Q & A Table of Contents
His Dirty Hands Handle Our Food
From: Brenda, Allentown, Pennsylvania
Question: My problem relates to an employee with whom I work. He is a PhD, but he does not have the common sense to wash his hands after being in the men's room. Many of our male employees have witnessed his lack of hygiene and have reported it to our safety manager. What's worse, is this person insists on picking up food (we have lunch and snacks provided to us) with his fingers, no matter how many times we tell him to use a spoon, fork, tongs, etc. Everyone here is disgusted and grossed out, and because of how easily lawsuits are filed nowadays, we aren't sure how to address this correctly without upsetting him. We are also concerned that this bad behavior by this person could eventually cause someone to become seriously ill because of all the germs he is spreading around.
Can you give me any advice on the best course of action to take in dealing with this problem?
Response: The first question is what your safety manager has done in response to the reports of your colleague’s bad hygiene. A qualified safety manager should have been trained in how to deal with such issues. So s/he should be the first person to whom you go for advice.
A next step could be to address the issue of how food is prepared and distributed. If anyone can ‘graze’ a buffet and, in so doing, touch other people’s food with dirty hands, maybe it would solve the immediate health safety problem to have the food served in individual servings so this slob is only able to touch his own food. Another possibility is to have a sign at the start of the food line requiring everyone to use a hand-cleaning product before touching a utensil or any food due to health considerations — this should be accompanied by a supply of hand-wipes or the kind of hand cleaner one finds in hospitals right at the start of the line.
These approaches do not deal with the issue of getting the PhD to clean up his act. It could make sense for one of his male colleagues who witnesses his failure to wash in the men’s room to ask the slob why he doesn’t perform this critical step in personal hygiene. It is important to ask questions rather than simply say “Your personal habits are lousy.” Being judgmental is not nearly as likely to get your ‘slob’ to buy into the discussion as showing respect and curiosity by asking open-ended questions. People are less likely to change their attitude or behavior for negative reasons than for positive ones.
You need to find out who among the men have witnessed the PhD’s poor hygiene — and how many of them are prepared to ask a simple question “Why don’t you wash your hands afterwards?” As a practical matter, even folks who do wash in the restroom are still exposed to germs, etc. on paper, telephones, and other things they touch during the normal course of life — so it may be worthwhile to ask your safety manager to bring in a medical professional to discuss disease prevention with the staff. Given the threats of diseases spread because so many people travel, this would probably be a good thing to do irrelevant of your ‘slob’s poor personal hygiene.
Good luck,
Steve
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