# Sink Contamination?



## josh88 (Nov 1, 2018)

Saw a picture of someone filling up a paint container with water in a drinking fountain today, and people raised a fuss because it puts a chemical near a "food source". Same goes for washing dishes and hands in the same sink, and that a health inspector would ding you real fast if they knew you were washing paint containers and dishes in the same place. None of these are a problem for me but its news to me, I get it with a proffessional kitchen or doing it in a school kitchen, or somewhere actually putting out food for people, but I've never had a health inspector go anywhere near a theatre space (with the exception of a catering kitchen and our bars). Are the FDA rules really applied that broadly? Or has it just never come up in my life till now?


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## Amiers (Nov 1, 2018)

Depends how picky your inspector is.

Technically no you should *not* (thanks Ron) have paint containers near food/water source.

However, if you saw what people did to them and knew nobody would ever use them.

Also with the way they have restructured how paint is made you can almost drink it now a days.


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## gafftapegreenia (Nov 1, 2018)

Personally I’d be more concerned about the quality of water coming out of that fountain than a little essence of paint.


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## josh88 (Nov 1, 2018)

Right I assume most water is contaminated anyway, easier to think everything is working to kill me. I just had never seen such an intense reaction to a picture of someone just watering down some paint in a handheld container (not even washing paint into a fountain). I absolutely get why, and like I said I don't do it because we have dedicated sinks, it just blew my mind that this would ever in reality be an issue someone would find or call you out on/ could be enforced as I've never heard of an inspector anywhere outside of the kitchens/obvious areas for a food inspector to be.


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## Amiers (Nov 2, 2018)

Boils down to people being bored and dicky. Better this then them snooping for other things I guess.


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## bobgaggle (Nov 2, 2018)

kind of a ridiculous thing to get mad about. I don't think I've ever seen a drinking fountain spout get cleaned/sanitized. I mean, I generally let the water run for a few seconds before I take a drink, figuring the flowing water will somewhat clean off the last person's slobber. I would have no problem following the guy who filled up his paint can....


Also, what's the deal with washing dishes and hands in the same sink? I got yelled at cause I washed a dish in the "hand sink" when I worked at restaurant. YOU USE YOUR HANDS TO WASH THE DISHES! Sure a lot of times they make you wear the big rubber gloves. great. But you use your ungloved hands to grab the gloves in order to put them on. Are you supposed to put on the gloves, go to the hand washing sink, wash the gloves, then go wash dishes in the dish washing sink? Its one of those rules that sounds good in a government office, but then you apply some logic and it all falls apart...


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## RickR (Nov 2, 2018)

Health inspectors wish for medical level sanitation. Home level makes them panic. Restaurants try to live in the space between regulations, profit, and speed.

There are restaurants I won't eat at due to kitchen conditions that drive employees to quit.


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## macsound (Nov 2, 2018)

Having been someone who had to spec and regulate commercial kitchens, it's less about contaminating the thing you're using than contaminating the thing NEXT TO the thing you're using. Like aerosolized pee on bathroom toothbrushes. 
So hand sink's proximity to the dishwashing sink or having the chemicals stored above the drying rack.
I don't see a problem using the same sink for multiple purposes, but if you splashed some paint on the drinking fountain, at some point you'd think, "well how did paint get in the drinking fountain in the first place."


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## Chase P. (Nov 2, 2018)

In addition to theater work, I managed restaurants and coffee shops for years.

Health inspectors will actually shut down a facility for doing dishes in a hand sink, or for doing something like storing a tray of food on top of a closed trash can, which may be why bobgaggle got yelled at for using it off label. They're remarkably inflexible about even the smallest things. It used to drive me crazy, until I simultaneously got giardia and amoebiasis from a food truck.

Drinking fountains aren't regulated by health inspectors, beyond basic building and plumbing code. I wish they were, the ones with the really low flow seem like you almost have to touch your lips to the disgusting thing to get a sip of water. And it's even more frustrating knowing most modern ones have a way to adjust that flow, but the building staff haven't done it.

Between what people have on their hands when they press that button, and where their own lips have been, paint is probably the least of my concerns. The water bottle that someone is filling from that fountain is probably worse than the water coming out of it.

And don't even start me on ice machines. So dirty.


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## mbrown3039 (Nov 2, 2018)

Chase P. said:


> It used to drive me crazy, until I simultaneously got giardia and amoebiasis from a food truck.



Damn, I was just headed out to a food-truck roundup for dinner.....I think I'll just have a sandwich instead. 


And don't even start me on ice machines. So dirty. [/QUOTE said:


> A few years back I was installing a sound system in a lounge that was re-opening after being closed about three years. The manager, who was a friend, was in the rack room with me and asked me to go to the kitchen and get the drop tray for the ice machine out of the dishwasher (seems it hadn't been cleaned since the day the lounge was last open and the hotel employees had been using ice out of it that whole time -- it was NASTY, lol) as his hands were dirty. I walked into the kitchen and saw the head Chef talking to a woman in the corner and thought nothing of it. I opened the dishwasher, slid the dish tray out, grabbed the ice tray and started to head off when the woman said "excuse me, but who are YOU?" I replied, "I'm Mike -- who are YOU?" And she replied "I'm the Health Inspector -- could I see your Health Card, please?" D'OH!
> 
> She closed the kitchen for 24 hours and made them scrub everything I had touched.


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## RonHebbard (Nov 2, 2018)

Chase P. said:


> In addition to theater work, I managed restaurants and coffee shops for years.
> 
> Health inspectors will actually shut down a facility for doing dishes in a hand sink, or for doing something like storing a tray of food on top of a closed trash can, which may be why bobgaggle got yelled at for using it off label. They're remarkably inflexible about even the smallest things. It used to drive me crazy, until I simultaneously got giardia and amoebiasis from a food truck.
> 
> ...


 *@Chase P*. Quoting you: "*And don't even start me on ice machines. So dirty*." 
You mean like when the crew bring in a disgustingly dirty cardboard case of 24 from the bed of someone's pick-up and stash it out of sight on top of the ice in the ice machine's hopper to chill for after the takeout?? How many other questionable containers have you found tucked out of sight in an ice machine's hopper?? 
As an aside you sound like you'll appreciate. I was on the original crew of a brand new venue when it opened in the fall of 1973. An outside vending machine contractor had installed approximately half a dozen vending machines in the enclosed truck dock gobbling up most of the available utility duplex receptacles. As soon as an FOH manager was hired he was appalled to learn there were not only any ice machines anywhere in the FOH at any of the four FOH levels but there was no ice machine anywhere in the twin venue complex. The city had a contract in place with an ice vendor to supply ice WEEKLY thinking a week's supply could be stored in the refrigerated garbage room adjacent to the two original truck docks. As I'm sure you understand, refrigerated garbage rooms are not refrigerated to freezing temperatures thus I'm sure you can imagine how well this plan worked. 
*The somewhat abridged version:* 
The house manager purchased an ice machine. 
The crew muscled the vending machines and created space for the ice machine. 
One of the part time crew was a fitter (not to be confused with a plumber) and he ran potable water to the ice machine. 
As one of two IBEW licensed electricians it fell to me to organize power for the ice machine. There was a choice of two 120 / 208 volt panels nearby, one was normal power and the other was fed via a Robonic (Brand) auto-transfer switch from the building's V12 diesel 347 / 600 volt three phase backup generator. Since both panels were equidistant and both had spare breakers, I chose to power the ice machine from the generator supported panel. The first time we had a major storm and power outage, the generator proved its worth. Not only were we able to have lights in our lobbies, power our sound systems, dimmers and run our performances BUT WE HAD ICE for the bars as well. 
You don't want to see an ice machine that's melted to a mass of water then FROZE SOLID a few hours after power has been restored. *@Chase P*. I'm sure you can appreciate this. 
Toodleoo! 
Ron Hebbard


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## Chase P. (Nov 2, 2018)

mbrown3039 said:


> She closed the kitchen for 24 hours and made them scrub everything I had touched.



I'm surprised she wasn't delighted that literally any part of any ice machine had been introduced to a dishwasher by literally anyone!

Frankly, I think she was being silly. Plenty of sales reps, delivery people, repair people, etc. enter kitchens all the time. As long as you weren't preparing food, there's very little to worry about. Many municipalities don't even require individual permits to work in kitchens, just for the facility itself. I'll bet she was being tetchy because you dissed her by not knowing she was the all-powerful Inspector.


RonHebbard said:


> thinking a week's supply could be stored in the refrigerated garbage room adjacent to the two original truck docks.



Since ice will absorb flavors and odors from the surrounding air, that seems like a terrible solution. Garbage and diesel exhaust tainted cocktails!

At least you were at a venue that had qualified staff to resolve the issue. So many times it's a workaround that becomes the permanent solution, bad as it may be.


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## josh88 (Nov 2, 2018)

Apparently in missouri fountains are inspected. #themoreyouknow


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## TimMc (Nov 8, 2018)

RonHebbard said:


> *@Chase P*. Quoting you: "*And don't even start me on ice machines. So dirty*."
> You mean like when the crew bring in a disgustingly dirty cardboard case of 24 from the bed of someone's pick-up and stash it out of sight on top of the ice in the ice machine's hopper to chill for after the takeout?? How many other questionable containers have you found tucked out of sight in an ice machine's hopper??
> As an aside you sound like you'll appreciate. I was on the original crew of a brand new venue when it opened in the fall of 1973. An outside vending machine contractor had installed approximately half a dozen vending machines in the enclosed truck dock gobbling up most of the available utility duplex receptacles. As soon as an FOH manager was hired he was appalled to learn there were not only any ice machines anywhere in the FOH at any of the four FOH levels but there was no ice machine anywhere in the twin venue complex. The city had a contract in place with an ice vendor to supply ice WEEKLY thinking a week's supply could be stored in the refrigerated garbage room adjacent to the two original truck docks. As I'm sure you understand, refrigerated garbage rooms are not refrigerated to freezing temperatures thus I'm sure you can imagine how well this plan worked.
> *The somewhat abridged version:*
> ...




Dirty as in "nobody cleans the ice-making parts, delivery chutes or the bottom of the bin and they grow a science project-worthy gooey black mold".

If you want really disgusting, look at the soda dispenser nozzles and the little "well" those dispensers store in...


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## Jay Ashworth (Nov 11, 2018)

I would like to state for the record that last year, when a cast member put a bagged sandwich in our breakroom ice maker the last day of a run last year (happily, *right* before 2 weeks dark), we scooped out 80 lbs of ice, and sanitized the entire bin. Let it dry and rinsed/wiped before turning it back on.

Now, that said, if you don't want your health inspector chasing around your building looking at shop sinks, give em one or two minors to waggle a finger at you for in the kitchen.


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