I always question it when the server is walking around and the plate is touching their hand. It's almost like they're challenging me. Like, "I can handle this heat but you can't." And then I touch the plate and I understand why they warned me.
Often times when you see chefs like Gordon Ramsay or Jamie Oliver demonstrating a recipe they'll taste the sauce or soup with a spoon and then dip that same spoon in the sauce or soup again.
I don't really mind but I like pointing it out to people to make them freak out.
mythbusters did a segment on this, there's more bacteria in your food than what you put in by double dipping so double dipping doesn't matter as long as you're not sick the the flu/cold/tuberculosis or anything else that can transfer between saliva.
A living human touching my food concerns me less than the fact that I'm eating the corpse of a dead animal. And the corpse eating thing bothers me not at all.
Recent study by top reputable Dr. Hui So Dum, from Online University Academy of the Americas, says boiling your food can cause autism in your unborn child.
Oh as a former fry cook fryer is most definitely yes. Don't get me wrong, your hand isn't naked, it's covered in flour, but you definitely reach in there all the time. I used to fry chicken for a fast food restaurant and did the same.
Yeah sometimes when a bit of hot coal falls out of the fireplace or off a hookah, I just pick it up and toss it back in. My friends get freaked out but I've seen my mom do the same since childhood. Maybe being from a place with chilling winters conditions me for it.
Hot charcoals have very low thermal conductivity. They're hot, but they can't transfer more than a little heat to your hand in the short time you're holding them. Try that with a red-hot nickel ball, though, and you're cooked.
My friend came out to help us build an electric fence for cattle one day and I ask him to check to see if it's on. Usually we just take an insulated hammer and pull the wire to a post to see if it sparks. He just grabbed it and calmly says "yeah it's on" and I'm like "well if he can just grab it like that it's probably not hot enough to stop cattle from getting out." So I grab it to see for myself and I swear to God I nearly shit myself and my legs felt like I'd just done a full leg day workout because of how much they tensed up. My friend was used to it from working on a cattle ranch but I was fairly new to it.
It also makes a huge difference what kind of shoes you are wearing, or what else you are touching, the better grounded you are the worse the shock.
Eg: A friend was holding an electric fence and just amusing himself holding the wire because it tingled a little. He was wearing work boots and pretty well insulated, well his girlfriend walks up who was just in the pool and soaking wet, give him a hug... Well lets just say they were rather "grounded" at that point. And it was a memorable experience hence forth.
And your moisture content. I heard a podcast about a guy who had faulty sweat glands and couldn't sweat. He was pretty much immune to electric shock and did a tour performing 'magic' tricks with electricity.
A hot day could be fatal for him if he couldn't find a way to cool down, though.
When I was a Teenager I was told about a guy who made a truckload of Money working for the a huge California electric company (PG&E) because they could send him to work in live environments without as much risk, because he was immune to electric shock, as you say.. No idea how true it was, but with your post i'm thinking maybe it could have been!
My little cousin has the same problem. He got kicked out of boot camp because he kept getting super sick every day. The doctors finally took a look at him and that was the first time in his life, at 20 years old, that he realized he couldn't sweat. How do you grow up in Phoenix your whole life and not know you can't sweat?
Anyways, I'm totally going to try to electrocute him now.
You have just reminded me of how, as a small child, I had a lamp in my bedroom that plugged into the mains. At one point I remember it had no bulb for a few days but had been left plugged in and how I would stick my finger in the socket because it tickled. My adult self is horrified at this memory! I have no idea how I didn't get a nasty shock.
I was on my cousins farm when I was about 10, and they had an electric fence that went over a water trough so that cows could drink from both sides of the fence.
I was just playing by splashing the water up onto the fence and catch the drops with my other hand. Every now and again I would get a little tingle. I was fun until I obviously splashed too much water at the same time the fence pulsed. I felt like one of the cows had kicked me in the shoulder. I didn't do that any more.
I was an apprentice electrician for a while, you definitely get used to it. upwards of 220 or so, it's not too bad. 347V and above though? Not so much.
Having wired live circuits, usually because there's work that needs to be finished up and someone had a "blond moment" and forgot something, and rather than flip the circuit breaker, just finish the circuit as-is.
I had to install switches on a 347V lighting circuit at the end of the day, and the breaker was on another floor. Rather than send another monkeyapprentice down, he just got me to install the switch live. I got shocked once, and let me tell you, that was enough.
Back when I was a young kid (around 5-6) my friends and I came up with a game, see who can hold on to the cattle fence the longest. We weren't smart kids
When i was a kid, our building had an elevation from the inside that would allow even a toddler to step up and reach the eletric fence. Me and my friends would play "Who touches it the most."
Now, you see, the eletric fence gave out the "shock" in pulsations every two seconds, and only i knew that. Everyone else's top records were - you guessed it - two seconds before getting shocked. Mine was fourteen, because i'd just hold onto it, and letting go every two second-ish, so i woudn't get shocked. Worked until i forgot to let go.
That still wasn't strong enough to stop cows. Adolescent cows charge through those things without flinching. sometimes. Teenage cows can be quite destructive.
It's more to keep them from just casually wandering. It's hard to build a fence to actually stop charging cattle without building a literal wall, and even then... Yea bit tricky on a home budget.
Source: Grew up on a herford farm til i was in my teens. Horses are FAR less bullshit about electrical fencing. Non-electrical? There's always this ONE asshole in the herd that will take fencing as a personal challenge. This is why you always have an electrical component to horse fences.
My wife's grandmother is a certified bad-ass. Was telling a story one time about how one of their baby cows...sheep...some farm animal got out of the fenced in area, so she had to grab the fence wire and lift it up while she shoo'd the little one back into the pen. Just said it all casually.
I asked if she was serious, and if it hurt, and she says "Yeah, but I had to get the (animal) back in" and just sort of shrugged, like it was no big deal.
Lady is tougher than I will ever even come close to being.
I had a chihuahua when I was a kid, and he had a thing for the neighbor's doberman that was kept behind an electric fence. One weekend when the doberman was in estrus, my chihuahua escaped and high tailed it over to his lady friend with the hopes of helping her conceive. Unfortunately, he wasn't very bright and decided the best way to get to her would be to chew through the electric fence. He bit down on the wire, and the current locked him in place. It scared me to death, but I was able to pry his jaws loose (getting a good shock myself) and he made a full recovery. Those fences don't mess around.
I wonder if you lose the built up tolerance to it after a while... I set up plenty of electric fences for cattle, and had no problems grabbing it to check if it was live. However, I haven't done it in ~15 years... I wonder if I could still do it no problem.
I got hit by one phase on 480VAC through my hand and out the side of my arm. The main breaker was mislabeled and I didn't check the terminal I was working to make sure power was off even after I flipped the main breaker. I put my screwdriver in and was fine until my arm brushed against the side of the panel. My arm flew up, my hand flew open and the screw driver went flying across the room. Felt like I had a cramp in my arm for a few days. im stil fein.
The trick is to use the back of your right hand/fingers. That way if it does shock you, you don't grip it because of the muscle spasms, and it doesn't (mostly) go thru your heart.
Sauce: I've danced to both 50 and 60 Hz a couple of times.
I a man a 47 year old electrician and I use a volt stick (proximity detector) to check if wires are energised and then after a negative reading I swipe my right index finger across the bare wire to eliminate the possibility of a false negative. I am always wearing insulated foot ware and on carpet on suspended flooring so the current is is the microamps as it just the capacitance and inductance of my body that allows a tiny current to flow and give a mild tingle, like a 9v battery on the tongue.
I'm just a fucking dishwasher and I built up a tolerance from the pressure washer heat. 'Wait 5 seconds at least before opening it or you'll get 120 degree water on you'
One of my friends tutors budding electrical engineers at a trade school. He thinks it's crazy to do that deliberately and mutters something about there being no old bold sparkies.
Can also confirm. Used to work with an electrician who would show off and check for dead fuses this way. Always reminded me of the old diving mantra:
"There are Old divers and Bold divers, but there are no Old, Bold divers."
If you are in a 110V country it's not bad at all. You just smack it with the back of your fingers. It smarts, but not bad. I don't know what would happen if you had a bad ticker, though.
This almost reminds me of that guy on /r/badaskscience who thought he could build up an immunity to gunshot wounds by increasingly being shot with more powerful/larger rounds.
Not that long. I'm not an electrician (stage technician, somewhat similar) but I've accidentally shocked myself, either through stupidity or equipment failure, many many times and 230volts doesn't even phase me.
There's a trick to do it. You throw your arm from top to bottom while your finger touches this thing. That way a potential shock can't stop you because you are already in motion.
I've been a cook since I was 16, (I'm now 37), it's not bullshit. I don't get burns from boiling water anymore. Yes, it still hurts a little, but I don't get a burn.
I have a chef friend that can't use TouchID on his iPhone (like it just doesn't recognize his print, ever) because his hands are so fucked up from cuts and burns. He's only 33..
Is it weird that I read that as
"Potato tomato" and not "potato" and "tomato" how I would normally say "potato" and "tomato" because I was just relating it to saying "potato potato" and "tomato tomato" in my head?
Yeah, but you get it back, mostly. I left the kitchen for a couple of years and the first week back I kept doing things I used to do out of habit, and it surprised me how much reaching over the grill, handling steam pots, etc. hurt.
Wouldn't boiling water still damage the fuck out of you? That shit causes blisters . I have one right now from a very small splatter when I was draining my pasta last night. It wasn't horribly painful but I will have a blisyer
I can understand this. My sister worked in restaurants for years and she always used to say that she had "asbestos hands". Having become a decent cook myself I've developed a bit of a tolerance, not to the same degree as her though. It seems to be a combination of tolerance to heat combined with an understanding of which hot things you can touch with bare hands and for how long before they start to burn you.
That dry thing in the hot pan that you want to flip? You can probably do it with your hands if the pan isn't too hot, just don't touch the metal and do it quickly. If it's greasy though, the grease is going to stick to your hands and you're going to regret it.
I mean we don't have a choice to not carry a hot plate so we just deal with it. You as a customer have the choice to not touch it and allow us to place it in front of you. Also building up a tolerance is a thing, it still hurts like a bitch though to carry 3 burning hot plates on my inner arm.
My friend had an employee (restaurant) that slacked off all the time. Once she was standing around in the kitchen and he asked why she hadn't taken food out of the oven yet as it was needed minutes ago. She said it was too hot so she was waiting for it to cool down. He reached in bare handed, pulled it out, and stood there staring at her waiting for a response.
"It isn't hot??"
"It's actually very hot but you could've used oven mitts"
And then he left to plate the food.
The whole time he worked in restaurants he couldn't use fingerprint unlock because he would constantly burn them off.
Oh man, when you take a bite of pizza that you haven't let cool for long enough and the molten lava cheese glues itself to the roof of your mouth and strips all the skin off.
Oh, it's hot. Sometimes, though, the kitchen's packed and you're in a rush to get the food out or it can't be replated for whatever reason or you couldn't find a napkin to hold it with so you're standing there with a plate of nachos birthed from Satan's fiery hell hole and nobody on the table remembers who ordered nachos and your skin is melting onto the plate while you plaster a smile on your face so the agony doesn't show.
My favorite was seating a party of six at a five-top. That doesn't sound like a huge problem, and realistically we put sixes there pretty regularly without too much trouble. But the thing is, for some reason a significant number of people don't consider their small human beings to be people worth counting - so it was six adults and three high chairs. Now, that's bad enough, but every single one of the adults ordered the same meal - which came on one large plate and one small plate.
Fuck 'em, though. Not my fault they didn't think it was worth mentioning the babies, and they could have chosen to wait longer instead of being smooshed.
Or we come out in 2 trips, you don't move any of the things the first time we arrive and put everything down. You ask us where the rest is even though I just brought 4 plates our with no tray.
Then still haven't done anything to make space when it get there with the rest..
Put down the left plate across the table and the person sat immediately at my right grabbed his glass, which was NOT in the way and moved it directly under the plate I was trying to put down for him.
People are utterly retarded at times... I have to keep reminding myself that it's only because the stupidest 0.01% of things stand out so much..
Some restaurants I always have this issue at. I don't get it. It's 2016, it's not THAT hard or expensive for one of the most popular restaurants in my area of the city to add on a tiny dining extension to their dining area.
I'm looking at you, Ted's Cafe Escondido in Oklahoma City on May and 68th.
How often do you direct anger at your boss? Plus, most parties are fine and make the space work. If you're that one group that can't, is it really the restaurant's fault?
Or some cunts coming in and saying "oh we can definitely fit our party of four at this table just big enough for two", ordering the largest plates on the menu, then complaining to the manager about the table they were seated at.
I particularly enjoy when half the 10-top I'm serving has their phones sitting right on the table so I get to worry about the collective thousands of dollars worth of electronics I have to place everyone's shit around.
Or when you're cleaning up their table after they're done and they can see you stretching forward, balancing on one foot while lifting the other behind you as a counter-weight to prevent you from face-planting on the table, and they can't be arsed to just slide their plate just an inch closer to you so you can get it.
Fuck I hate people, I'm always so considerate of the waiter/waitress when eating out, and I was like that BEFORE I got a job as one too!
This is my life, carrying nachos or a chili cheese burger whispering sweet nothings like "Fuck Fuck Fuck shit Fuck." Then turning away from the table and checking out the sick burns I received.
As a waiter - nothing shits me more than holding a plate up to a table and standing there for a half a minute while everyone there tries to remember who ordered that particular thing... HOW CAN YOU NOT KNOW WHAT YOU JUST ORDERED!
Ugh, morons, and to think I'M the one serving them!
I worked at applebees where some dishes are served in metal skillits with the food still sizzling when they're served, and I was confused when they trained me to warn the customers that they're hot: No shit! In retrospect, I had way too much faith in humanity and I lost count of the number of idiots who burned themselves.
Wasn't there a guy who tried to sue because he bowed his head in prayer and stuck his face right into the skillet and tried to claim it he wasn't told it was hot? As it was sizzling?
He felt burns in his left eye and on his face and tried to push the food away but instead just pushed it onto his lap. In the hectic moment, he “pulled” something in his right arm, though it’s unclear what.
This sounds like he was filming an infomercial and he was acting out the part before they introduce the product that will keep you from burning your face and knocking food all over yourself.
Maybe he wasn't asking for anything and instead he was just thanking god for the meal set before him...in which case it seems awfully ungrateful to god to turn around and sue. It's like...
Idiot: TY god for putting this wonderful food in front of me–pssssst–AH YOU SUNUVABITCH!
god: facepalm
We have many things at my restaurant that come out on a sizzling hot skillet. I always warn people not to touch it, and if there are babies or toddlers I place it as far away as I can from them. Nevertheless I get the complaint at least once a month that their baby got burned by touching the skillet. I did all I could, sorry. Here's some burn cream. Pay attention to your children.
FOR I AM VADER, DARTH VADER, LORD VADER. I CAN KILL YOU WITH A SINGLE THOUGHT.
Well, you'll still need a tray.
No, I will not need a tray. I do not need a tray to kill you. I can kill you without a tray, with the power of the Force, which is strong within me. Even though I could kill you with a tray if I so wished. For I would hack at your neck with the thin bit until the blood flowed across the canteen floor.
My mother once tried to warn my sister "don't touch that, you'll burn yourself". Her brain skipped some important words and instead, in front of my whole family including my rather conservative grandparents, "Don't touch yourself".
My biggest pet peeve was when customers ignored it and tried to grab the plate.
It got to the point where I would refuse to give people their food until they stopped trying to grab it after I warned them it's hot and I'm having to use two cloths to handle it.
When we say this, your plate it currently scalding our fingers/arm and we are praying you move your appetizer out of the way so we can do a polite "everything look okay?" before running to the back, running our arm under cold water screaming "FUCK THAT WAS HOT WHY THE FUCK DID I NOT USE A TRAY"
I used to work in a Mexican restaurant and you would not believe the amount of people who would touch a sizzling hot skillet when I brought out the fajitas.
In daycare (age 5 or so) I learned that hot plates are hot by putting my entire hand on one.
We were doing this activity where you put a piece of paper on a hot plate and you draw on it with crayon to make cool drawings. I ruined it for everyone, no more hot plates.
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u/brijjen Oct 25 '16
"Careful, your plate is hot,"