The 8:40 delivery into a full cooler

• Ground beef, 6°C - reject. Potentially hazardous food must arrive at 4°C or colder. You cannot document how long it was above 4°C, and 'we'll use it first' does not fix a temperature failure that happened before it reached your door.
• Frozen chicken, soft spots, -12°C surface - reject. Soft patches and a surface far above -18°C mean it partly thawed in transit. Refreezing gives you a product with unknown time in the danger zone plus a quality problem. It is not a bargain for tonight's special.
• Milk, 3°C - accept. Check dates and confirm the crates were not sitting on a hot dock.
• Fresh salmon, 2°C - accept. Well within 4°C; record the reading.
• Cans - reject the two with side-seam dents. A dent on the seam can break the hermetic seal, which is a botulism risk. A small, non-sharp dent elsewhere that does not involve the seam is acceptable; a discounted whole lot is not.

Every accepted item gets its temperature and time written on the invoice, and the supplier's missing thermometer and log are raised with them today.

Do not cram it in. An overloaded cooler loses its cold-air circulation, the thermostat reads the wrong spot, and the whole box drifts - you would be risking everything already stored to save a delivery.

Work the levers in this order:

1. Free space legitimately. Move canned goods, dry goods, and unopened beverages out to dry storage. That is where they belong anyway and it frees real shelf space.
2. Place the risky items first. Milk and salmon into the coldest, most reliable part of the walk-in. Keep raw items below cooked and ready-to-eat items, on the bottom shelf, in containers that cannot drip.
3. Fix the airflow. Move the box off the fan grille. A blocked evaporator means the 3.5°C reading is not what the corners of the cooler are doing.
4. Do not use the reach-in at 5°C. Five degrees is above 4°C - it needs repair or adjustment before it holds anything potentially hazardous.
5. If space still fails, shrink the delivery. Return part of the order, borrow cooler space from a neighbour, or 86 a menu item. What you must not do is park the milk or salmon on a prep table until the lunch rush clears.

Treat it as an active pest problem, not a housekeeping note.

1. Stop using that dry-storage area as it stands. Record what you see and where - gnaw marks, droppings, urine staining, tracks, and how close they are to product.
2. Discard the gnawed bag and the bags next to it that show damage. Rodents urinate as they travel, and you cannot wash the inside of a 20 kg sack. Any product with droppings on or in it goes too. When in doubt, throw it out, and never redirect contaminated product to 'staff meals'.
3. Clean damp, not dry. Wear gloves, wet the droppings and wipe them up rather than sweeping, which aerosolizes contaminants. Then clean and sanitize the shelves, the floor, and the shelf edges. Wash hands afterwards.
4. Protect what remains. Transfer flour and grains into sealed, pest-proof containers, keep everything at least 15 cm off the floor and away from walls, and rotate stock.
5. Close the entry points. Door sweeps, cracked walls, gaps around pipes, torn window screens. Call the pest control operator today and keep the evidence for them.

If the storage room cannot be cleaned and sealed before service, keep product out of it rather than working around the droppings.