A Vomiting Cook, a Blocked Hand Sink, and Three Dozen Sandwiches
At 11:35 a.m. on a Saturday, with the dining room full, a line cook leaves the grill, vomits in the employee restroom, and returns to the line. He tells the person in charge it was just something he ate and asks to finish his shift because the kitchen is short-staffed. In the previous hour he made three dozen grab-and-go deli sandwiches with bare hands and wiped his hands on a cloth towel after each one. The towel is still on the prep table. The restaurant's hand sink is blocked by a stack of sheet pans, so employees have been using the vegetable prep sink, which is also where lettuce is washed. Two servers have called in sick with diarrhea this week. The manager must decide about the cook, the food, and the kitchen before the dinner rush.
1. What must the person in charge do about the cook right now, and when may he return to work?
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Exclude him from food operations immediately. Vomiting and diarrhea are the two symptoms the Food Code treats as automatic exclusion triggers, whatever the cook believes caused them. The likely agent here is norovirus, shed in vomit and feces, with a very low infectious dose. He may not return until at least 24 hours after the last episode, and 48 hours if norovirus is diagnosed or suspected. If a physician confirms norovirus, Salmonella Typhi, Shigella, E. coli O157:H7, or hepatitis A, the person in charge must report it to the regulatory authority. Do not let him finish the shift and do not move him to dishwashing: exclusion covers any work involving food, utensils or food-contact surfaces.
2. Which food and surfaces are affected, and what must be discarded or cleaned?
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The three dozen sandwiches were handled bare-handed by a vomiting food worker within the previous hour and receive no kill step, so discard all of them, along with the cloth towel and any ready-to-eat food the towel touched. Clean and sanitize the prep table, slicer, knife handles and the towel's contact surfaces at the correct concentration. Clear the sheet pans from the hand sink and restore it before service: blocked access is exactly why staff moved to the vegetable sink, and that is a separate violation. Washing lettuce in a sink used for handwashing puts norovirus directly onto a food served raw, so the lettuce from that sink should also be discarded or, at minimum, the batch is unsafe to serve.
3. The cook later says a clinic diagnosed norovirus. What additional obligations does the manager have?
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Notify the local regulatory authority, follow their exclusion guidance, and cooperate with any interview of the sick cook and the two sick servers. Continue exclusion for 48 hours past symptom resolution, and screen the rest of the staff for vomiting, diarrhea, jaundice, sore throat with fever and infected cuts. Clean and sanitize restrooms and high-touch surfaces, and review handwashing with everyone. Document the event: names, dates, symptoms, actions taken. Also address the staffing pattern that led the cook to hide his illness. A regulation cannot fix a workplace where people work while vomiting because they cannot afford to stay home.