We are a “glove use required area” for all RTE’s, but a health department variance is easily obtained with a written hand sanitation procedure in place.
We use gloves when needed, I prefer the black nitrile gloves, because typical translucent food handler gloves look like a used condom to me.
You also mentioned that your guys glove one hand. What do they do with the other hand?
One hand is gloved and used only for RTE items, (rolls, bread, etc.) the hand without a glove is for opening cooler doors, grabbing utensils, knives & such
If they grab a door handle with a gloved hand, that means it was a “Change of task” so the glove comes off, hands get washed, and a fresh glove is used.
Building a pizza is not something I’d ever consider glove use for, because it is not an RTE item, it gets baked after being built.
Now handling cooked slices or whole pies, that would warrant glove use according to most regulations if utensils cannot be properly used
I bet if I were to observe your employees, who are gloved at all times, I’d see them touching all sorts of stuff with their gloved hands that would require removal, a wash, & new gloves, but thats probably not happening, because the gloves give them a false sense of security and lessened tactile sensation.
Do they handle raw sausage with gloves? then what? use those same gloves for what?? Do you see where I am going with this. I bet if you stood back and watched your crew, you’d find multiple infractions per minute of improper glove use.
I say that glove usage has created more problems than they were supposed to fix. And there are studies to show that.
Heres a typical scenario; (I underlined the cross contamination points)
Gloved Employee grabs a raw chicken breast from the cooler, (cooler door or handle) flops it on the broiler, then that employee grabs a roll, butters it and flops it on the flat top, then he gets the lettuce and other garni on the plate, then he grabs a tongs to flip the chicken breast, all without changing gloves, the employee does not feel the slime from the chicken breast on his hands due to reduced tactile sensation, so it does not occur to them that they just cross contaminated every thing else they touched, including utensils, not another gloved employee grabs the same tongs with raw chicken slime on it, and everything they touch after that is now contaminated, did glove use stop this from happening? No, I say it encouraged or enabled it.
Too many people use gloves like they are for their own personal protection, not the protection of the customer by minimizing cross contamination.
