Saturday evening walk: five findings, one manager, 2,300 customers
At a 6,000 sq ft supermarket in Gurugram, the store manager does a Saturday evening walk with 2,300 customers in the store that day. Five findings: (a) the hot-snack counter is frying samosas in oil that is dark and smoking; the counter staff say it was last changed 'three or four days ago'; (b) a food-handling staff member at that counter has a cut index finger covered with a cloth plaster; (c) a mop bucket and a wet floor beside the dairy chiller with no warning sign; (d) fourteen empty plastic crates stacked in front of the rear fire exit; (e) rodent droppings near the grain bins at the back. There is no written cleaning checklist; staff say the supervisor checks 'when he remembers'. The store trades until 11 pm and reopens at 8 am.
1. Rank the five findings in the order they must be dealt with, and justify the ranking with stated criteria.
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Criteria to state first: severity of harm if it happens, likelihood of it happening today, and how quickly the fix can be made. Ranking without criteria is guesswork.
- Blocked fire exit (d). Highest possible consequence - multiple casualties in a panic egress, and 14 crates narrow the exit exactly when 2,300 people are inside. It costs two minutes and needs no purchase. Clear it before anything else.
- Wet floor with no sign (c). The most likely injury in the building right now: a slip on a wet patch in a busy aisle. Fix immediately - dry mop, cone, and find the source (chiller leak or mop bucket placement), not just the sign.
- Open cut on a food handler (b). A direct contamination route into ready-to-eat hot food. It is not an instant injury but it is a direct route into what customers eat, so it is settled before the next batch: waterproof coloured (detectable) plaster plus glove, or move the worker off food handling.
- Dark, smoking frying oil (a). A genuine health hazard from repeatedly reheated oil, but it builds over days rather than minutes. Change the oil at the next batch break, filter daily and set a change cycle with a written log.
- Droppings near grain (e). Serious, indicating an active infestation and possibly contaminated stock, but the resolution is days, not minutes. Start tonight by isolating and inspecting the grain in that zone, covering bins and calling pest control.
A defensible answer may swap 1 and 2; what earns marks is a stated criterion.
2. For the fire exit and the wet floor, describe the specific control and say who owns it.
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Rear fire exit
- Control: mark a clear zone (about 1 m) on the floor in front of the door, paint 'KEEP CLEAR', and designate a crate-return point elsewhere - crates will reappear unless they have a home. The door must open freely from the inside at all times and the exit route must be lit.
- Owner: the shift supervisor, checked and initialled at opening, mid-afternoon and closing; the housekeeping team clears crates as they are emptied, not at end of day.
- Why it matters: an exit blocked by 14 crates is not a housekeeping problem, it is a life-safety and legal problem. It is also the cheapest fix on the list, which is why leaving it is indefensible.
Wet floor
- Control: a cone is not a control, it is a warning. The control is to remove the source, dry mop, sign the area, and re-check within 10 minutes. If the chiller is leaking, place a tray and raise a maintenance job the same shift.
- Owner: the person who creates the hazard cleans it immediately ('clean as you go'), with the duty manager accountable for the dairy zone.
- Why: mopping only at closing means the hazard exists exactly when the store is fullest.
3. Design a daily hygiene and safety check that staff will actually use, and explain how to make it stick.
Read the worked answer
Design rules: one page, no more than ten items, tick boxes for opening, mid-day and closing, and every item phrased as something you can see, not a vague instruction.
Example items:
- Fire exit clear, 1 m zone visible - initials, three times a day.
- Floor dry in dairy, chiller tray empty - initials.
- Fryer oil: date changed, time and initials on the fryer log; discard cycle written on the wall.
- Food handlers: no open cuts, plaster plus glove if any, clean apron, nails trimmed.
- Grain area: bins covered, no droppings, pest-control visit date recorded.
- Dustbin lids closed, hand-wash sink stocked with soap and paper towels.
Making it stick:
- Keep it short. A 40-item form gets signed without being read; ten items get checked.
- Attach it to the shift, not to a person. It is initialled at shift change, so an unchecked item is visible to the next shift.
- Manager reviews and signs daily, and once a week walks the store with staff for ten minutes to look at the same items together.
- Act on what it reports. If staff report the chiller leaking twice and nothing happens, they stop filling the form - the form's credibility is the whole control.
- Train by demonstration, not by notice. Show a new joiner how to change oil and how to cover a cut, and record the training.