To have been put off my food because of this?

[Beagle26]

AIBU to feel a bit revolted by servers handling food without washing their hands or wearing those cellophane gloves? Particularly if they are handling cash and have rings on their fingers. Went into a cafe today to treat myself to a cheese baked potato, and the guy serving me was bouncing it around gloveless, having just used the till. Couldn’t face eating the skin after that (and that’s normally my favourite part) because I was imagining all the germs. I am being a bit tongue in cheek, as I know it’s petty really, but it does gross me out.

I really couldn't care less. Some people on MN seem to be petrified of germs! Honestly, maybe you should ask to inspect the kitchen, goodness knows what is going on there.

We recently went to a National Trust cafe where the server changed her gloves between every single ice cream. As a family of 6, it was very slow, and environmentally catastrophic. Soap and hot water would have been fine. All payments were by card (so no handling money)....

Well, quite.

The stuff about touching money then touching food has the ick factor.

But the things that are likely to actually make you ill are much more subtle - incorrect fridge temperatures or lack of separation between raw and ready to eat food, for instance.

Plus not enough people have a fridge (or freezer) thermometer at home, and haven't got a clue about if it's safe. I once worked in retail and fielded a complaint about ice cream melting in the customer's freezer - obviously this was our fault. Obviously. A question about what temperature their freezer was running at was met with silence. See also: the annual news stories about Christmas turkeys going off before their use by date.

Unless you're excluding children and pets from your kitchen, doing a two stage cleaning process before you start cooking, checking your fridge temperatures, organising your fridge correctly (ready to eat at the top, raw at the bottom), and practicing impeccable separation between raw and ready to eat food, I'll guarantee you're more likely to get food poisoning at home than at an eatery. There's a good reason why people are more likely to get food poisoning at home.

I used to work in a food manufacturing factory and gloves were banned unless you had a skin condition. Gloves pick up bacteria at the same rate as skin, they also create sweat so if a tiny rip appears, contaminate the food far more than skin, especially as the skin underneath is not washed as frequently.

OP out of interest did you notice the cafe’s food hygiene score on the door?

I can't say I'd even notice something like that, let alone get upset by it 😳

Um… you do realise chefs literally never wear gloves to prepare your food in the kitchen?

Also, you realise gloves aren’t actually sterile? A pair of gloves that has handled loads of stuff all day is not more hygienic than bare hands that are frequently washed. In a medical environment, gloves are either changed after every patient, or are there to protect the staff, not the patient.

If the server is also the one handling the money, then they shouldn’t be touching the food as well. But if they’re doing nothing but serving food it’s not a problem.