Yes, I’m sure people have seen many gross things here and in other countries, but here’s the one that leaves me confused as to whether I’m pissed, sad, or incredulous. A couple of days ago at the Carrefour near ZhiShan MRT, there was a guy cleaning produce in the middle of the fresh produce section during prime time with lots of customers and employees running around. He’s holding up and cleaning a melon or gourd with two hands so that when he sneezes, it’s right on the thing he’s cleaning and the pile of the rest of them. So I keep looking at him to see what he or anyone else will do, and he sneezes again while continuing on his merry way spraying with water and wiping. No one reacts (openly), no fellow employee comes over to suggest that he not do this, let alone in front of a crowd of customers. I didn’t want to get too close, but I did walk around a bit to get a look at his face because I was curious, and he had no mask and didn’t appear mentally out of touch in any way, and was a bit older and more manager-looking than the average person who weighs your produce. I once saw a worker at the same Carrefour reach a bare hand into a tray of sticky rice and put a pinchful into his mouth right in front of me while staring at the manager to make sure he wasn’t seen. But that hundan looked really low down on the employment and social ladder and was acting like a bad child rather than someone making a proud public display of doing his job as the sneezer was doing.
Carrefour seems to me as standard as supermarkets I’ve seen in lots of other places, which will also have there share of employees who do dumb things. So it doesn’t fit under the “these filthy people!” canard. I’m pissed because 1) if he’s doing it once, he’s doing it all the time, 2) if he’s doing it and no one cares, other people are, too. 3) if I say something to him like, “you know, people will be buying that stuff you sneezed all over,” I’ll just get a string of useless duibuqi’s, 4) I see no real benefit to tattling to management. I mean, what are they going to do, fire the guy? They can’t just tell him to stop it and expect to accomplish much–that’s just a finger in the dike. It’ll be tons of buhaoyisi’s and they’ll probably remember me at future visits, which is annoying to me. But I think it’s management’s fault for not maintaining a culture where acting like this isn’t perceived as outrageous. That’s what enables non-malicious, hard-working employees to do such majorly inconsiderate things.
I’m pissed because the only real solution is to simply never buy certain kinds of things at the Wellcomes, Carrefours, A-Marts, etc. and stick with only the higher-priced and inconvenient Jason’s, who works harder to maintain an image that justifies the prices and more upscale goods. And so I’m pissed because I’ll continue to go to the Carrefours, and from now on the traumatic image will pop up, and sometimes I’ll have to pass on something I want and other times I’ll just bite the bullet. crap. I know plenty of horror stories from respectable international restaurants, but they’re good at not letting everything that goes on in the kitchen be seen by patrons so that the illusion is maintained.
Almost anywhere you go, this probably happens regularly. You are just lucky enough not to see it. This is why you’re best off only buying produce you can wash, and cooking from scratch yourself, rather than buying pre-cut produce or prepared food that can’t really be washed, or choosing places where hygiene is obviously emphasized.
yeah. Meanwhile, eating raw vegetables is one thing in this world that I really, really like–simply because they taste good. You can’t buy a salad in this place.
What throws me in this situation is that openly sneezing in a group of people is as unacceptable here as anywhere I’ve been. People just don’t do it, except maybe for children. And people commonly wear masks when they have a cold, which is unheard of and would even be objectionable where I come from (why are you hiding your face?). It’s just unfathomable that in that moment at the supermarket, it became socially acceptable. I’d really have loved to ask the guy what made it ok, but there’s pretty much no way to get a considered answer to that kind of question.
I’ve seen my server at a popular pizza joint here wipe her very runny nose then continue to serve our food without washing her hands. Obviously she had not taken any cold meds to minimize viral shedding, either. There was no appropriate management oversight of the basic hygiene there, and it was the last time I ever ate there. It’s not just Tianmu Carrefour. It’s a pandemic cultural negligence.
FOod safety is not as widespread as we would like.
Case in point.
REspected Philly Cheese steak place in the East Bay , USA.
Went there and while waiting for my cheesesteak to be made. I observed the “cook” grab some raw meat with his hands. Then grab some buns. Again with his bare hands. Put both on the grill. Then gave change to another customer while ringing up his purchase. Then went back to the cheesesteak, took the buns from the grill with the same bare hands, then reached into a bowl where some veggies sat in a brine and grabbed some veggies . Spread them on the sandwhich with his hands then put the now cooked meat on top with some prongs.
All this time, never washing hands.
That was how the philly cheesesteaks were being made there. He should not touch bare meat with his hands then touch bread. Should not touch money then go back to touching food.
See, that’s what I mean: someone who openly does it as if it’s a nothing. All the restaurant horror stories I’ve ever heard were things that they wanted to keep hidden. I’m just saying that multiple open sneezes is something the same person wouldn’t normally do, even absent-mindedly. But in that moment, he had on the happy worker vibe, self-consciously displaying a positive attitude in the middle of a busy business. The grossness and real health risks aside, it’s disturbing in a weird way. I just can’t get over it, yet I have to keep going back to what amounts to the same place and have another.
That’s because Carrefour and many other foreign supermaket retail store are often partnered up with Taiwanese companies that mostly run the show … says it all, well for most it does, there are others of course, some good ones but they are controlled from abroad a big deal with foreign managers here on the ground, and even then these people can’t oversee everything. Same goes for franchises from foreign companies, some franchises are out of hand and just gross. Wetmarket behaviour still rules.
eh i worked at a deli like store once where the guy was cutting ham and the whole thing fell on the floor. he just picked it up and placed it back up and continued cutting it. he was a senior person there not a temp like me.
This may have been a isolated case, but just in case someone sees this again:
The other day I saw a rat (looking well fed) running from the vegetables to the freezers in the Tianmu Carrefour. Other customers saw it too and didn’t seem too happy about it. Minutes later I saw this:
Better have a good look at your food before putting it in the cart…
[quote=“sushi171”]This may have been a isolated case, but just in case someone sees this again:
The other day I saw a rat (looking well fed) running from the vegetables to the freezers in the Tianmu Carrefour. Other customers saw it too and didn’t seem too happy about it. Minutes later I saw this:
Better have a good look at your food before putting it in the cart…[/quote]
Bwa! Someone took a bite, just trying the quality … who cares? :ohreally:
[quote=“sushi171”]This may have been a isolated case, but just in case someone sees this again:
The other day I saw a rat (looking well fed) running from the vegetables to the freezers in the Tianmu Carrefour. Other customers saw it too and didn’t seem too happy about it. Minutes later I saw this:
Better have a good look at your food before putting it in the cart…[/quote]
I regularly see rats in the Xindian Carrefour too, always between the vegetables and the bakery.
And talking about paying attention to what you put in your cart, it often happens to me to pick a pack of vegetables at Carrefour, say tomatoes, looking perfectly fine and when I open it at home the side of the vegetables touching the black foam plate is completely rotten…
[quote=“Kawa”][quote=“sushi171”]This may have been a isolated case, but just in case someone sees this again:
The other day I saw a rat (looking well fed) running from the vegetables to the freezers in the Tianmu Carrefour. Other customers saw it too and didn’t seem too happy about it. Minutes later I saw this:
Better have a good look at your food before putting it in the cart…[/quote]
I regularly see rats in the Xindian Carrefour too, always between the vegetables and the bakery.
And talking about paying attention to what you put in your cart, it often happens to me to pick a pack of vegetables at Carrefour, say tomatoes, looking perfectly fine and when I open it at home the side of the vegetables touching the black foam plate is completely rotten…[/quote]
Packing vegetables is science … many supermarkets know the art of packing them so that no one notices they are somewhat not suitable for consumption.
I once saw a worker in the bakery of Carrefour Banciao rolling dough with his forearm as he chatted on his cellphone wedged between his shoulder and his chin. Not sure if his forearm was cleaner than his hand though. At the time I was thinking, at least it’s not as bad as seeing the guy xxx street kneading dough with both hands with a cigarette in his mouth with a big fag-end drooping and about to drop.
Saw a rat last Friday at Yamazaki at main station (the one next to 星巴克). I was turning around to leave and there it was… It came running from the back of the store and with intermittent stops it (routinely!) ran up the rack where the breads are, into a hole in the ceiling.
