After reading Michele Fleury’s skewed perspective on dining hall cleanliness (‘Dining halls show no glove for cleanliness,’ Nov. 17, pg. 6), I wanted to personally spit in her burrito, and to say the least, I felt personally offended.
As a student worker at Myles Standish Hall’s dining hall, I take every precaution necessary to ensure that my workstation is sanitary, and I can say no less for my co-workers. However, Fleury feels that the dining halls are unclean, and that the use of gloves does nothing more than promote unsanitary conditions.
Food safety is a very serious issue in the dining hall, and not taken lightly by anyone. I change my gloves often, and if a student requests that I change my gloves (which is a common request by vegetarians), I will do so ungrudgingly. My co-workers change their gloves often as well, and take the utmost care to not contaminate the food. I don’t know if Fleury has realized this, but the workers eat the same food in the dining hall as the students do.
It is unfortunate that Fleury has had a bad experience in the dining hall, but it is no excuse to attack all dining hall workers at such a base level. Fleury writes, ‘I have never seen such slow, deliberate and yet seriously incompetent workers.’ If anyone is being slow or deliberate in the dining hall it is to ensure that you have a quality meal on your plate. As for incompetence, the only incompetence that I see is Fleury’s inability to understand that everyone in the dining hall works very hard to see that the students are safe and happy. I would expect this type of acknowledgment from someone who claims to have worked in food service for more than three years, as Fleury has herself claimed.
I am left with one thing to say: Quit your bitching. You obviously have no idea what it takes to work in food service. The dining halls at Boston University are as clean as they come, and the employees all take their jobs very seriously. If you have a problem with sanitation, take it up with a dining hall manager, rather than make insulting remarks about the individuals that give it their all everyday to make sure that your ungrateful self can get a hot plate of food for dinner.
Kayla Burnham CAS ’05
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