Telling her not to let her child touch all the food?

[aaronslands]

I'm currently on holiday and this morning went down for breakfast
It's a buffet breakfast.
I'm stood behind a lady and her daughter (probably 6 ) and she's walking around touching the sausages then she touched the bacon
The mum is saying "oh do you want that?"
The daughter says no and she walks on (leaving the food she touched )
After the 5th time she did it
I said "excuse me ,I don't mean to sound rude but it's not very hygienic to let her touch food if she's not going to put it on her plate-it's a bit off putting for other people"

She looked at me -said nothing and kept walking

Was I in the wrong?

No idea what kind of hotels you frequent... I have never, EVER seen a buffet where guests help themselves with their hands. No doubt you have. Very glad to avoid those venues in future.

I makes me want COVID rules back again.

That’s disgusting and the exact reason why I hate buffets 🤢

Not really the same thing but similar…

Many years ago I was in the big Tesco at Beckton and turned into the aisle where they sold sugar to see a woman using the pallet of sugar bags to change her son’s nappy. No changing mat, just plonked the poor little chap straight on the bags of sugar.

I went and got a member of staff and we waited while she calmly finished the job (what else can you do!) by which time the Manager had arrived to ‘have a word’ and arrange removal of the sugar.

I have no idea what happened as I had to get back to work but the most amazing thing was that people were wandering past while she was doing this and they hardly reacted.

I told a lady off once for squeezing all the bread rolls to go with the soup at a self service cafe. She was very annoyed and seemed to think she was entirely reasonable. I’m a teacher so can’t help myself haha!

You aren't wrong. I would have addressed the child directly.

The woman needed to be told. That is vile. Are some people so blinded by their desire to onset to their children’s wants that they lose track of decent behaviour?

I see it plenty, ranging from indulgent smiles at children running around screaming, to the woman on the train who soothingly stroked her child’s hair as she said “I hate that lady’s coat mummy. It’s so ugly,” at the top of her lungs (about me, after I’d given her some of my child’s stickers and biscuits), to the mother from my kid’s nursery who claims to be a gentle parent and when her oik son threw a rock at my toddler, praised his throwing ability.

Yeah I'm sure you would have said that 😐

@crumbsneverdid , TBH seeing anyone wasting food like that drives me mad - many adults are just as bad.

YANBU

I was in a cafe recently and my phone rang whilst food was being served, I answered as I was waiting for the doctors to call with an appointment time.

In the seconds I was distracted reaching into my bag a woman on the next table reached over and grabbed my cutlery and started using it to mime to my child how to eat spaghettini properly my twirling it on the fork. She raised it right into her open mouth!

I cut the call very short with, ‘sorry, child emergency’ and told her not to. She put the cutlery back next to my plate and told me she was only showing them how to eat it correctly. I told my child they could eat it with a knife and fork if they found it easier, asked her to focus on her meal and got new cutlery. She called me ‘uppity’ multiple times.

Really, it’s not just kids and parents. She was a fully functioning woman of around 50 who thought it was acceptable to take my cutlery and spray her spit and breath on it holding it in her opened mouth as she spoke. To the extent she then got very cross with me.

(Before anyone jumps in, my 6 year old wasn’t using their hands or smearing it round their face. They’d just used their knife and fork to cut a piece they could put on a fork, they’d had two mouthfuls like this and were happy. They are at the fine motor stage of twirling yet)

Was in a Harvester and watched a boy of about 9 lick the serving spoon and put it back in the mayonnaise. I told him it was unacceptable and told staff. Few minutes later his mum comes over and tells me I shouldn’t be telling her son off. When I told her what he had done and that I hadn’t told him off, just told him it was unacceptable her reply - that’s a lie he doesn’t even like mayonnaise!

Yeah, depends on where the child’s fingers had been before they were on the food !!

That's totally gross and making me rethink my weekly purchase of a pastry in Marks. Though the ones I buy are high up and not reachable by small kids. I may be wrong though I now actually sanitise my hands before taking a bag and lifting one with the tongs. I notice that their bread is no longer wrapped which I'm not happy with. Some of which is low down.
The person who lifted the salad with bare hands would have totally grossed me out.

We were staying in a nice hotel in London and a woman picked up a croissant off the buffet, tore it in half and put a half back 🤷‍♀️

Yuk you are in the right

Worse things happen at sea. Your food will likely have been touched by human hands several times. Not everything has to be perfectly sterile to be safe. More MN hygiene virtue signalling.

No you weren’t in the wrong, she was.

YANBU x 1000! Well done for telling her - maybe it’ll make her think, next time. Kids don’t always understand these things and sometimes they will touch things without thinking, but it’s the parent’s job to teach them not to. Sometimes kids are a bit too quick to stop, but if my kids ever did that I’d pick up the food they touched and say “well we have to take it now because you’ve touched it” and I would tell them not to touch anything again.

I am all for reducing plastic use and re-use so much in my house. But I wish they would bring back wrapping the bread in the bakery section. I still buy bread/ crossants when I go to lidl but I try to get ones towards the back. During covid everything was already packaged. To be fair you put it in a bag yourself anyway so it's not like it's creating more waste.

I have wondered how, with uncovered buffets, one can be sure that flies have not been on the food!

That said it’s not a good thing to allow children to touch food because they have less awareness of hand hygiene than adults. It’s one of the reasons I always choose adults only cruises.

No, you're not "brutally honest". You're seemingly incapable of being assertive without being rude and aggressive.

YADNBU op.

I was once in Tesco, looking at their fancy olive pick and mix and contemplating getting some, when a child grabbed a handful, and his mum said "no no, PUT THAT BACK!" and HE DID. Yeah, I'll stick to the prepacked ones thanks.

OMG!! 🤢🤢🤢 what the fuck is actually wrong with people?????

That is just such weird behaviour!!