, how
22:15
Speaker 1: how safe is that? I would guess if it's operating
22:20
Speaker 1: in the United States? Safe safe enough. That's the whole
22:25
Speaker 1: point of restaurant inspectors, so that you don't have to
22:27
Speaker 1: ask that question. That you can look at that and say,
22:29
Speaker 1: somebody who knows what they're doing has inspected that and
22:32
Speaker 1: determined that that is not a threat to my health.
22:35
Speaker 1: Maybe it just creeps me out to look at it. No,
22:37
Speaker 1: I'm with you, I understand. I also want to say,
22:40
Speaker 1: there are some places where you go in and you're like,
22:43
Speaker 1: this is clearly in violation of some health codes. I
22:46
Speaker 1: have no idea how this place is allowed to stay
22:49
Speaker 1: like this, but it's still worth it. And I would
22:52
Speaker 1: direct you to Ann's, A's ghetto burger right by your house. Yeah,
22:57
Speaker 1: that's just down the street. Yes, have you have you
22:59
Speaker 1: had one? I've never had an ans because I thought
23:03
Speaker 1: that she left and it closed. But it's still going.
23:05
Speaker 1: Is she's still running it? You know? I don't know.
23:08
Speaker 1: She she had been threatening to like retire for twenty years.
23:12
Speaker 1: Or something. But I knew she wanted to get balled
23:14
Speaker 1: out and didn't want to just close it down, So
23:16
Speaker 1: hopefully she was able to retire. That's that's my hope.
23:20
Speaker 1: But is the Wall Street Journal said it was I
23:22
Speaker 1: think maybe the best hamburger in the United States? The
23:24
Speaker 1: Wall Street Journal ain't lyon. You know, yes, but if
23:28
Speaker 1: you go there, that's like decades worth of Greece just
23:33
Speaker 1: on the event around the or the backsplash, like the
23:36
Speaker 1: stainless steel backsplash or whatever splatter guard behind the griddle,
23:41
Speaker 1: and you're like, just how does she how did she
23:44
Speaker 1: get away with that? And then you take a bite
23:46
Speaker 1: of it, and you're like, oh, because it matters not
23:49
Speaker 1: at all compared to this burger. Uh, well, maybe she
23:53
Speaker 1: is compliant, because that is the second risk factor involved
23:56
Speaker 1: with how often you're gonna get inspected, which is it,
24:00
Speaker 1: do you have a list of complaints or a record
24:03
Speaker 1: of violations on your record, then you're gonna be on
24:06
Speaker 1: their frequent visitor list, right, you know? Yeah? Yeah, And
24:10
Speaker 1: especially if you've ever been the source of a food
24:13
Speaker 1: born illness, you're on your on your you're a high
24:16
Speaker 1: risk automatically probably permanently. Yeah, I would think so, and
24:20
Speaker 1: depending on where you are, you know, like you're gonna
24:22
Speaker 1: get lots of visits after that. Like that's probably aside
24:26
Speaker 1: from maybe people getting shot in your restaurant, a food
24:32
Speaker 1: boarding illness is probably the worst thing that can happen
24:34
Speaker 1: in your restaurant, I would guess, um, and you know,
24:38
Speaker 1: whether you're a new restaurant, well, if you're a new
24:43
Speaker 1: restaurant in particular, I should say I think the standard
24:46
Speaker 1: is is that depending on where you fall as far
24:49
Speaker 1: as what kind of restaurant you are, whether you're a
24:52
Speaker 1: deli serving cold cuts or a sushi place serving raw seafood,
24:56
Speaker 1: you're assigned like an initial risk assessment, and then depending
25:01
Speaker 1: on that risk assessment, if you're a sushi place, say
25:04
Speaker 1: they're gonna come visit every three months for the first year,
25:07
Speaker 1: or if you're a deli, they might come once every
25:11
Speaker 1: year and a half. And then depending on how you
25:15
Speaker 1: perform in those inspections, those regular routine inspections that are
25:20
Speaker 1: basically predetermined by the type of restaurant you are, that
25:23
Speaker 1: that schedule can either diminish or increase. So let's say
25:27
Speaker 1: that deli is found to be in violation pretty frequently
25:31
Speaker 1: every eighteen months, they're gonna start getting inspected every twelve
25:35
Speaker 1: months or every six months. Where that sushi place that's
25:37
Speaker 1: getting inspected every three months or six months. If if
25:40
Speaker 1: it's just painfully obvious that they are top notch pros
25:44
Speaker 1: who are taking this quite seriously and never get caught
25:47
Speaker 1: for anything, then that three or six months may end
25:49
Speaker 1: up turning into a year. Who knows. Yeah, you may
25:53
Speaker 1: have heard reports on the news too that UM food
25:57
Speaker 1: inspectors have racist policies where they will go after ethnic
26:01
Speaker 1: restaurants more often. No, I hadn't heard that, is that right? Yeah,
26:04
Speaker 1: I've seen I've seen reports on stuff like that that
26:07
Speaker 1: they get inspected more frequently if you're like, have an
26:10
Speaker 1: ethnic restaurant, that's pretty rotten. But there is a food
26:13
Speaker 1: safety expert at North Carolina State named Ben Chapman that
26:16
Speaker 1: says there's really no data to back that up. He said,
26:19
Speaker 1: but there could be biases through consumer complaint systems. Uh.
26:24
Speaker 1: And they did a sort of just a a snapshot
26:29
Speaker 1: from Yelp reviews, which say what you want about Yelp reviews,
26:33
Speaker 1: they're pretty much the worst thing ever, right, But if
26:38
Speaker 1: you look at Yelp reviews, you do a search for
26:41
Speaker 1: food poisoning, and close to seventy of the time they
26:44
Speaker 1: were ethnic restaurants where people complained about food poisoning. So
26:48
Speaker 1: I see, this food is weird. It is possible recognize
26:52
Speaker 1: it that some bias comes in through that. But that
26:55
Speaker 1: makes sense. Then chuck like if if if yelp is
26:58
Speaker 1: um a proxy for the number of times somebody might
27:03
Speaker 1: call in um a complaint. That's one of the ways
27:07
Speaker 1: that the food inspector goes out to inspect a restaurant
27:09
Speaker 1: is when somebody the public, said, you know, calls and
27:11
Speaker 1: says something or complaints. UM. So I mean that that
27:16
Speaker 1: makes utter, in complete sense. Um, have you ever called
27:20
Speaker 1: and complained about a restaurant? Have you ever called the
27:22
Speaker 1: health department? I never have either, and they're actually after
27:25
Speaker 1: researching this article, I was like, there, I can think
27:29
Speaker 1: of it. At least one time when I could have
27:31
Speaker 1: and should have called just got undercooked chicken and um,
27:36
Speaker 1: you mean I both got very sick for like the
27:38
Speaker 1: whole weekend, and I kept calling this place like like,
27:42
Speaker 1: what are you guys gonna do about? Is you have
27:43
Speaker 1: to do something? And um, they just got less and
27:47
Speaker 1: less interested the more frequently I called him by the
27:50
Speaker 1: by like the fourth or fifth time, was like, we're
27:53
Speaker 1: still suffering. I just wanted to let you know we're
27:55
Speaker 1: laying around throwing up. And they didn't do anything about it.
28:00
Speaker 1: There was no, um, we're sorry that that. I think
28:04
Speaker 1: they actually didn't believe me. Maybe, But now that I've
28:06
Speaker 1: read this, so I'm like, I totally should have called
28:08
Speaker 1: the health department on those guys. It was in Atlanta,
28:11
Speaker 1: I think I remember that. Actually we got so we
28:14
Speaker 1: were sick for an entire week, yes, right across from
28:20
Speaker 1: where we used to work actually, and they could not
28:24
Speaker 1: have cared less. And that's what ticked me off. Oh
28:26
Speaker 1: you were calling the restaurant over, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah,
28:29
Speaker 1: I thought you called the health inspector over. But now
28:31
Speaker 1: now I'm like, why wouldn't Why didn't we just call
28:34
Speaker 1: it health inspector? Now I would call for sure, now
28:36
Speaker 1: that I've done this research, because it's not like like
28:41
Speaker 1: what you're doing is helping other people from from the before,
28:44
Speaker 1: from the same fate befalling. Yeah, you're not being a rat, right,
28:49
Speaker 1: which is another thing that health inspectors look out for.
28:52
Speaker 1: All right, well let's talk about that. When you when
28:55
Speaker 1: this is how that this goes down. They're unannounced visits.
28:58
Speaker 1: Like I said, so I've worked at UM. I've worked
29:02
Speaker 1: it I don't know, like probably four or five places
29:05
Speaker 1: over the years, and two of them were pretty bad.
29:08
Speaker 1: The aforementioned barbecue place and then where I worked in
29:11
Speaker 1: college wasn't terrible, but it wasn't great. It was a
29:14
Speaker 1: typical like college town Mexican joint UM, but it wasn't
29:21
Speaker 1: like the super professional other restaurants that I've worked at.
29:23
Speaker 1: But in those first two places, I remember when the
29:27
Speaker 1: restaurant inspector walked through the door, a panic set in. UH.
29:31
Speaker 1: Invariably the one of the like the GM or whoever
29:34
Speaker 1: the manager was, would immediately confront UH in a nice
29:39
Speaker 1: not confront but greet the person and send you know,
29:43
Speaker 1: the understanding was someone go back to the kitchen and
29:46
Speaker 1: tell everyone that the inspector is here. And judging from
29:50
Speaker 1: that Mental Floss article you sent, that's exactly how it works.
29:54
Speaker 1: And for that reason, the very first thing a good
29:56
Speaker 1: health inspector does is kind of barged through there and
29:59
Speaker 1: say I'm going straight into the kitchen right the second right,
30:03
Speaker 1: because they know what's going on, right, that's they have
30:06
Speaker 1: to or else a whole bunch of violations get covered
30:09
Speaker 1: up really quickly, very quickly, And so in that mental
30:12
Speaker 1: Flass article, basically they said they needed to do like
30:15
Speaker 1: a a brisk like run walk through the kitchen as
30:19
Speaker 1: fast as they could. But it's also you you scals,
30:25
Speaker 1: like what do you do and like just stand there
30:27
Speaker 1: and freeze. That's what they should do, is be like
30:29
Speaker 1: everybody phrase and then like have their finger and thumb
30:32
Speaker 1: in the shape of a gun because I don't think
30:35
Speaker 1: they're allowed to actually carry guns. Well, this one health
30:37
Speaker 1: inspector in the Mental Flass things said, we want to
30:39
Speaker 1: see the things that won't be there in another three
30:42
Speaker 1: to four minutes. But that's the thing. But I mean
30:46
Speaker 1: it could be anything like there's there's like, um, if
30:49
Speaker 1: you are sitting there making food and you have like
30:53
Speaker 1: a cup of coke, right, you're not supposed to have
30:57
Speaker 1: that there or in your cell phone in the kitchen.
31:00
Speaker 1: It's another big one. I'll bet that is probably the
31:02
Speaker 1: most frequent violation today. They're covered in poop. Do you
31:07
Speaker 1: ever see something like if I have you ever just
31:09
Speaker 1: stopped and looked at people on the street like with
31:11
Speaker 1: their phones, like they'll just be stopped mid something like
31:15
Speaker 1: they have like a shovel like propped up against their
31:18
Speaker 1: their shoulder, just looking at their phone with their mouth
31:20
Speaker 1: hanging open, and it's like crazy, we're turning into like
31:23
Speaker 1: a society of zombies. Man, how do you stare at
31:26
Speaker 1: your phone? I've seen you do that. You do it
31:28
Speaker 1: in a smarter looking like I do the thing where
31:30
Speaker 1: I'm like stroking my chin thoughtfully. I've got like one
31:36
Speaker 1: eyebrow arch Alright, So the first thing they inspect, obviously
31:40
Speaker 1: the kitchen. The the manager or the owner or whoever
31:43
Speaker 1: is there on point is with the inspector the whole time,
31:47
Speaker 1: because they're saying like hey, like little things like that
31:51
Speaker 1: catchup bottles disgusting, Like why don't you go ahead and
31:53
Speaker 1: have someone clean it up? And I won't dock your point,
31:56
Speaker 1: but just get it clean. And the guy wipes it
31:58
Speaker 1: down and he's like, no, that brand. It's so we
32:00
Speaker 1: get some hinds in heresgusting. But the first thing they
32:04
Speaker 1: inspect or the dynamic areas, which are the kitchen food
32:07
Speaker 1: preparation areas. UM basically anywhere where there's food actively out
32:15
Speaker 1: is the first place they'll go, right, That's that's the
32:19
Speaker 1: static area dynamics. The dynamic okay, and then you start
32:23
Speaker 1: with the hundred points. By the way, I don't know
32:24
Speaker 1: if we mentioned that, which I think is kind of optimistic.
32:27
Speaker 1: It's saying like, I want to believe the best in you.
32:30
Speaker 1: So everybody starts with a hundred and then we start
32:33
Speaker 1: deducting from there. Yeah, then it just gets sad. So Um.
32:37
Speaker 1: One of the first things they're looking for is employee
32:40
Speaker 1: hygiene because remember what you mentioned, like way back and
32:43
Speaker 1: when the Food and Drug Act was created, the Food
32:45
Speaker 1: Code was first established. Um, there were a lot of
32:49
Speaker 1: basic tenants that were put forth back then, and one
32:51
Speaker 1: of them was, you're the people who cook the food
32:54
Speaker 1: need to be clean as a whistle. And that's one
32:57
Speaker 1: of the big things that the health inspectors looking for,
32:59
Speaker 1: like are they wearing gloves, which, by the way, is
33:02
Speaker 1: not to say that if an employees wearing gloves that
33:05
Speaker 1: you're totally covered. Um, the gloves are supposed to be
33:09
Speaker 1: a fail safe to good hand washing, So you want
33:13
Speaker 1: them to be washing their hands very frequently and then
33:15
Speaker 1: wearing gloves on top of that, but then on top
33:17
Speaker 1: of that not doing things like like using their cell
33:21
Speaker 1: phone with the gloves on because you've just automatically contaminated
33:25
Speaker 1: them and totally defeated the purpose of using gloves at
33:28
Speaker 1: that point. Right, So there's a lot of hygiene things
33:31
Speaker 1: that are are being taken into account. But how do
33:34
Speaker 1: you how do you tell whether people are washing their
33:38
Speaker 1: hands when you're just walking into a kitchen. Of course
33:41
Speaker 1: they're going to wash their hands in front of you
33:43
Speaker 1: and the way that they're supposed to be, but how
33:44
Speaker 1: do you know they're doing it routinely? Chuck? Well, yeah,
33:48
Speaker 1: and we should say that there is a way you're
33:49
Speaker 1: supposed to wash the hands. You don't rinse them off
33:52
Speaker 1: and just dry them with the towel that's sitting by
33:54
Speaker 1: the sink or just below on them. You rents, You
33:57
Speaker 1: put on the soap, you scrub for twenty seconds, then
34:00
Speaker 1: you dry off with a one use towel and good old,
34:04
Speaker 1: unsustainable made out of tree paper towel. Uh yeah, Or
34:09
Speaker 1: if you're a really fancy restaurant, you can just have
34:10
Speaker 1: like cashmere towels laying around as long as you faw
34:13
Speaker 1: them away afterwards. Right, you have to go away. But
34:16
Speaker 1: you're a little trick. I know where you were leading.
34:18
Speaker 1: How you can tell is this one very crafty restaurant
34:21
Speaker 1: inspector in the middle Flass article said, they go in
34:24
Speaker 1: the first thing they do because it takes them a
34:26
Speaker 1: couple of hours at a just sort of a normal
34:28
Speaker 1: size restaurant, um, four or five hours at a big
34:31
Speaker 1: hotel restaurant. He said, he puts an X on the
34:35
Speaker 1: paper towels, and if he goes back at the end
34:38
Speaker 1: of his inspection and that X is still in the
34:41
Speaker 1: paper towel, then he knows hands are not being washed. Right,
34:45
Speaker 1: very sneaking, pretty clever. Yeah, uh so, I guess we
34:49
Speaker 1: just gave it away though, So now all the people
34:51
Speaker 1: are going to go check their paper towel rolls. There
34:53
Speaker 1: are other ways. Um, yeah, that was just a setup
34:56
Speaker 1: to nudge them into the actual way he's telling, like
35:00
Speaker 1: wash your hands. Um. Food is another big one too, Right.
35:03
Speaker 1: You want to make sure that the food is being
35:05
Speaker 1: properly stored and properly cooked. And apparently there is a
35:09
Speaker 1: danger zone um between I think like zero and a
35:14
Speaker 1: hundred and forty that you want to hit or that
35:18
Speaker 1: you want to stay outside of. So basically you want
35:21
Speaker 1: your food, especially like um, raw meat, to be stored
35:26
Speaker 1: at a temperature frozen, right or else kept at forty
35:30
Speaker 1: degrees fairheight four degrees celsius or below for fridges. Um,
35:34
Speaker 1: And then when you cook it, you have to cook
35:36
Speaker 1: it to at least a hundred and sixty degrees internal
35:38
Speaker 1: temperature for beef, pork, all those guys, and then a
35:42
Speaker 1: hundred forty five for fish. And if a restaurant is
35:44
Speaker 1: not doing that, that's a big that's a big one,
35:47
Speaker 1: as we'll see. Yeah, I mean, the best way to
35:49
Speaker 1: think about food storage is without getting into the specific temperatures.
35:54
Speaker 1: Is if it's supposed to be cold or frozen, it
35:57
Speaker 1: should be cold or frozen. If it's supposed to be
36:00
Speaker 1: it should be hot. Is that middle ground is where
36:03
Speaker 1: you're in big trouble exactly. They talked about lukewarm being
36:07
Speaker 1: the big enemy, right, not not that's never good lukewarm.
36:12
Speaker 1: I'm trying to think of a time when lukewarm is
36:14
Speaker 1: preferable with anything. Um, it just sounds gross. I like
36:20
Speaker 1: my food really hot too. Yeah. Like, that's the one
36:23
Speaker 1: thing I will send something back is if it's was
36:26
Speaker 1: clearly made a little earlier than the rest of the
36:29
Speaker 1: party at the table and it's sort of lukewarm, I
36:31
Speaker 1: might no, man, I want I want steam coming off
36:34
Speaker 1: this thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah they do, and then they're like, oh,
36:38
Speaker 1: I guess you want a little spit on that too.
36:41
Speaker 1: Apparently soup should be uh Like, the way you reheat
36:45
Speaker 1: things is a big deal because obviously that Brunswick sto.
36:48
Speaker 1: You don't just throw it out every night. You put
36:50
Speaker 1: it back in the walk in so some jerk can
36:52
Speaker 1: step in it. But when you bring soups and brawls
36:56
Speaker 1: back uh to heat, you have to reboil them entirely
37:01
Speaker 1: right from their refrigerated state, which makes sense, but that's
37:05
Speaker 1: never very good for um food. If it's already prepared
37:09
Speaker 1: once you reboil it, that's that's probably you're just gonna
37:13
Speaker 1: want to throw that away then, yeah, man, it toughens
37:17
Speaker 1: everything up, or else it overcooks it. It's already been
37:19
Speaker 1: cooked once, so when you bring it to a boil,
37:21
Speaker 1: you're really cooking it again. And for food boorn illnesses,
37:25
Speaker 1: that's a good way to treat it, but it doesn't
37:27
Speaker 1: necessarily make for the most appetizing food. All Right. I
37:31
Speaker 1: don't know if I agree with that, but that's all right,
37:32
Speaker 1: that's what I'm going with. Uh, frozen meat, you don't
37:35
Speaker 1: just say, hey, Jimmy, throw that frozen bird out on
37:40
Speaker 1: the table and leave it there until this evening. Right.
37:43
Speaker 1: But you don't just leave food out to thaw there.
37:45
Speaker 1: There are proper ways of following and bringing things back
37:48
Speaker 1: to the correct temperature. Right. And then so let's say
37:51
Speaker 1: you have a place where you're cutting up that thowed
37:54
Speaker 1: chicken that was properly thought um, and then you set
37:58
Speaker 1: the knife down and somebody else picks it up and
38:00
Speaker 1: they start cutting lettuce with it. That's cross contamination. That
38:04
Speaker 1: is extremely dangerous because as you know, very few people
38:08
Speaker 1: cook their lettuce before they eat it in a salad.
38:11
Speaker 1: It's raw and so now it has raw chicken juice
38:14
Speaker 1: on the lettuce that you're eating raw and uncooked, and
38:16
Speaker 1: you can die from that. UM. So cross contamination is
38:19
Speaker 1: a big one they look for. They also UM it
38:22
Speaker 1: can be a little more simple, like with something like
38:25
Speaker 1: UM silverware. From what I saw, if the silverware is
38:28
Speaker 1: dirty or smudgy, UM, that is a big problem because
38:33
Speaker 1: that means usually that the whole kitchen is dirty. There's
38:37
Speaker 1: a lot of that's like a big red flag that UM.
38:39
Speaker 1: Apparently health health inspectors will will tell you that if
38:43
Speaker 1: the silver ware is dirty. It usually is indicative of
38:45
Speaker 1: just a dirty restaurant in general. Um. And I've always
38:49
Speaker 1: heard I don't know if it's an urban legend or not,
38:52
Speaker 1: but uh, you know, like the just the plastic soda
38:56
Speaker 1: cups that like a lot of restaurants will have. Um,
39:00
Speaker 1: have you ever heard that it's not possible for them
39:04
Speaker 1: to get to the temperature needed to kill any bacteria
39:08
Speaker 1: on them, because they'll melt otherwise, so that when you
39:12
Speaker 1: drink out of them, they've not really been sanitized from before.
39:17
Speaker 1: I have not heard that. But as as someone who
39:19
Speaker 1: has worked as a dishwasher, you don't say, well, I'm
39:22
Speaker 1: going to watch these things that this temperature you just
39:25
Speaker 1: throw everything through there. Yeah, you don't have any choice
39:28
Speaker 1: in what temperatures. It's all prescribed for you. You're just
39:30
Speaker 1: basically putting them on the tray and sliding them through,
39:32
Speaker 1: pulling the door down, and then it washes them and
39:34
Speaker 1: you lift the door up and pull them out. Yes,
39:37
Speaker 1: and I will say one of my dreams that is
39:38
Speaker 1: to have one of those in my home. Those I
39:40
Speaker 1: can't remember what they're called, but they're wonderful. It's pretty great. Yeah,
39:44
Speaker 1: it just watches everything like super fast. So that's the
39:47
Speaker 1: dynamic areas, right. There's also the static areas, where it's
39:51
Speaker 1: things like, um, well, the dish washing area actually apparently
39:54
Speaker 1: is a static area doesn't change very much. Um where
39:57
Speaker 1: you store cleaning products that kind of stuff. I guess
40:01
Speaker 1: you get points deducted if you're cleaning products or your
40:04
Speaker 1: toxic chemicals are not in there marked original package, because
40:10
Speaker 1: you could they can be mistaken for oil and vinegar
40:12
Speaker 1: or something like that. Yeah, and they're gonna check. The
40:15
Speaker 1: static areas include a lot of things that you don't
40:18
Speaker 1: think would even fall into the purview of a restaurant inspector.
40:21
Speaker 1: They're gonna look at your HVAC systems and your bents
40:24
Speaker 1: and your smoke detectors. Uh, they're gonna look at your
40:27
Speaker 1: dining room and the floors and the ceilings, and your
40:29
Speaker 1: ceiling vans and your dumpster behind and then your grease trap.
40:34
Speaker 1: Like they look at everything, right, which is good. And
40:37
Speaker 1: another one that they take a look at that I
40:39
Speaker 1: think is probably a big problem for restaurants in a
40:42
Speaker 1: lot of ways are ice machines. Um. The there's a
40:46
Speaker 1: lot of parts to ice machines that are out of view.
40:49
Speaker 1: This thing scared me in mental flaws. Now that can
40:52
Speaker 1: like grow mold pretty easy, and not just the ice
40:56
Speaker 1: machine right where they're like scooping ice out, which is
40:58
Speaker 1: another thing too, Like there better be an ice scoop right, Um,
41:03
Speaker 1: it can grow mold in the ice machine. But also
41:06
Speaker 1: those shoots where ice comes out of like a like
41:09
Speaker 1: a beverage dispenser, those are usually serviced by the company
41:14
Speaker 1: that that makes the beverages that it's dispensing, and so
41:18
Speaker 1: it would be up to that company to clean those out,
41:20
Speaker 1: which means that they get even less attention than the
41:23
Speaker 1: rest of the restaurant. So the next time you're getting
41:26
Speaker 1: like ice out of beverage dispenser, like get your flashlight
41:29
Speaker 1: out of your pocket and look up there, uh and
41:32
Speaker 1: see if you see any mold and then just raise
41:35
Speaker 1: holy hell if you do. Yeah. And I'm not a
41:37
Speaker 1: big fan of the serve yourself soft drink stations anyway,
41:42
Speaker 1: for you know, out there with the public. I don't
41:43
Speaker 1: think the public should ever have access to something. That's why,
41:48
Speaker 1: well that's not the reason, but buffets are just so
41:51
Speaker 1: gross and creepy. I haven't been to a buffet, and
41:53
Speaker 1: good lord, I don't know twenty years, but you should
41:57
Speaker 1: the thought of a buffet. I know they have the
41:58
Speaker 1: sneeze guard, but uh, people like scooping in and serving
42:03
Speaker 1: themselves their own food from a drough is so weird
42:07
Speaker 1: and gross an archaic that I can't believe people still
42:11
Speaker 1: do that. Well. I mean also, like even if you're
42:13
Speaker 1: using like a spoon, like a serving spoon to scoop
42:18
Speaker 1: something out, so did the person before you, right, And
42:22
Speaker 1: that means you're touching the safe serving spoon and then
42:24
Speaker 1: going back and using your hands to go eat. So
42:27
Speaker 1: you just touched whatever the other person had on their hands,
42:30
Speaker 1: and now you're coming in contact with your mouth. It's
42:32
Speaker 1: a flawed system, for sure. It is, because what you're
42:35
Speaker 1: saying is, I'm going to count on the three hundred
42:39
Speaker 1: people that have eaten here today before me are all
42:42
Speaker 1: completely hygienic. All their hands have been washed. Yeah, Timothy,
42:47
Speaker 1: poop hands isn't among them. No one did a single
42:49
Speaker 1: gross thing, like if a tater tot fell off the spoon,
42:53
Speaker 1: flicked it back in with their finger, Like, no one
42:56
Speaker 1: did anything wrong at all. I I just no way,
43:01
Speaker 1: not even like whole foods or someplace. Those are all
43:03
Speaker 1: gross to me. Oh yeah, whole foods would count with
43:07
Speaker 1: that too. Huh, Although I do like a build your
43:08
Speaker 1: own salad thing every once in a while. That's the
43:10
Speaker 1: exception good salad bar. Yeah, it's tough to turn down.
43:14
Speaker 1: I'm with. Well, let's take a break, think a little
43:17
Speaker 1: more about salads, and we'll be right back. All right,
43:49
Speaker 1: we're back, Charles. Let's talk about point deductions. A. Yes,
43:53
Speaker 1: let's remember we said that restaurant inspectors are very optimistic
43:57
Speaker 1: and they start out with a hundred. It just goes
44:00
Speaker 1: down from there. And again, you know, since these are
44:03
Speaker 1: done like city by city or county by county, like
44:06
Speaker 1: everybody has like their own methods or whatever. But usually,
44:09
Speaker 1: and I think the f d a UM has pointed out,
44:13
Speaker 1: like there are five things that you're really looking for,
44:15
Speaker 1: like five general categories UM improper UM storage of food
44:23
Speaker 1: as far as temperature goes, inadequately cooked food, UM, equipment
44:28
Speaker 1: that's contaminated, sources that are unsafe, uh, that are an
44:34
Speaker 1: unsafe supply of the ingredients, right, so like if it
44:37
Speaker 1: turns out like the goat is coming from their buddies farm,
44:41
Speaker 1: that might be a problem. And then personal hygiene of
44:44
Speaker 1: the people who work there, right, And so depending on
44:48
Speaker 1: some of those, especially if there's multiple ones of these,
44:51
Speaker 1: these are big ones, um, they will probably be a
44:55
Speaker 1: high priority type one or critical violation any of those. Yes,
45:01
Speaker 1: And then there's also other ones where like this is
45:03
Speaker 1: not that big of a deal, but it's definitely something
45:05
Speaker 1: that needs to be paid attention to. Those fall after
45:08
Speaker 1: those usually and it can be anything from like a
45:10
Speaker 1: dentic can that could conceivably contain botuli is um but
45:14
Speaker 1: definitely hasn't been proven to contain botulism being thrown away,
45:17
Speaker 1: to um, there being a hole in the screen door
45:20
Speaker 1: that's left open for some reason. Yeah, and these uh.
45:24
Speaker 1: As far as deducting individual points that you'll see on
45:26
Speaker 1: the wall when you walk in and if you don't
45:29
Speaker 1: look at that piece of paper when you walk into
45:31
Speaker 1: a restaurant, I don't know what's going on in your brain.
45:33
Speaker 1: You should always do that. Um. But like a static
45:36
Speaker 1: violation like hey, there were some chairs that had bad legs,
45:40
Speaker 1: your ceiling fan was pretty dusty, those will be like
45:42
Speaker 1: a point each, maybe a couple of points for a
45:45
Speaker 1: minor infraction like you're cleaning product, like I found a roach,
45:50
Speaker 1: you know, the the chef has a cell phone in
45:52
Speaker 1: the kitchen. That's a couple of points all the way
45:55
Speaker 1: up to four and five points, and those that's when
45:57
Speaker 1: you're talking about your your fridge is broken and it
46:01
Speaker 1: is not up to temperature, and everything in there is
46:04
Speaker 1: at risk, and that's when they can actually shut you
46:06
Speaker 1: down until you get it fixed. Yeah, which I got
46:09
Speaker 1: the impression from this article that that is it's a
46:12
Speaker 1: rarity that the health inspector wants to air on the
46:16
Speaker 1: side of the restaurant staying open and solving everything as
46:20
Speaker 1: quickly as it can, while also it's business not suffering unnecessarily,
46:25
Speaker 1: so if you're if your restaurant gets shut down temporarily,
46:28
Speaker 1: like that violation was significant enough that that people were
46:33
Speaker 1: at an immediate risk of getting sick from visiting your restaurant, exactly. Yeah,
46:37
Speaker 1: it's a big deal. In other words, as it's as
46:39
Speaker 1: big a deal as you would think. Yeah, but with
46:42
Speaker 1: those point deductions, if you go in and you see
46:44
Speaker 1: like a seventy two on a restaurant score sheet, it's
46:49
Speaker 1: probably not twenty eight individual small violations, right. There are
46:54
Speaker 1: probably some four and five pointers in there, and you
46:57
Speaker 1: should probably think about eating there or you know it
47:01
Speaker 1: says in the art in this article. You can go
47:03
Speaker 1: to the website and really break down because those aren't
47:05
Speaker 1: for the public to necessarily be able to digest easily.
47:08
Speaker 1: But um, if you do look at them, if you
47:10
Speaker 1: can get close to them, you can actually look and
47:13
Speaker 1: see the little category for each thing. Um. Sometimes behind
47:18
Speaker 1: the register they may not like you poking around. Well,
47:20
Speaker 1: the health health departments usually put them on the web
47:25
Speaker 1: these days. Yeah, that's I'll saying, Like, you can investigate online,
47:29
Speaker 1: but in the restaurant itself, it is marked. It's you know,
47:31
Speaker 1: a bunch of tiny little letters and categories, and you
47:35
Speaker 1: can give it a look. And uh, you know, as
47:37
Speaker 1: long as I wouldn't spend too much time there, like,
47:41
Speaker 1: just go by that initial score. And if you're really like, yeah,
47:44
Speaker 1: I gotta see what those eighteen points were deducted for,
47:47
Speaker 1: I would just turn around and walk out, right, especially
47:50
Speaker 1: if there's an identical place, like right across the street. Um.
47:54
Speaker 1: But that is a pretty good point because when you
47:57
Speaker 1: think about it, most people just see that score prominently displayed,
48:01
Speaker 1: whether it's like an A or a B or a C,
48:03
Speaker 1: or like a eighty five or a ninety eight or whatever. Um.
48:08
Speaker 1: And it's not really meant to be shorthand for the public.
48:13
Speaker 1: It's I mean, I guess it isn't a way where
48:16
Speaker 1: it's like, hey, buddy, you're you're really taking a gamble
48:19
Speaker 1: here at like seventy um. But when it's really high up,
48:24
Speaker 1: it does seem to be kind of an indicator like
48:26
Speaker 1: this one's a okay. In my book, that's not really
48:29
Speaker 1: what the restaurant uh inspection report is supposed to be.
48:33
Speaker 1: It's supposed to be a lot more granular than that.
48:37
Speaker 1: And so to really tell whether you're running a risk
48:39
Speaker 1: at eating in a restaurant or not, you actually do
48:41
Speaker 1: have to go to the trouble of looking up what
48:43
Speaker 1: the violations were and then even then judging for yourself,
48:47
Speaker 1: because short of the health inspector deciding to shut the
48:51
Speaker 1: restaurant down and making the decision for you that you
48:53
Speaker 1: can't go there, they're not they're not saying like don't
48:57
Speaker 1: eat here. Like if it passes, if it passes inspection
49:01
Speaker 1: enough to stay open, then as far as the county
49:04
Speaker 1: Health Department is concerned, it's good enough for you to
49:07
Speaker 1: be eating there. But that might not really jibe with
49:09
Speaker 1: your own definition. So to get that that information. You
49:12
Speaker 1: have to go find out what they're why points were deducted. Yeah,
49:16
Speaker 1: and you can't. Uh, it's either the mental plus or
49:18
Speaker 1: our own article point out that just because someplace has
49:21
Speaker 1: a bad rating doesn't mean they haven't fixed things and
49:26
Speaker 1: it's fine now. And just because as a great rating
49:29
Speaker 1: doesn't mean they're not in violation that day. There. These
49:32
Speaker 1: inspectors come every six months to a year for a
49:35
Speaker 1: couple of hours during a lunch shift, and it is
49:38
Speaker 1: a snapshot of what occurred on that day. Right, So
49:41
Speaker 1: there's no like fail safe for a consumer. You just
49:44
Speaker 1: gotta you know, did the best you can, cross your fingers.
49:48
Speaker 1: You just roll the dice and everything's okay in there,
49:50
Speaker 1: or just cook at home and boil everything including your
49:53
Speaker 1: lettuce boiled lettuce delicious. What oh, I didn't know if
49:59
Speaker 1: I was missing on and then you got anything else
50:02
Speaker 1: on restaurant inspections. Um. Just this one more little tidbit
50:06
Speaker 1: from Mental Floss that I thought it was pretty great
50:11
Speaker 1: is that this one restaurant inspector said that he can
50:15
Speaker 1: smell cockroaches in the air at this point. Yeah, that's
50:19
Speaker 1: a real problem with cockroaches, though, don't you think to
50:22
Speaker 1: be able to smell. I guess it'd be an infestation,
50:25
Speaker 1: is what he's He said, you can walk in, take
50:28
Speaker 1: a deep breath, and he said it's kind of a nutty,
50:30
Speaker 1: oily smell that you after years on the job, I
50:33
Speaker 1: can identify it. It's like I still get hungry every
50:37
Speaker 1: time I smell it. I got a lot of roaches
50:39
Speaker 1: in my house right now, and it's really pissing me off.
50:43
Speaker 1: A clean house. You know, it's not gross, it's just
50:47
Speaker 1: this summer was just real, kind of muggy and dank.
50:51
Speaker 1: And do you have a lot of cardboard boxes in
50:53
Speaker 1: your attic or basement? No? I don't know where they're
50:56
Speaker 1: coming from, Like we see him outside all over the place,
50:58
Speaker 1: so I don't. Maybe it's at Swale Pond from Perman
51:03
Speaker 1: Culture episode. Maybe. Yeah. The Perman Culture lady was like,
51:07
Speaker 1: I forgot to tell you you're gonna have roaches. It's
51:09
Speaker 1: the only new thing, right, I don't know. Man, good
51:14
Speaker 1: good luck and god speed, though, go find the most
51:16
Speaker 1: sustainable way to treat it. I'll be interested to hear
51:18
Speaker 1: you come up with. Well, so far it's been the
51:20
Speaker 1: flip flap method. Oh poor roaches. No. Uh, If you
51:25
Speaker 1: want to know more about cockroaches or restaurant health inspections
51:28
Speaker 1: or flip flops. You can type those words in the
51:30
Speaker 1: search bar a house of works dot com. And I
51:32
Speaker 1: said that, which means it's time for listener mail. All right,
51:37
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this a great, gross way to finish
51:39
Speaker 1: this gross ish podcast. Excellent. Hey, guys, wanted to regale
51:43
Speaker 1: you with the story of how you two contributed. My
51:45
Speaker 1: fantastic relationship my wonderful girlfriend last summer and follows traveling
51:49
Speaker 1: across the country, camping, going to national parks, and I
51:52
Speaker 1: wound up in moab Utah at canyon lands and arches
51:55
Speaker 1: and met a smart, fun girl at a brewery and
51:58
Speaker 1: we made a date to go hiking. The next day,
52:01
Speaker 1: I picked her up and we went on a wonderful
52:02
Speaker 1: little hike and disaster struck. It turns out months of
52:06
Speaker 1: cheddar brought worst and beer wasn't great for my digestive system,
52:10
Speaker 1: and I felt horrible, and I had an inescapable urge
52:13
Speaker 1: to take the Browns to the Super Bowl. Unfortunately, I
52:17
Speaker 1: was miles away from a leif and I ran out
52:19
Speaker 1: of excuses to keep stopping and standing still for a moment. Hey,
52:23
Speaker 1: look at that arch again. Oh uh, so I had
52:27
Speaker 1: to tell her the horrible truth on our first date,
52:28
Speaker 1: and I was sure it would ruin it. Eventually, I
52:31
Speaker 1: made my way to a bathroom, shoved some poor people aside,
52:34
Speaker 1: and uh safely made it back to town. But I
52:38
Speaker 1: was horribly embarrassed and sure I had ruined everything. On
52:41
Speaker 1: the way back to town, she asked if she could
52:43
Speaker 1: put a podcast on, and she played me your episode
52:45
Speaker 1: about poop. No nice, how about that? She's got a
52:49
Speaker 1: good sense of human great sense of humor. I've never
52:51
Speaker 1: been as happy to hear two men describing fecal matter.
52:54
Speaker 1: At that point, I knew anyone could spend a date
52:56
Speaker 1: almost pooping in their pants into an excuse to share
52:58
Speaker 1: their podcasts favorite As a keeper, we've been together over
53:02
Speaker 1: a year now. We love listening to your new episodes
53:04
Speaker 1: while we hike in camp and uh and poop. I
53:08
Speaker 1: guess they've got to remember the love seat that Saturday
53:10
Speaker 1: Night Live commercial. It was like the two toilets facing
53:13
Speaker 1: each other's You could hold hands while you poop. Exactly.
53:17
Speaker 1: I couldn't be happy to find a new favorite thing
53:18
Speaker 1: to listen to and a wonderful new girlfriend at the
53:20
Speaker 1: same time. So I want to thank you guys if
53:22
Speaker 1: you ever get back to Denver, maybe next year. We
53:24
Speaker 1: don't know yet. UM I'll be buying tickets as soon
53:27
Speaker 1: as I hear the announcement. That is from Tom, and
53:30
Speaker 1: he said, if you do read this in the air,
53:32
Speaker 1: please give a shout out to Alice. Nice Tom and Alice. Yeah,
53:36
Speaker 1: way to go kids. Uh, thanks for writing in Tom
53:40
Speaker 1: nice story. Uh. If you want to get in touch
53:43
Speaker 1: with this like Tom did, you can tweet to us
53:45
Speaker 1: at s y s K podcast, join us on Facebook,
53:47
Speaker 1: dot com, slash stuff you Should Know, send us an
53:50
Speaker 1: email to Stuff Podcast the house. Stuff works dot com
53:53
Speaker 1: and has always joined us at our home on the web,
53:55
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know dot com. For more on this
54:01
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff Works dot com.
54:11
Speaker 1: M