To report this cleaner?

[queensonia]

My daughter has just got a job in a pub restaurant. Part of her job is cleaning and laundry and she has been trailing the regular (senior) cleaner to learn the ropes. She came home today horrified, because after watching the other woman scrub the toilet bowls and urinals with a micro-fibre cloth, she then chucked the dirty cloth into the washing machine along with all the restaurant's tea-towels and other kitchen cloths as well as all the other cleaning cloths that she'd been cleaning the basins and furniture with. She said it would be OK at 90 degrees but my daughter isn't convinced and neither am I. We certainly wouldn't do this at home, and you'd expect a restaurant to have higher standards of hygiene. My daughter also realised that this woman has been using the same rubber gloves that have been down the toilet every day for the entire week (and presumably before that as well) without ever washing or disinfecting them. This woman has worked there for years and has apparently always done this. My daughter wants to bring this to somebody's attention, but knows it will cause trouble. She says that the guy who runs the pub seems pretty clueless about domestic matters and probably wouldn't care anyway. We looked on the Food Standards website to see what the official guidelines are and the idea of washing toilet cloths and tea-towels together hasn't even occurred to them, because they have nothing to say on the subject. On the days when she works on her own, my daughter's plan is to use disposable cleaning wipes for the toilets (which she'd have to buy herself because the pub doesn't use them). Should she just keep her mouth shut? Is anybody else disgusted by this or are we over-reacting?

What is wrong with people here? OF COURSE this is bad from a health safety standpoint.

Strange, because I'm also "highly qualified" in food safety and know there is no risk here.

Can you please explain why?
Washing cloths at 90°, for a full cycle, with detergent will get rid of dirt and germs. What's the health and safety issue that FSA aren't aware of?

i hope the OP never needs to visit a hospital - everythere gets washed together too - with whatever bodily excretions on them - at 90 degrees, that is fine.

I am a cleaner.

Good Practice is to use colour coded cloths for different areas. This is so the same cloth isn’t inadvertently used in, for example, a kitchen right after being used in a bathroom because the red cloths can only be used in the bathroom.
However, there are no guidelines that state different coloured cloths should be laundered separately.

HSE guidelines advise soiled laundry should be washed at least 80 degrees - soiled being anything that has been used and may be contaminated with blood, faeces, urine etc such as that in a hospital or care home.

Clean laundry should be stored separately from soiled laundry.

So, unless they’re wiping the loo then doing the kitchen with the same cloth or using the same gloves in the different areas, they don’t seem to be breaking any guidelines.

There won’t be any bacteria after a 90 degree wash. It santises it.

The gloves is grim though unless she’s sanitising them in between. If not then it should be separate gloves for toilet and food/drink prep areas.

hmm.. although it might be fine at 90 degrees, the idea of washing a cloth which has been used to scrub s* stains off a loo with kitchen cloths is gross. Not difficult to have a cloth for scrubbing just the loos is it?

Whe I worked in hotels we had seperate cleaning stations for seperate areas. So gloves for kitchen were only used in the kitchen. Not sure about washing though as there was only one machine.

The point of laundering cloths is to remove dirt and bacteria. When you get your head around that you can think about things like "what temperature kills bacteria?"; most are killed at 65 degrees and remaining fairly harmless ones at 80 degrees. So, washing temperature at 90 degrees killed ALL the bacteria, no tummy bugs. Move along to the dirt; detergent will remove most of it although grease from kitchens is most tricky; unless the washing machine is broken or detergent forgotten, the wee/poo will certainly be washed out.

Gloves should be cleaned; given they are usually touching a range of bleach and other cleaning agents this doesn't take much effort. I would guess germphobic daughter simply doesn't notice the quick rinse. Remember that the bleach being used will have killed the germs, and that the gloves are mostly touching cloths rather than surfaces.

Your job as a mum is not too see your DD being unreasonable to the point of hysteria about germs and just agree, your job is to be helping her to be reasonable, and where there's confusion help her to understand hygiene. Is there a calm person available who you could each go to when you get overwhelmed like this?

When I'm staying in a hotel, I always rinse the cups out with boiling water before I use them. (I was a chambermaid in my teens and know what goes on!)

I have a stash of microfibres cloths that are used for everything, yesterday my daughter cleaned her car with one.
Some of these clothes are over 15yo. They get washed at 60 degrees once a week.
None of us have died yet.

Me too. I think people assume the cups are washed in the kitchen but we gave them a squirt of cleaning fluid rinsed in bathroom sink and dried with a used pillowcase from the bed. They had no cleaning cloths and no way to wash or dry them, linen was rented and delivered.

This is fair. Hotel room cups and toothbrush mugs are unsanitary. If we want to use them, I swipe restaurant ones that get properly cleaned.

@Lovelysummerdays @GRex We had a huge list of rooms to clean and very little time. We were expected to change all the bed linen and towels in every room, dust everywhere (including curtain rails etc) and do all the usual cleaning, hoovering and tidying. It was exhausting!

Thank you all for your comments. Happy - and relieved - to accept that my daughter and I have been completely unreasonable to worry about this and that any germs will be killed stone dead at 90 degrees. I think she was just overwhelmed by the absolute horror of the men's pub toilet after a busy Saturday night! I think we've also learnt from the other hotel staff who've chipped in that the only health hazard she's likely to encounter are the mugs in the bedrooms. 😀

I can't believe you're not reporting this hygiene breach to Environmental Health. That is utterly disgusting, but sure take the advice of the majority who likely have no qualifications in Food Safety, and totally disregard the advice from someone highly qualified in it.

What hygiene breach has there been @ReadingSoManyThreads?

Not keeping toilet/bathroom cleaning cloths/equipment separated from food cleaning equipment. These should be colour coded and kept separated.

Bathroom cloths that potentially contain bodily fluids and faecal matter should not be combined, even when washing, with food cloths/towels.

The people who see no harm in this are batshit and quite frankly disgusting.

Nope.

The training body that awarded you these "qualifications" should be reported.

Exactly, and disposable gloves for cleaning. What a nonsense.

Better report all qualified Environmental Health Officers then.

No, most of them understand how washing works.