ignorant damn woman is asda.........................<<argh>>

[psychomum5]

tis DD1's birthday tomorrow, she will be 15

she is having a sleep-over tonight with her three closest friends, and they want pizza and pasta for dinner........all well and good, asda do the make-your-own type so I can also have pizza, just obviously without the cheese (severe allergy issues).

anyhoo

we are waiting to have one made up, and in the meantime the lady is making up a previous customer. problem is, se makes a mistake with the topping, so instead of start afresh, she pulls off the mushrooms she was using and throws them back into the pot.......along with some of the cheese.

clearly this means the the mushrooms are now contaminated (which for most people will not be a problem, for me it could mean another 999 dash to hospital!).

My issue tho........I tell the lady and cancel my order, and she tries to insist that it is not her fault, and I should still have the damn thing.

no, the allergy is not her fault, I quite agree......what IS however is the filthy practice of taking toppings off of pizzas, throwing them back into pots, and thinking it does not matter!

It does tho!! not just to allergic people, but also the fact the the pizza she was making had pepperoni on it, the mushrooms had been put ON with the pepperoni, and then taken off................this means that vegetarians also will find that food is contaminated (or rather, they won;t as they don't realise), and that, IMVHO, is worse!!!

and the lady................completely clueless to what she is doing/has done.
!

I think unless someone has had specific training or experience of someone close to them with a severe allergy, people are clueless. I would be.

A person working in this environment should have been trained in food handling and cross contamination. The fact that she not only put the mushrooms back in the pot to be used again but also was not horrified and apologetic when you pulled her up on it, shows that she has not had training.

If this was me, I would want an apology but more importantly I would be interested to know what their training is for people working on these counters and an assurance that ths staff memeber would receive some more training as a matter of urgency.

I would definitely put it in writing to the store manager and copy it to Head Office (Chief Exec). Use a letter not email- seems more formal and means they have to reply in kind.

Mil knows ds has a nut allergy and still used the same knife for his jam that she had just used in peanut butter. She said she had washed it but I think it gave her a shock that she should be more careful and use fresh utensils, plate and chopping board.

Defo complain to asda. Not on at all.

Complain in writing. Not email, paper. For some reason head offices take properly written-down complaints much more seriously.

Quote the time and date and any descriptive details that you can remember (apart from rude ignorant bitch of course ), they should have the schedule so should be able to discipline the appropriate person. There is no way that is policy for any company - their health and safety just wouldn't allow it.

And you will have to get plain pizza bases and make up your own from now on, I think. Otherwise your next 'I'm going to die' thread will be ful of 'we told you so'.

YANBU. Complain.

I think from Asda's pov they will just say that ANY topping may be contaminated with any other topping. So what lady did in OP would be fine according to that pov. They simply can't guarantee no X-contamination.

I guess her hands (with gloves) go into the different topping.
Should be like in SubWay where they offer to change gloves when they do a veggie meal.

Some time ago, in Tesco, I bought 2 pastry whirl thingys with a creamy topping instead of icing. I ate one and my pregnant daughter had the other. I did notice that the cream tasted 'off' and so I only ate the bun. I was very ill with D & V for three days thereafter. When I inspected the pastries the following week, I noticed that the wrapped 4 in a pack ones said that the topping contained soft cheese, but the loose ones in paper cases had no such warning. I wrote a lengthy letter to Tesco pointing out how many people are lactose intolerant as well as people like me who can have milk and cream but cannot stomach cheese, sour cream or yogurt. I explained how carefully I check labels but that I did not expect to find cheese on a sweet pastry. I have had neither acknowledgement nor reply and I see the offending items are still on sale, although they are now marked as 'discontinued'?????

I also get quite stroppy in sandwich shops when they make my cheese free sandwich on a board covered in grated cheese, or restaurants who seem to think we need a sprinkle of cheese on everything from cauliflour to soup. I can suffer for days from imbibing one cheese and onion crisp!

Did you get her name psychomum5? Also note the time/date etc.

This has put me off using Asda deliver, which is being offered in my area as we don't have a store nearby.

That sounds like what I have Granny22 (though yoghurt and sour cream are okay, but I don't like them and never eat enough of them to know if I have a mild problem) - I thought it was quite rare, does it have a name?

Will have to watch out for those Also mascarpone - I didn't realise that was cheese for ages and nearly got caught out.

YANBU. I hope your DD has a lovely birthday.

Not the same and not as dangerous but annoying (for me). I was at Tescos having breakfast (oh yum). They have a veggie option. The bloke was using the same tongs for everything. I am not that prescious about touching meat (have to cook it for family anyway) but I am not keen on having meaty sausage grease dripped all over my food .

I pulled the guy up and he wouldnt have it! He was insisting that there were two sets of tongs. Yes there were but he wasnt using them.

Just read my post and realised I am turning into my mother

peanutbutterkid, yes, any topping may be contamintated, but between dealing with customers they should change gloves, and also, they should never mix toppings nor throw back in unwanted toppings........EVER.

I am severely allergic (anaphylactic style of which I have suffered two in the last two weeks!), but even I do not ensure a completely allergy-free house......unfair on my children and DH......so I can obviously cope with a teensy amount of risk, but the risk the lady was posing is 1), irresponsible towards those with allergies/dietry restrictions, and 2), smacking of filthy practice!

trillian...........I will indeed be making my own from now on!

chegirl, she is so far, and is not even here yet!!

Well good luck guys, but you are going to get nowhere. Asda simply can't take responsibility for appearing to prevent X-contamination, it's a liability risk, they won't even want to try (changing gloves each time, etc.)

report her thats bad service

so peanutbutterkid, in your opinion then, no one should ever do anything as no one will ever listen yes, do I understand you correctly??

if everyone took that attitude the country would be in a poor state indeed!

oh, whats that I hear everyone say, it is already....yes, cos some idiots think that it is never worth doing anything cos people simply don;t care enough.

If one person gets the message that throwing food back into pots is disgusting and potentially dangerous, that that olne person will tell someone else, and so on and so forth........and eventually we have a good chance of people caring again. but follow your advice peantubutter, and the possible outcome is that I (or someone else) could actually die...........or is that the only outcome that will make people take notice.

you are probably right, they probably won;t do anything much, but for me to ignore it makes me agreeable to that type of behaviour, and for you to advise ignoring makes you in fact a tad worse.

unless you think it IS ok of course, and in fact do that type of thing yourself???

Well said Psycho

Do you think there may be a asda worker on this thread

It's just only the affect on poor allergy sufferers (who frankly have to trust others everyday when they eat out or buy pre-prepared food) but for all of us.

If this person has been poorly trained, it suggests that training across the board could be in-adequate. So buying cooked meat from the deli-counter could lead to food poisoning for anyone if it has been contaminated by someone not changing gloves or using utensils that have come into contact with raw meat.

It also begs questions about general hygiene standards across the store.

ps, Happy birthday to your dd1 Pyscho. Tis my birthday today too (wish I could say I was 15 as well)

desperate, I had not even thought of the poisoning risk........gets worse and worse the possible implications.

I am going to write to them (seeing as I do think that a letter will show seriousness), but I am actually also going to email them and link them this thread. something needs addressing about attitudes regarding training and risk, and this is a good place to start IMO

happy birthday desperate

My Mum is allergic to mushrooms so if she she had a pizza with mushrooms removed from it, she'd still end up being quite ill albeit they were only on there for seconds. It's not on - apart from basic food hygiene rules.

I hope your complaint is taken seriouusly.

I think even if the counter girl does not know anything about allergies, once the customer has explained the danger of cross contamination she certainly should NOT have insisted that OP shopuld still have the pizza!

I do personnaly think your complaint will be taken seriously if only for the fear of being sued should anything happen to one of their customer that could have benn avoided by very simple measures and basic training in food hygiene.

I'd want guidelines about things being scrapped back into pots etc because of ordinary hygiene and not mixing stuff in that might be less fresh etc.

Thinking about it though anyone with a severe allergy should be making their own food at home from fresh basic ingrediants. Even if you demand that food preparation take into account allergies there are too many variations to keep track of.

Change gloves between touching meat and veg? possible though time comsuming. How about between every ingrediant since the next customer might want mushrooms but be allergic to sweetcorn.

Not to mention ingrediants which themselves might have been contaminated before they got there.

A freshly scrubbed work area which you have prepared and ingrediants which you selected are the only safe way.

I noticed in Tesco the other day that the Deli says there is a risk of x-contamination as items may get mixed . However I think the shop assistant was completely in the wrong to throw back the toppings as thats just horrible food practice.

Alternatively they could use tongs for each item instead of their hands?

I almost wrote "tongues"! Not sure that would have helped!