How to Win Friends and Influence People…

Taken in Austin, Texas on July 3, 2006 while visiting Tara. Click here to see the photograph larger and in its full glory, or click the photo to go to Flickr and read the rest of the story behind the shot.

We went to the Gee’s Bend exhibit today, which was quite cool. It was really interesting to see the quilts in person, and you could immediately see the influence that they had on the women at Mason-Dixon Knitting and how the log cabin blankets featured in their book came to be. (I’m sorry, I can never keep Kay and Ann straight. I blame it on the three letter names. I think it was Ann that went to see the exhibit in New York in 2003, but there is a 50% chance that I am wrong.) If you love quilts for their perfection and fancy fabrics, these may not be your thing. The beauty of these quilts is more in the story that they tell, the hardships of their life and the “make do” attitude that they had. It was a really interesting taste of American history.

After we toured the exhibit and the gift shop (whee!), we went to the restaurant downstairs. The manager, who had been working in another area, came over to take our orders. As we ordered our drinks, he scooped the glass through the ice to fill the glass.

This is like nails on a chalkboard to me, but about a million times worse.

So then he did it again to Katy Blogless’ drink. Then he did it to mine.

I seriously couldn’t take it anymore. I said, “You shouldn’t do that.”

He gave me a rather puzzled look. I said, “You shouldn’t scoop the ice with the glass. You’re handling money, and it is dirty, and then you are dragging the glass through the ice and that isn’t good.”

As he admitted it was wrong, poor Katy was getting grossed out just thinking about it. Katy is a relatively calm person. She is not the type to make waves over this. Plus her glass was one of the ones he just did this to – so it was totally grossing her out. She kept telling me to stop. Just stop. Don’t talk about it. Poor Katy, I didn’t mean to upset her.

But really – did you see the Dateline special? (Or 48 Hours, or whoever.) It was all about how ice is the “non-food” to most people working in the food industry, and so many cases of food poisoning are actually from the ice. They tested the ice that they collected from restaurants, and it was almost enough to make me never order a drink with ice again. It was nasty. I won’t bother quoting specifics (mainly because I don’t remember them), but a lot of times when you get sick after eating out, it wasn’t the food. It was the ice. The food no one thinks about.

So just think about that the next time you see someone doing that to your drink. Ewwww…

(In case you wondered – they are supposed to use a scoop that is then stored outside of the ice bin. Never use the glass or leave the scoop in the bin, because then the germs from people’s hands get in the ice thanks to cross-contamination. And don’t even get me started on how people don’t wash their hands in public bathrooms because I could go on about that all day. Sing the ABCs as you lather up the soap to make sure you wash them long enough, and always wash your hands!)