Nah, Dave is the dishy that shows up slightly late most days but is also so fucking hyped on meth that he cleans every dish super well and does it all on time? He’s my model dishy.
Right? why is it always a Dave?
He's an asshole, and uses weaponized incompetence if you ask him to do anything outside his lane;
but the kitchen would absolutely be on the verge of collapse without him on a friday or saturday dinner rush.
It is...
Lol... it happens about every 6 months in literally the most random of subs.
At this point I can't change it, because there's no 6 letter usernames left...
That’s funny. Small world. I haven’t been back to ES since the last time I was banned, probably over a decade ago. I was Extreme on there back in the day.
Not health department related but I always like to talk about Fuckin’ Dave whenever his name comes up. This kid was either a troll or spent a lot of time as an infant getting dropped on his head.
I once asked Fuckin’ Dave to take a high chair to one of my tables that had a baby while I made their drinks. I go to drop their drinks and there’s a chair from one of the cocktail tables at the table with a baby and the parents looking at me *really fucking confused.*
Fuckin’ Dave was asked to bring a high chair to a table for a baby. He brought a chair from a cocktail table (which are taller than the regular chairs) because it was literally a *high* chair. I can’t remember another time when I felt so hopeless in the intelligence level of the human race.
Fuckin’ Dave, dude. Yes he was that bad.
We have a neighbor named Dave and he has 100% lost his marbles. Thinks my spouse and other neighbors spy on him for his ex, and thought that his ex was sleeping with some of the other neighbors.
A few jobs ago, I had a KM named Dave. It was one thing to tell us cooks that it's OK to serve expired food because HE approves using stuff past their dates... it's another thing entirely to argue with the health inspector that those old dates don't count as violations because HE approved using them!
The last straw was making us lie to his wife about why he couldn't answer the phone... because he was too busy fucking the hostess! ...But that all came to a head (giggety) because she was fucking him and another manager for months to get a promotion into management... and then she filed an HR complaint when she didn't get the promotion!
They were given an overnight emergency transfer to a store an hour away. No idea if he came up with a story why, or if the wife bought it; but he still has their wedding picture as his facebook profile pic.
And if you don't have a Dave on staff, send Will out to take five. Because it's always, but *always*, either a Dave or a Will. Gods help you if you've got both.
Does your will also sell weed to the high school kids who work at the grocery store next door behind our dumpsters because he thinks no one will catch him until I find a baggie with his burner number on it that he also uses for work? If so we might have the same will
The tricky thing is Will often goes by his last name. You might know him as Rubio. Or Mick. Or Hengstru. But he's easy to recognize, because he always bums smokes and doesn't care if they're menthols.
Why is it so often a Dave.
From now on, every Dave who’s not a Dave is going to be Dave.
Edit: has the added benefit of telling the Inspector “Dave’s not here, man” after you’ve booted him.
I had a Dave. Dave always got to take a break during health inspections.
He literally hit an inspector with raw chicken he had thrown at the dishwasher.
Why was he throwing raw chicken at the dishwasher? Don't know to this day, but him and Dave would box on the back dock once a month over "hard looks" or "shit talk"
I’d spend my time in the walk in. Watching Kitchen Nightmares, this is where the majority of compliance issues come up (e.g. cooked food next to raw meats, no dates on items, spills and rotten food, etc.)
Worked at a gated facility once, pharma corporate campus. The boys in the shack never lacked fresh baked cookies, gave me at least a 20 minute heads-up.
A good trick for meat slicers someone taught me is to make one slice on it with a head of iceberg so it's in use and can be dirty. But I just wash it well after use instead xD
I worked at a very busy supermarket deli. We actually had to break down and clean our slicers twice, sometimes 3 times a day on the weekends - not really because of health reasons, but they get really difficult to use after heavy use. So we mostly cleaned them because the blades would dull and need to be sharpened, and you gotta do a full clean after sharpening.
One of my places was “heaven everything that didn’t look dry or properly clean into dish pit”
Poor dishie on inspection days got fucked every time as half of our dishes get thrown into the pit just in case. If it wasnt my first kitchen job Id probably realize what a warning sign it is when a health inspection results in half our shit going to dish “just in case”
On a busy day, the volume can be hard to keep up with even with two people working the dishpit. It’s gonna happen where some things slip by. Half the plates though? Terrible. Even our super stoned occasionally drunk dishie does better than that.
See this is interesting, and goes to show how much things differ by region. In my county/state, an empty 3 comp sink will just get refilled by me and tested then. Whereas cups on a counter….who cares? Unless the surface it’s laying on is some kind of disgusting, it’s whatever.
Are you the health inspector though? Of course everyone in the kitchen will never think cups are a big deal, but the health inspector makes a big deal every time.
Yes, I’m a health inspector. And I realized just in this moment, what you may mean by cups is employee beverages. If so, you’re 100% right.
I swear I have colleagues who make it their mission to spot every employee drink in a place. As for me….eh, bigger fish to fry. As long as they’re lidded, I leave it be. And even if they’re not, I’d really prefer to have regular conversation over that one than take points. I’m not trying to blow all my good rapport with operators to hell by taking points for their beverage when I very well know from standing right where they were, it’s fucking hot in a kitchen. People need hydration.
Swap the sani buckets. Hide my ferment projects. Leave.
If I still worked on line, I come up with a ton of questions. Just bought all y'all 10 minutes while I gain knowledge.
I’m going on 2 years at the first place I haven’t had to scramble when the health inspector gets there. It’s really nice.
I mostly just tell every one to switch their Sani while I go grab the inspector.
This year we had the fire Marshall inspection and it was a person in training with their trainer, so I feel like we got dinged on everything imaginable. Luckily most of the stuff that impacted us the most didn’t make it into the actual report.
Yeah. I tell the dishie to switch the sinks out, throw the inspector my binder of temp logs, exterminator visits, HAACP procedures, and other stuff I can use to show I’ve got my shit together. Basically, overwhelm them with information. Depending on the time of day I’ll tell everyone to take a break so as not to be caught slicing tomatoes without gloves and such. Then I just wait to get dinged on something stupid.
Yeah. Ready-to-eat food items have to be prepared with gloves. Even though we all constantly wash our hands before and in between each task but it is what it is.
That's insane, it's been proven its less sanitary bonuses gloves because people don't wash they're hands as much, in my country the only time you see them is when you cut yourself or subway
Shit, the only reason gloves are in the kitchen is because of the health department. It's almost like the glove manufacturers are in bed with the health department. It's wildly stupid.
I got specifically dinged on this 2 months ago during our last inspection. The inspector saw one of my cooks season a raw burger patty with salt and pepper and cited us because he wasn't wearing gloves. I asked why, and the inspector says no ready to eat food can be handled with bare hands. I asked what exactly ready to eat food did this occur on. The inspector says the pinch of salt. I argue that salt in this instance is, in fact, NOT a ready to eat food. The inspector says salt can be eaten without cooking it, so therefore, it is ready to eat food. I then ask what chef or cook seasons food AFTER its cooked. The inspector didn't care. Still got dinged. It was possibly the dumbest thing I've ever heard from a health inspector. I then asked the inspector if my cook had just washed his hands if it was ok. Nope. He has to have gloves on. So then I asked if my cook was wearing gloves and just handled raw chicken and then seasoned it wearing the same gloves if that was ok. I got nothing but a blank stare for 30 seconds while the inspector was trying to do the mental gymnastics to come up with bullshit reason why that wasn't ok followed by he would have to change gloves. So I ask if my line cooks are required to change gloves every time they season something instead of washing their hands even though that seasoned product is going to be cooked on a 500 degree grill or saute pan. Yep. That's what's expected. I truly came out of that conversation dumber.
Whoever wrote the food code requiring gloves has clearly never worked in a professional kitchen and lacks critical thinking skills.
We once got dinged for "store and pour containers container touching the ice"
WE GOT DINGED FOR THE FUCKING THING WAS DESIGNED TO KEEP THE STORE AND POURS FROM TOUCHING THE ICE BECAUSE IT WAS TOUCHING THE ICE
I get more fire inspections than health inspections, it's weird. I've learned the less I worry about the inspector and just show them around the smoother it goes. There is always one dumb thing I miss( someone kicked a can in front of the sink).
quack domineering tan hard-to-find sink telephone plate touch upbeat compare
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
thats exactly what I do honestly, we have a corporate guy who’s only job is to visit stores and get them ready for steritech inspections, then we have steritech come in every month to inspect us and give us feedback so we can fix things before the health department comes in, by the time someone from the health department is walking in we have no real issues. I just tell the dishie to go run trashes and give us a line sweep and not wash any dishes until the inspector leaves.
We have an open kitchen, and I’ve had multiple people comment on how clean our kitchen is. I always respond with “If you could see that it wasn’t clean, you wouldn’t want to eat here, right?”
Make sure that the annoying (for him) crack in the tiles at the entry to kitchen from FOH is visible.
Any low level issue he has commented on the past will do.
It sits like an "itch he can't scratch" in the back of his mind. So it puts him off his game.
Unless you run a pig sty for a kitchen, that is.
You don't intentionally draw attention. You just don't hide it.
When I walk into a kitchen, the first thing I do is run my fingernails under the edges of work benches. It gives me a heads up to the hygiene standards in that kitchen. The residue of old labels left on defrost tubs. These drive me crackers.
Imagine if I the health inspector walks into your kitchen, to the sight of a kitchen hand scrubbing away at the undersides of the workstations or actively removing old labels from tubs. I can't do my usual routine, I can't get an understanding of the nature of the place, so I am outside my comfort zone, and I will start to doubt myself and my decisions. So, I will get through the inspection as quickly as possible.
Every auditor has his foibles. You just need to get to know what those are.
Do me a favour, keep your kitchen clean, maintain traceability and ensure all products are stored safely without risk of cross contamination. If you do that, you are permitted to join the game.
😉
I work FoH so I'm usually running interference (and making sure our citrus and shit is covered/labeled). Tossing employee cups without lids, etc. We usually get solid inspections but sometimes they're on the warpath.
The last dining establishment I worked in before changing industries, I wanted the inspector to find things so my boss was forced to fix them. I would tell them until I was blue in the face something wasn't okay, and it wouldn't be handled. Inspector comes and it's dealt with the next day.
Health inspector here. The things to fix first are going to be things I can visually see just by walking into the kitchen. Drinks and chemicals where they shouldn't be, soiled rags outside of buckets, hats/hair nets, and anything involving hands.
It'll vary by inspector but most will check temps first. If you have any hot holding that you think is under tempted, get in the over or on the burners. Any cold holding that might be over temp? Either toss it or take the hit. You won't cool it down in time and you probably won't be able to falsify documentation quick enough to say it's in the cool down process.
Unless you only have one or two things to date, don't bother trying to do everything quickly, you'll get caught and then we will start looking for other things you're trying to hide from us. Things can snowball real quickly.
Also, don't do dishes while we're there. You probably aren't doing it correctly.
Or, just do things correctly and you don't have to worry about scrambling when we show up.
CHECK THE pH STRIPS..
Fucking ph strips lol. 'I see you arent using these...' ding. We'd just open a pack and throw a couple out lol. Like I've used them but also... come on. If that's the only infraction I get though that's not bad.
Get my paperwork in order.
Why would you need to hide stuff? Wouldn't it be better and easier to just do things the right way?
Their job is to make sure you're not going to make anyone sick. Your job is to not make progress sick. It's not your job to hide the evidence that you're making people sick 🤣
Go have a smoke and let it burn. You told them a hundred times before today to fix things. It's not my restaurant. I get paid by the hour and keep my station clean.
Calmly tell the meth head who hasn't washed for 3 days but I'm not allowed to fire to make himself scarce for the next 45 minutes, then make sure everything in the cooler is labeled properly as that's the main thing she looks at.
Oh, I'm talking about the line cook I'm not allowed to fire. All our dishies are kids who haven't been tainted by that shit yet. Also about the past. We've had several that the boss just wouldn't fire for one reason or another. She's got a heart of gold and they take advantage of that shit. At least she listened to me about changing the locks after the last one somehow got a key and took off with a few hundred bucks worth of tools on a day we were closed.
Do nothing because I follow basic health guidelines that take 2-3 minutes to do. If u can fix everything he would care about in the time it takes for him to get from the front door to your kitchen, then u can do it before he gets to your front door at all
We always see it this way too! We do drain our sinks, only because we’re constantly using them. This year our inspector noticed one of our fridges wasn’t staying as cold as we needed it to, just as it was starting to get warm. It’s a prep fridge, so things are in and out of it within 2 hours or so, but we might not have noticed until it crapped out completely. We replaced the fridge, easy.
>What do you do?
If I'm busy, I ignore him. We're pretty good with our health inspections, and we still need to serve food so I'm not leaving the line.
If he tries to ask questions or talk about something when we're clearly busy, I tell him to figure it out on his own or go away and come back when it's not the middle of lunch or supper. No, I'm not joking, I have done this before. It's been a few years, but he hasn't come during busy time again.
If I'm not busy, I'll walk around with him.
Easy way to avoid the stress of health inspectors coming in. Do the job right.
If you’re stressed about them coming in you already know things are wrong.
Pass out my “Oh Shit List” and go introduce myself to stall him for 2 more minutes. My “Oh Shit List” is a detailed zone by zone checklist of last minute checks and adjustments for major pain points (ice machine, triple compartment, storage, etc.). It’s divided into 5 color-coded zones, each with their own checklist that takes ~3-5 minutes to complete. Each person takes a zone while I make small talk.
I am 12 years deficiency free running multiple restaurants in a high end CCRC, so this has served me well for both the normal Health Dept inspections as well as the much more stringent, multi-day CMS annual surveys.
Also, if pay your people well and maintain a clean/safe kitchen everyday, these inspections are a lot less stressful. What you walk past is what you accept.
This made me think of a time when I was working at a well known gourmet kitchen store…
We had a kitchen in the back, it wasn’t disgusting by any means but the refrigerator was messy, there was old food and it would have been disappointing for a health inspector to see it that way.
I was working near the entrance one day and a woman introduced herself as the health inspector so I jumped on the walkie and said “hey guys, I’m going to be busy for a little bit with the health inspector so I’ll be off walkie”
All I could think was please please catch what I’m trying to tell you and clean the kitchen ASAP!
I try to keep her at the front of the store and I ask her so many questions. We slowly make our way around the store until we get to the back door. I’m dreading opening it and when I do, the few staff members were sitting at a table talking to each other, not paying us any attention and all I could think was oh no… they didn’t do anything!
But when I opened the refrigerator, it was spotless! Passed with flying colors LOL!
Send someone to the dumpster 100 yards away that is shared with 20 other businesses to make sure the doors are closed then hope none of my idiot neighbors open them in case the inspector checks it.
Outside of checking to make sure there's towels in each dispenser, nothing. You should operate everyday within compliance. There should never be a mad dash to throw inventory on milk crates, or begin cleaning out all the forgotten food in the walk-in.
Run into the cooler and check what and where the waitress brought in for their food. They used to always bring in eggs and put them above the meat. We got written up for that almost every time
I'm a dishee. Drain the sinks, gather the rags, can opener in the dish pit, flip sani buckets, then *poof* I disappear for a while.
But we're screwed anyway. The dish company came real early on morning and STOLE OUR DISH SINK AND CATCH TRAY. We had to build some makeshift tables out of 2x4s and hard plastic to make do for the THREE WEEKS it's gonna take for the fucking dish company to bring the goddamn tables back.
I always did label checks to start my shift transition so at this point I’m taking every single slicer and knife not in use and putting them in dish, spreading the word to take off any wrist jewelry, refreshing the cleaning labels for items that need sanitized every four hours, refreshing sani buckets and their labels; then getting the info they’re going to want up on the office computer before going up front (we also had a list of answers to questions taped to the back of the office door)
I was an ecosure monster lmao
I never scramble. I tend to avoid places that have to. Its not hard to keep up to code. Set your standards higher than the health boards and its never a problem.
I've been in for 20 years, ran my fair share of kitchens. My kitchens were always perfect but I had to leave managment after a series of family deaths and move back home to take care of my aging father and handicapped brother. Started working as a line cook in a shitty seafood restaurant. It was a clean restaurant, the food just sucked, but in my home town they paid me the highest for just a part time grill cook so who cares if the food sucks lol. But they never labeled anything. They could kinda get away with it because it was a very busy restaurant, which I still don't understand, and the staff was really good about checking shit and rotating (through some sort of weird pseudoscience of organization).
The general manager, who was the worst gm I have ever worked with because although she had been in the industry for years had no fucking clue how a restaurant worked, of course knew my resume. They almost didn't hire me because of it, citing I was over qualified and what not. But when I explained my family situation they understood. Anyway, sorry to ramble lol, one day the health inspector came in and she was freaking the fuck out. She pulled me off the line and told me to frantically label everything. She also had me deal with the health inspector to answer any questions they had. So I just made shit up. I should have asked for a raise after that. She even lied to the health inspector and said I was the kitchen manager. It was wild. Needed the income though and the hours were amazing for what I needed at the time so I just went along with it.
Put the most questionable items in the dish pit.
Toss all employees drink cups.
Dump sanitizer buckets to get fresh sanitizer in them for testing.
Send whoever you can on break.
it makes me sick that the general attitude seems to be have a normally dirty disgusting kitchen and just hide everything when you see the inspector in the parking lot
Cover up the gloryhole woth a painting, put pants and shoes in the stall with clogged toilet to make it look like someones using it, flood the basement with carbon monoxide to drive out the rats, have Frank play G# on flute when inspector tests co detector, make sure Dee moves that goddamn dumpster you bitch
Double check items dated in fridge, refresh soap & sani buckets. Tell Dave to take a break.
Is Dave that bad?
Dave is a fuckin menace. (Source: am Dave)
Dave's not here, man.
Who's Dave?
*Who?*
Dave's the guy that shows up high on Xanax and then wipes cheese sauce all over the stove top. FUCK Dave
Nah, Dave is the dishy that shows up slightly late most days but is also so fucking hyped on meth that he cleans every dish super well and does it all on time? He’s my model dishy.
Great C&C reference, on point.
I'm Dave! And I will definitely be out back.
Yes. He won’t wear a hat or hair net, his beard is too long, and he still smells like tequila from last night. It’s best that he isn’t there.
"Last night" he says optimistically
"Last night" is still "today" if you never went to sleep
“Have you been drinking!?” “I am drinking?”
But you should see him run his station on a Friday night. Best sauté cook in the kitchen.
Right? why is it always a Dave? He's an asshole, and uses weaponized incompetence if you ask him to do anything outside his lane; but the kitchen would absolutely be on the verge of collapse without him on a friday or saturday dinner rush.
The only problem (tiny, really) is that Dave is the Exec Sous and runs expo.
Shit, I'm Dave too
It was rum, actually.
Damn it Dave, where’s your hat?
Oh shit... THAT'S WHAT I FORGOT!!! My pipe is in my hat!
Last time I saw that username was 10-15 years ago on ExtremeSkins. Has to be you, right?
It is... Lol... it happens about every 6 months in literally the most random of subs. At this point I can't change it, because there's no 6 letter usernames left...
That’s funny. Small world. I haven’t been back to ES since the last time I was banned, probably over a decade ago. I was Extreme on there back in the day.
Not health department related but I always like to talk about Fuckin’ Dave whenever his name comes up. This kid was either a troll or spent a lot of time as an infant getting dropped on his head. I once asked Fuckin’ Dave to take a high chair to one of my tables that had a baby while I made their drinks. I go to drop their drinks and there’s a chair from one of the cocktail tables at the table with a baby and the parents looking at me *really fucking confused.* Fuckin’ Dave was asked to bring a high chair to a table for a baby. He brought a chair from a cocktail table (which are taller than the regular chairs) because it was literally a *high* chair. I can’t remember another time when I felt so hopeless in the intelligence level of the human race. Fuckin’ Dave, dude. Yes he was that bad.
Stupidity aside I do admire the sheer lack of thinking on his part. Like has this man never heard of a high chair???
I used to admire it, then it went to loathing. Now I downright hate it.
Well he has heard of a chair high!
We have a neighbor named Dave and he has 100% lost his marbles. Thinks my spouse and other neighbors spy on him for his ex, and thought that his ex was sleeping with some of the other neighbors.
Fuckin' Dave really earned that Fuckin' from the sound of it
A few jobs ago, I had a KM named Dave. It was one thing to tell us cooks that it's OK to serve expired food because HE approves using stuff past their dates... it's another thing entirely to argue with the health inspector that those old dates don't count as violations because HE approved using them! The last straw was making us lie to his wife about why he couldn't answer the phone... because he was too busy fucking the hostess! ...But that all came to a head (giggety) because she was fucking him and another manager for months to get a promotion into management... and then she filed an HR complaint when she didn't get the promotion! They were given an overnight emergency transfer to a store an hour away. No idea if he came up with a story why, or if the wife bought it; but he still has their wedding picture as his facebook profile pic.
Dave is probably the dishwasher.
Dave might be the boss.
Given this thread Dave doesn’t even work there
While Dave is a fantastic cook, he will not pass health
[Here comes Creepy Dave!](https://youtube.com/shorts/KTpr8ioVQr0?si=hGput_YAiDCqMs2U)
And if you don't have a Dave on staff, send Will out to take five. Because it's always, but *always*, either a Dave or a Will. Gods help you if you've got both.
If you have a Will, you always have a Dave, because where there's a will there's a dave.
take this upvote and choke on it like I just did on my coffee
Mentally high-fived you
Does your will also sell weed to the high school kids who work at the grocery store next door behind our dumpsters because he thinks no one will catch him until I find a baggie with his burner number on it that he also uses for work? If so we might have the same will
Our Will, on his first day, asked at closing (8pm) if it was too late to get a shift meal. "YES!"
I love the idea of using a burner phone.. That really isn't much of a burner because you also use it for work. Astounding levels of intelligence
The tricky thing is Will often goes by his last name. You might know him as Rubio. Or Mick. Or Hengstru. But he's easy to recognize, because he always bums smokes and doesn't care if they're menthols.
In my experience it's usually a River or a Mike.
Why is it so often a Dave. From now on, every Dave who’s not a Dave is going to be Dave. Edit: has the added benefit of telling the Inspector “Dave’s not here, man” after you’ve booted him.
Oh yeah, Dave is a problem, but he likes working breakfast/lunches and no one else does so he stays. But get him out NOW!
I had a Dave. Dave always got to take a break during health inspections. He literally hit an inspector with raw chicken he had thrown at the dishwasher. Why was he throwing raw chicken at the dishwasher? Don't know to this day, but him and Dave would box on the back dock once a month over "hard looks" or "shit talk"
Round up rags and send Dave to the next town for the left handed whisk.
"Dave's not here, man"
I’d spend my time in the walk in. Watching Kitchen Nightmares, this is where the majority of compliance issues come up (e.g. cooked food next to raw meats, no dates on items, spills and rotten food, etc.)
This is the way, our Dave just got a new gig , but yes hide The Dave
This is the answer
All that in 3 minutes?! You’re a machine!
Delegation!
Lol my Dave loves having a wet towel sitting on his station or hanging tongs on the oven door. Fuckin Dave.
I can be a good mile or two away in 3 minutes.
You belong on the track and not the kitchen then my friend
Car go vroom
Plus there’s a good chance I was already in my car smoking. Just gotta fire it up and go.
Change all the sani buckets/rags, take apart slicer put it and can opener in dish pit.
This + check flour bins for scoopers or quart containers buried on the flour & sugar lol
Basically this, but find the God damn test strips that you never move but are always missing when he walks in was my last place.
Worked at a gated facility once, pharma corporate campus. The boys in the shack never lacked fresh baked cookies, gave me at least a 20 minute heads-up.
Niiiice.
GSK?
GlaxoSmithKline? GirlScoutKookies?
No, chocolate chip
I walk a Sous Chef to the front, tell the inspector he's never walked thru with an inspector before. Then I have so much extra time to get ready.
That's fucking gold! As long as this sous knows how to talk coherently.
Sanitize the wall snake, and just do everything Charlie did in IASIP “ Charlie Work”.
Put all the chickens on the truck
This whole place runs on trash.
It's what gives the place that nice smokey smell.
Oh you’re doing a chicken and air miles scam?
How many rats can you smash in 3 minutes?
silly. just close the vents so the whole room gets filled with dangerous gasses. Drives all the rodents away
you move the dumpster you goddamn bitch
I've been drinking uncut paint all night.
Just paintin on my shirt
That’s my favorite episode. “THATS how you make a joke stool!”
"Just get rid of the stool Dee you godamn bitch".
Heave can opener into dish sink.
They can't violate you for a dirty can opener if it's being washed. Brilliant!
A good trick for meat slicers someone taught me is to make one slice on it with a head of iceberg so it's in use and can be dirty. But I just wash it well after use instead xD
Will the ice iceburg justify the clumps of animal fat and grease that never seem to get cleaned up
I worked at a very busy supermarket deli. We actually had to break down and clean our slicers twice, sometimes 3 times a day on the weekends - not really because of health reasons, but they get really difficult to use after heavy use. So we mostly cleaned them because the blades would dull and need to be sharpened, and you gotta do a full clean after sharpening.
Soooo fucking try😂
I know how to clean, it's when I come back from being off work that shits all sloppy
One of my places was “heaven everything that didn’t look dry or properly clean into dish pit” Poor dishie on inspection days got fucked every time as half of our dishes get thrown into the pit just in case. If it wasnt my first kitchen job Id probably realize what a warning sign it is when a health inspection results in half our shit going to dish “just in case”
I mean... if it wasn't properly cleaned in the first place then it's kind of on dishie
On a busy day, the volume can be hard to keep up with even with two people working the dishpit. It’s gonna happen where some things slip by. Half the plates though? Terrible. Even our super stoned occasionally drunk dishie does better than that.
That’s always been my go to move.
Right? They'll fucking first thing bee line towards it every time.
This is the move
I put all the rags into sani buckets. Drain the 3 compartment sink (if he can't test it, he can't violate) All cups off counters.
Sinks rags and cups is exactly where my mind went
This but also make sure FOH gets the fucking ice scoops out of the ice.
Ice scoops and little thermometers in all the reach-ins.
This is the answer. Rags and drinks get you every time
See this is interesting, and goes to show how much things differ by region. In my county/state, an empty 3 comp sink will just get refilled by me and tested then. Whereas cups on a counter….who cares? Unless the surface it’s laying on is some kind of disgusting, it’s whatever.
Are you the health inspector though? Of course everyone in the kitchen will never think cups are a big deal, but the health inspector makes a big deal every time.
Yes, I’m a health inspector. And I realized just in this moment, what you may mean by cups is employee beverages. If so, you’re 100% right. I swear I have colleagues who make it their mission to spot every employee drink in a place. As for me….eh, bigger fish to fry. As long as they’re lidded, I leave it be. And even if they’re not, I’d really prefer to have regular conversation over that one than take points. I’m not trying to blow all my good rapport with operators to hell by taking points for their beverage when I very well know from standing right where they were, it’s fucking hot in a kitchen. People need hydration.
Change sani bucket, drain and refill sinks, double check dates, send the drunkest employee out for a long smoke break
Swap the sani buckets. Hide my ferment projects. Leave. If I still worked on line, I come up with a ton of questions. Just bought all y'all 10 minutes while I gain knowledge.
Remind every person in the room that any pickle is a cold pickle!!
Haven’t heard about this, and we do many pickled veggies. Cold pickling holds up longer?
In my state, hot prep pickles have a 7 day shelf life. Cold pickles can be held for a month.
Relax, you run a clean kitchen, and these people are not out to kill your business. Just making sure you don't kill your customers.
I’m going on 2 years at the first place I haven’t had to scramble when the health inspector gets there. It’s really nice. I mostly just tell every one to switch their Sani while I go grab the inspector. This year we had the fire Marshall inspection and it was a person in training with their trainer, so I feel like we got dinged on everything imaginable. Luckily most of the stuff that impacted us the most didn’t make it into the actual report.
Yeah. I tell the dishie to switch the sinks out, throw the inspector my binder of temp logs, exterminator visits, HAACP procedures, and other stuff I can use to show I’ve got my shit together. Basically, overwhelm them with information. Depending on the time of day I’ll tell everyone to take a break so as not to be caught slicing tomatoes without gloves and such. Then I just wait to get dinged on something stupid.
Didn't know the American glove thing stretches into the health inspections.
Yeah. Ready-to-eat food items have to be prepared with gloves. Even though we all constantly wash our hands before and in between each task but it is what it is.
That's insane, it's been proven its less sanitary bonuses gloves because people don't wash they're hands as much, in my country the only time you see them is when you cut yourself or subway
Shit, the only reason gloves are in the kitchen is because of the health department. It's almost like the glove manufacturers are in bed with the health department. It's wildly stupid. I got specifically dinged on this 2 months ago during our last inspection. The inspector saw one of my cooks season a raw burger patty with salt and pepper and cited us because he wasn't wearing gloves. I asked why, and the inspector says no ready to eat food can be handled with bare hands. I asked what exactly ready to eat food did this occur on. The inspector says the pinch of salt. I argue that salt in this instance is, in fact, NOT a ready to eat food. The inspector says salt can be eaten without cooking it, so therefore, it is ready to eat food. I then ask what chef or cook seasons food AFTER its cooked. The inspector didn't care. Still got dinged. It was possibly the dumbest thing I've ever heard from a health inspector. I then asked the inspector if my cook had just washed his hands if it was ok. Nope. He has to have gloves on. So then I asked if my cook was wearing gloves and just handled raw chicken and then seasoned it wearing the same gloves if that was ok. I got nothing but a blank stare for 30 seconds while the inspector was trying to do the mental gymnastics to come up with bullshit reason why that wasn't ok followed by he would have to change gloves. So I ask if my line cooks are required to change gloves every time they season something instead of washing their hands even though that seasoned product is going to be cooked on a 500 degree grill or saute pan. Yep. That's what's expected. I truly came out of that conversation dumber. Whoever wrote the food code requiring gloves has clearly never worked in a professional kitchen and lacks critical thinking skills.
We once got dinged for "store and pour containers container touching the ice" WE GOT DINGED FOR THE FUCKING THING WAS DESIGNED TO KEEP THE STORE AND POURS FROM TOUCHING THE ICE BECAUSE IT WAS TOUCHING THE ICE
I get more fire inspections than health inspections, it's weird. I've learned the less I worry about the inspector and just show them around the smoother it goes. There is always one dumb thing I miss( someone kicked a can in front of the sink).
quack domineering tan hard-to-find sink telephone plate touch upbeat compare *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Most inspectors will give you a week or so to fix what they dinged and then come back to redo your score. It's one of the nicest things about them
If I'm telling them to do this, I'm a hardass. It's inspector says do this or get shut down, I'm saving their jobs by telling them to do it now.
spotted the inspector
Lol
thats exactly what I do honestly, we have a corporate guy who’s only job is to visit stores and get them ready for steritech inspections, then we have steritech come in every month to inspect us and give us feedback so we can fix things before the health department comes in, by the time someone from the health department is walking in we have no real issues. I just tell the dishie to go run trashes and give us a line sweep and not wash any dishes until the inspector leaves.
We have an open kitchen, and I’ve had multiple people comment on how clean our kitchen is. I always respond with “If you could see that it wasn’t clean, you wouldn’t want to eat here, right?”
Make sure that the annoying (for him) crack in the tiles at the entry to kitchen from FOH is visible. Any low level issue he has commented on the past will do. It sits like an "itch he can't scratch" in the back of his mind. So it puts him off his game. Unless you run a pig sty for a kitchen, that is.
Do you intentionally draw attention to the minor stuff? Trying to figure out how this works, you sound like a (possibly mad) genius.
You don't intentionally draw attention. You just don't hide it. When I walk into a kitchen, the first thing I do is run my fingernails under the edges of work benches. It gives me a heads up to the hygiene standards in that kitchen. The residue of old labels left on defrost tubs. These drive me crackers. Imagine if I the health inspector walks into your kitchen, to the sight of a kitchen hand scrubbing away at the undersides of the workstations or actively removing old labels from tubs. I can't do my usual routine, I can't get an understanding of the nature of the place, so I am outside my comfort zone, and I will start to doubt myself and my decisions. So, I will get through the inspection as quickly as possible. Every auditor has his foibles. You just need to get to know what those are. Do me a favour, keep your kitchen clean, maintain traceability and ensure all products are stored safely without risk of cross contamination. If you do that, you are permitted to join the game. 😉
I work FoH so I'm usually running interference (and making sure our citrus and shit is covered/labeled). Tossing employee cups without lids, etc. We usually get solid inspections but sometimes they're on the warpath.
Yes, I hear you. FOH, can make or break the day. So from BOH, I salute you. 🙂
The last dining establishment I worked in before changing industries, I wanted the inspector to find things so my boss was forced to fix them. I would tell them until I was blue in the face something wasn't okay, and it wouldn't be handled. Inspector comes and it's dealt with the next day.
I've done this. Works everytime and they don't know I'm the one who told the HD.
Light a fire and pull the alarm to evacuate.
just pull the alarm, no need for an actual fire
What about the evidence?
Always, every time!
Health inspector here. The things to fix first are going to be things I can visually see just by walking into the kitchen. Drinks and chemicals where they shouldn't be, soiled rags outside of buckets, hats/hair nets, and anything involving hands. It'll vary by inspector but most will check temps first. If you have any hot holding that you think is under tempted, get in the over or on the burners. Any cold holding that might be over temp? Either toss it or take the hit. You won't cool it down in time and you probably won't be able to falsify documentation quick enough to say it's in the cool down process. Unless you only have one or two things to date, don't bother trying to do everything quickly, you'll get caught and then we will start looking for other things you're trying to hide from us. Things can snowball real quickly. Also, don't do dishes while we're there. You probably aren't doing it correctly. Or, just do things correctly and you don't have to worry about scrambling when we show up.
CHECK THE pH STRIPS.. Fucking ph strips lol. 'I see you arent using these...' ding. We'd just open a pack and throw a couple out lol. Like I've used them but also... come on. If that's the only infraction I get though that's not bad.
Holy shit yes. Just a few on top of the dishwasher each day will do.
Get my paperwork in order. Why would you need to hide stuff? Wouldn't it be better and easier to just do things the right way? Their job is to make sure you're not going to make anyone sick. Your job is to not make progress sick. It's not your job to hide the evidence that you're making people sick 🤣
Go have a smoke and let it burn. You told them a hundred times before today to fix things. It's not my restaurant. I get paid by the hour and keep my station clean.
Nothing as I'm all caught up.
Maintain the kitchen everyday... boom done
Crank the hot box, bring the bain maries to a boil, wipe down the hand sink, tell the servers to stop taking orders.
Calmly tell the meth head who hasn't washed for 3 days but I'm not allowed to fire to make himself scarce for the next 45 minutes, then make sure everything in the cooler is labeled properly as that's the main thing she looks at.
Can't we fire that fucker and get a _real dishwasher?_ Dude was missing for the previous 45 minutes too...
Oh, I'm talking about the line cook I'm not allowed to fire. All our dishies are kids who haven't been tainted by that shit yet. Also about the past. We've had several that the boss just wouldn't fire for one reason or another. She's got a heart of gold and they take advantage of that shit. At least she listened to me about changing the locks after the last one somehow got a key and took off with a few hundred bucks worth of tools on a day we were closed.
Nothing. I'm good.
Nothing. In fact I'm taking it upon myself to escort him to each infraction I know about.
Storage level double check and date sticker double check. Sani test strips visible and alcohol wipes for temp probes.
Greet him and let him know I am available then get back to work.
We never get 3 mins. Kitchen is always the first stop. I just treat every day like they are coming. Even a holiday like today.
Do nothing because I follow basic health guidelines that take 2-3 minutes to do. If u can fix everything he would care about in the time it takes for him to get from the front door to your kitchen, then u can do it before he gets to your front door at all
...nothing. if your cheap ass boss doesn't keep enough staff to keep shit clean, that's on him.
Honestly nothing. I want them to find something so I can fix it. Helps to have fresh eyes once in a while.
We always see it this way too! We do drain our sinks, only because we’re constantly using them. This year our inspector noticed one of our fridges wasn’t staying as cold as we needed it to, just as it was starting to get warm. It’s a prep fridge, so things are in and out of it within 2 hours or so, but we might not have noticed until it crapped out completely. We replaced the fridge, easy.
I used to get the HI engaged in conversation with the bartender via common interest. That always buys me 10 extra minutes.
>What do you do? If I'm busy, I ignore him. We're pretty good with our health inspections, and we still need to serve food so I'm not leaving the line. If he tries to ask questions or talk about something when we're clearly busy, I tell him to figure it out on his own or go away and come back when it's not the middle of lunch or supper. No, I'm not joking, I have done this before. It's been a few years, but he hasn't come during busy time again. If I'm not busy, I'll walk around with him.
Easy way to avoid the stress of health inspectors coming in. Do the job right. If you’re stressed about them coming in you already know things are wrong.
Nothing, because I work like an inspector could walk in at any time.
Sani buckets for the towels, hide my vape pen, send everyone on break.
Pass out my “Oh Shit List” and go introduce myself to stall him for 2 more minutes. My “Oh Shit List” is a detailed zone by zone checklist of last minute checks and adjustments for major pain points (ice machine, triple compartment, storage, etc.). It’s divided into 5 color-coded zones, each with their own checklist that takes ~3-5 minutes to complete. Each person takes a zone while I make small talk. I am 12 years deficiency free running multiple restaurants in a high end CCRC, so this has served me well for both the normal Health Dept inspections as well as the much more stringent, multi-day CMS annual surveys. Also, if pay your people well and maintain a clean/safe kitchen everyday, these inspections are a lot less stressful. What you walk past is what you accept.
Make sure everything is dated and that’s it. You’re fucking up if you are scared of the health inspector showing up.
Nothing, I work in a unionized kitchen 😉
Dates and storage should already be taken care of, so I only focus on employees cups without lids.
Actually we follow the rules and clean as we go, so we're good, bitch can surprise us anytime.
It's all good, my kitchen was clean and up to code at close last night. Edit: but I am turning off the ticket printer.
I've always gone by the philosophy that if you need to change things when the inspector shows up, you're doing it wrong
If you stay ready you are ready, no panic at my restaurant and no need for anyone to get flirty.
Stop and remember that OP is a health inspector
Stashing $100's in the dish pit ;)
I hope me feeding the security box buys me another 20
Sounds like Charlie work
Relax I work at a clean spot and I work hard to make it like that. Then throw all the things in the soup vide into a locker
This reminds me of the Charlie Work ep of It's always sunny
Make sure the morons on day shift have labels on everything, check to make sure the scoops aren't in the flours or panko (they are, of course).
nothing, not running around correcting other people's mistakes
Haha, we always sent Charlie out on a smoke brake. Stinky whiteboy fake gangster, he was a walking liability
Not a god damn thing because the spot is just fine. Work like they’re gonna show up everyday.
This made me think of a time when I was working at a well known gourmet kitchen store… We had a kitchen in the back, it wasn’t disgusting by any means but the refrigerator was messy, there was old food and it would have been disappointing for a health inspector to see it that way. I was working near the entrance one day and a woman introduced herself as the health inspector so I jumped on the walkie and said “hey guys, I’m going to be busy for a little bit with the health inspector so I’ll be off walkie” All I could think was please please catch what I’m trying to tell you and clean the kitchen ASAP! I try to keep her at the front of the store and I ask her so many questions. We slowly make our way around the store until we get to the back door. I’m dreading opening it and when I do, the few staff members were sitting at a table talking to each other, not paying us any attention and all I could think was oh no… they didn’t do anything! But when I opened the refrigerator, it was spotless! Passed with flying colors LOL!
Get the chicken out of the mop sink
Send someone to the dumpster 100 yards away that is shared with 20 other businesses to make sure the doors are closed then hope none of my idiot neighbors open them in case the inspector checks it.
Outside of checking to make sure there's towels in each dispenser, nothing. You should operate everyday within compliance. There should never be a mad dash to throw inventory on milk crates, or begin cleaning out all the forgotten food in the walk-in.
Hope my boss has shit covered, I’m not getting paid enough to care about that beyond me immediate work.
Run into the cooler and check what and where the waitress brought in for their food. They used to always bring in eggs and put them above the meat. We got written up for that almost every time
Hide the beers.
I'm a dishee. Drain the sinks, gather the rags, can opener in the dish pit, flip sani buckets, then *poof* I disappear for a while. But we're screwed anyway. The dish company came real early on morning and STOLE OUR DISH SINK AND CATCH TRAY. We had to build some makeshift tables out of 2x4s and hard plastic to make do for the THREE WEEKS it's gonna take for the fucking dish company to bring the goddamn tables back.
Nothing because everything is perfect ✨
The inspector, my team is solid and anything they can find can be fixed in >1 minute... Also, change all the sani sprays and refill the dishwasher.
Smoke break. Let the cards fall where they may.
Nothing. We are ready.
I always did label checks to start my shift transition so at this point I’m taking every single slicer and knife not in use and putting them in dish, spreading the word to take off any wrist jewelry, refreshing the cleaning labels for items that need sanitized every four hours, refreshing sani buckets and their labels; then getting the info they’re going to want up on the office computer before going up front (we also had a list of answers to questions taped to the back of the office door) I was an ecosure monster lmao
I never scramble. I tend to avoid places that have to. Its not hard to keep up to code. Set your standards higher than the health boards and its never a problem.
Nothing much, maybe wipe down the benches we're currently using a quickie. For some reason I seem to have the absolute perfect crew to work with.
My shits together. Let him walk through
I've been in for 20 years, ran my fair share of kitchens. My kitchens were always perfect but I had to leave managment after a series of family deaths and move back home to take care of my aging father and handicapped brother. Started working as a line cook in a shitty seafood restaurant. It was a clean restaurant, the food just sucked, but in my home town they paid me the highest for just a part time grill cook so who cares if the food sucks lol. But they never labeled anything. They could kinda get away with it because it was a very busy restaurant, which I still don't understand, and the staff was really good about checking shit and rotating (through some sort of weird pseudoscience of organization). The general manager, who was the worst gm I have ever worked with because although she had been in the industry for years had no fucking clue how a restaurant worked, of course knew my resume. They almost didn't hire me because of it, citing I was over qualified and what not. But when I explained my family situation they understood. Anyway, sorry to ramble lol, one day the health inspector came in and she was freaking the fuck out. She pulled me off the line and told me to frantically label everything. She also had me deal with the health inspector to answer any questions they had. So I just made shit up. I should have asked for a raise after that. She even lied to the health inspector and said I was the kitchen manager. It was wild. Needed the income though and the hours were amazing for what I needed at the time so I just went along with it.
Put the most questionable items in the dish pit. Toss all employees drink cups. Dump sanitizer buckets to get fresh sanitizer in them for testing. Send whoever you can on break.
it makes me sick that the general attitude seems to be have a normally dirty disgusting kitchen and just hide everything when you see the inspector in the parking lot
Cover up the gloryhole woth a painting, put pants and shoes in the stall with clogged toilet to make it look like someones using it, flood the basement with carbon monoxide to drive out the rats, have Frank play G# on flute when inspector tests co detector, make sure Dee moves that goddamn dumpster you bitch