Horns, Baskets…Some words…

Horns, Baskets…And surviving

When that new F&B director, Chef or GM arrives we’re probably justified in being concerned. Understandably our first impulse is to look to the folks we worked with to support us in retaining the business.

And while that’s reasonable, we need to realize that they’re likely undergoing some of the same anxieties about their future. Afterall, he or she may well have a retinue of favorite assistants from their old position who could become their replacements.

So while they may well support us, they may be less than assertive about it. That said we do want to request their support and importantly take the opportunity to arm them with a few morsels of our past performance that they can readily mention if the opportunity assises.

Those examples might be the excellent costs of operation that you’ve delivered, perhaps some difficult service problem you solved, training sessions you conducted and of course the level of great sanitation that you’ve helped them deliver – both in the back and front of the house.

All in all we want to circle the wagons as best we can and hope that some or all of those folks will vouch for us – while not overlooking the need to blow our own horn with that new sheriff in town. Adding just one more metaphor, this isn’t the time to hide our light under the basket. It’s when it needs to shine brightly.

Some words…And their meaning

For folks who make their living providing sanitation we’re sometimes pretty off hand with our choice of words when it comes to describing it. It’s not all that infrequently that one of us utters the word sterilize when we should have said disinfect or sanitize when we should have said disinfect. Or maybe the term we really should have used was simply cleaning.

As we learned (and maybe forgot along the way) sterilization means that 100% of all living organisms on a surface have been killed. That includes those that are disease causing (Pathogenic) bacteria as well as innocuous ones like many yeasts or molds. Sterilization is achieved in a device called an autoclave at a temperature above 273F at 15-30 psi pressure for up to sixty minutes.

Then there’s disinfection. It means killing 100% of certain pathogenic bacteria. And as we know the product’s EPA label will list the specific pathogenic bacteria a product is certified to kill. And then there’s sanitizers. That term refers to killing 99.999% of the named pathogen and like disinfectants those are the ones listed on the products’ label.

Next up: The big deal over 99.999% vs. 100%.