[It's Gonna Take More Than A Hamburger To Make Me Happy!] Gross-ery Carts

I spend quite a few hours icing cakes at work, and sometimes my thoughts drift off into places I probably shouldn't go. For instance, the other day, I was decorating a teddy bear cake, and I could hear some kind of commotion going on in the meat department (it's on my left), so I stopped what I was doing, and went to take a look. I saw one of the guys throwing garbage into a grocery cart because he was getting ready to go dump it into our compacter. I headed back over to the cake I was working on, and started thinking about grocery carts. People use them to put their groceries in, and this guy was using it to haul out the trash. EWWW!! I literally had to stop what I was doing and go ask one of the service clerks (these are the guys who round up the grocery carts outside and bring them in) if the carts ever get sanitized. He had no idea. So, I asked another guy. Again, no idea. The third guy that I asked said that the rain washed the carts when they were outside. Uh, OK, buddy.

Back I went to decorating the teddy bear cake and thinking about people putting food in grocery carts that are never disinfected. Not good, not good at all. People might put their fruits and veggies in plastic bags, and most other food items come packaged someway or another (ex. soup in a can, cereal in a box, etc), but the food is still being placed into dirty carts, and whatever is in those carts is getting on those packages, and then transferring to your table, counter, cupboard or wherever you're putting your groceries when you get home. EWWW!!!!

At that point, I should have stopped thinking about dirty grocery carts and gone to my happy place or something, but my next thought was inevitable. Just how dirty are the carts, really? It's one of those things you want to know, but don't want to know. Know what I mean? Anyway, I figured a little digging around on the Internet would surely turn up something, so I gave Eddy a call on my break and had her do a Google search.

JB: Hey, it's me.

Eddy: Hi, aren't you at work?

JB: Yeah, I'm on my break. I need you to Google something for me.

Eddy: OK, what?

JB: I want to know how dirty grocery carts are.

Eddy: Huh? Where's this coming from all of a sudden?

JB: I'll tell you the whole story later because I only have a few minutes. Can you find out?

Eddy: Yeah, hold on.

JB: OK, cool.

For the next 30 seconds all I heard was Eddy clicking away at her keyboard, and then...

Eddy: Disgusting!!

JB: You found something?

Eddy: Yeah, you sure you want to know?

JB: Yup, tell me.

Eddy: Well, it turns out that the University of Arizona conducted a four year study and discovered all kinds of nasty stuff --- urine, fecal matter, saliva, blood from raw meat, E-coli, salmonella, staphylococcus, and....

JB: Sick!!!

Eddy: Basically, they're worse than public bathrooms.

JB: REALLY?????

Eddy: Yeah, because the bathrooms are cleaned daily and the carts aren't.

JB: OMG, that's right. EWW!!!

Eddy: Yeah, forget grocery carts. It's more like gross-ery carts.

JB: Big time gross.

Eddy: Uh huh.

JB: I have to go. Thanks for checking.

Eddy: Sure. You should definitely blog about this, by the way.

JB: It's gonna freak everyone's freak.

Eddy: Yup.

JB: OK, I'll talk to you later.

Eddy: Yeah, and stay away from the carts.

JB: Hahaha, I will.


Will you???

JB

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Posted By jb to It's Gonna Take More Than A Hamburger To Make Me Happy! at 3/25/2010 10:05:00 AM