Good Job! You’re Fired. Food Safety: The Industry You Can Lose Your Job by Doing It Too Well | Episode 53
So they understood exactly what I was saying when I started talking about black mold and various kinds of mold in the ice machines and cockroach infestation and the diseases that could be spread and all of these other things that were wrong within this facility. And these people ate at this facility because, again, it was a very well known restaurant within the community. And the looks on their faces were just
Intro:Everybody's gotta eat and nobody likes getting sick. That's why heroes toil in the shadows keeping your food safe at all points from the supply chain to the point of sale. Join industry veterans Francine Eleshaw and Matt Ragucci for a deep dive into food safety. It all boils down to one golden rule. Don't eat poop.
Intro:Don't eat poop.
Matt:Hello. Hello, Francine. Hey, Matthew. Wow. That was very exciting.
Francine:Matthew, Regushi, how are you?
Matt:Very good. Francine
Francine:Shaw. I used my full name. So and I don't think you know my middle name, so we can't go there.
Matt:Yeah. Is it on LinkedIn? I don't know. You have a whole bunch of initials after yeah. No.
Matt:I don't know your link. Let me guess. Is it Lynn?
Francine:You're never gonna guess it now. Elizabeth? No. Elizabeth doesn't start with an l.
Matt:Oh, is oh, that's right. It's Francine Elshah. Yeah. So not Lynn. Every woman I know has, like, middle name Elizabeth or Lynn?
Francine:Yep.
Matt:Okay. Well, we have a very interesting topic today, and it hits right at home with you. It's almost as if you've written a book about this.
Francine:It seems that way, doesn't it?
Matt:Yeah.
Francine:It seems that way. Someone said to me, that seemed to really hit a nerve with you.
Matt:What? The topic that we're about to discuss? Yeah. Yeah.
Francine:In fact, it was Jonathan. We talk about Jonathan a lot.
Matt:Jonathan Nido.
Francine:Yeah.
Matt:Okay. So what happened? Do you want me to tell say it, or do you wanna talk about it? Sorry.
Francine:No. You can go ahead. Go ahead.
Matt:Alright. So we posted an article last week about a town that voted to end city restaurant inspections because the guy who was the city restaurant inspector inspected a very popular restaurant, and it's in Lewiston, Maine. Very popular restaurant and then found out there was a whole bunch of cockroaches and then basically said to them, k. Listen. You have to shut down and get this problem fixed.
Matt:And it would cost the restaurant or at least the restaurant is saying it would cost them $80,000 for them to shut down and to fix the issue. So the o restaurant owner went and complained to the city council, and the city council decided that they were gonna vote on whether or not to basically can this guy. They put him on suspension and whether or not to get rid of the inspections for the city.
Francine:Right? Actually, it's the code enforcement officer who they're voting whether or not the code enforcement officer gets to keep his job, not the actual health inspector. They're 2 different people. But the message it sends is you do your job as the health inspector, you're gonna get fired all because this guy seemed to have some friends or a friend on city council. And when you look back through the documentation, I posted several links on LinkedIn about this.
Francine:There were a number of inspections going back through 2023 and a number of violations to support what happened. There were things written. There was one cockroach found or something like that. You don't have just 1 cockroach. Right.
Francine:Okay.
Matt:What is the phrase if you have 1 cockroach, you have 1,000?
Francine:You have 10,000 that you don't see. So it's you never have just 1 cockroach ever. It was like somebody doesn't just bring in a cockroach, dump it on a glue board, and that's it. That's all you have. What happened is just so outlandish that I can't even wrap my head around it.
Francine:And full transparency, it hits such a nerve for me because when I was doing health inspections, I was the health inspector for a small town. I had something very similar happen when I closed a very well known restaurant for multiple violations. One of them was a cockroach infestation, and they had friends on town council. And before it was all said and done, I ended up in a meeting in front of town council With a whole bunch of people in the audience from the general public.
Matt:How did that go? So you end up in front of the town council and is
Francine:this, like, them grilling you about this? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I was there to defend what I did and why I did it. Now I went very well prepared and I think what they failed to realize, even I believe the person that hired me, what they failed to realize was I wasn't and I'm not demeaning any health inspectors or sanitation people by any means, but at that point in my career, I was already an expert in my field.
Francine:I hadn't only done Inspections. I worked way beyond inspections at that field. So at that point in time so I went with all kinds of documentation. I didn't just have the inspections. I had the inspections.
Francine:I had all the statistics and the data about what could happen based on what I found within the facilities. I had all kinds of information that I took to present to the board. And I was very fortunate in the sense that probably that somewhere between 25 40% of the board members worked in the medical field. So they understood exactly what I was saying when I started talking about black mold and various kinds of mold in the ice machines and cockroach infestation and the diseases that could be spread and all of these other things that were wrong within this facility and these people ate at this facility because again, it was a very well known restaurant within the community and the looks on their faces were just And I had images as well. I had to take pictures that you have documentation So I had very vivid images of the things that I saw as well as written documentation.
Francine:And I'm gonna say there were probably there was the city council. I had a PowerPoint presentation. I had the images and I probably did a 40 minute presentation with q and a at the end about not only this specific facility, but some other facilities as well. And when I was finished, the general public that was there for basically, they were there to just slander my name and just it was not a good situation but there was nothing they could say really because I was so well prepared and the documentation spoke for itself that there wasn't much that they could say after the presentation was done.
Matt:So Which leads, like, to one of the questions. I sent you over a couple questions on LinkedIn. One is, how often does this happen? And, like, that you would get called up to the city council. And 2 is, how does this help the restaurant?
Matt:Because I posted that as well. Like, now the restaurant is all over national news. So if I was going to Lewiston, Maine, I'm not going to this restaurant. Right? Like, this is not where I'm going to go.
Matt:But it also then hypes up right now, there's a lot of conversation wrapped around this, and the community is not happy. Like, it's a mixed bag here. Right? You have some people who are like, yeah, this is just overbearing. We could be having the state do this or the county.
Matt:We don't need to be doing it municipally. But then there's a lot of people in the city. They're like, no. I want this to be done. And there's restaurants that popped up in Lewiston that were like, hey.
Matt:I've been inspected by this guy multiple times. He is hard, but he's hard for all the right reasons. So do you have a bunch of people stepping up? They're like, yeah. We don't want this to disappear.
Matt:That was loaded in first off, how often does this happen to you as a and have you heard because you work with a lot of through your business, you work with a lot of county and public supervisors, like, doing this type of stuff. Mhmm. And then how again, how is this benefiting the restaurant when they attack you like this and now it's public, even more public?
Francine:Okay. So to answer the first question, something that I'm told a lot is that health inspectors are afraid to close restaurants because they're and their legal teams will tell them not to do it, so they don't have the support of the legal. And I think that's a shame. They need to be able to do that because when situations where things like this occur a threat to the public health
Matt:Yeah,
Francine:I just saw some images today of a restaurant that just recently closed That had been open for a number of years and they're selling some of the equipment This equipment is nasty. It is so disgusting It took years for this equipment to look like it looks.
Matt:You mean just like tons of grease on it and just
Francine:It's it's and it's not just the equipment. It's the facility as well because you can see the facility in these images. So there's missing grout. There's missing pieces within the wall structure. So and these are only the pictures that we can see where some of the equipment is.
Francine:Health inspectors need to be able to do their job. Yeah. Don't hire people for any position anywhere and not let them do their job. And they're there for a good reason, and that's to protect the public's health. So what is it the legal team's afraid of?
Matt:This. What
Francine:is it they're afraid of?
Matt:They're afraid of this. They're afraid of being called up and and slandered.
Francine:But
Matt:Or sued. Okay. So if the restaurant now sues the city for 80,000
Francine:Okay. Well, wait a minute. First of all, Just because you're having a bad day You can't close a restaurant. You can't close a restaurant or a facility unless you have the appropriate documentation And if you have the appropriate documentation, there's nothing to sue you for.
Matt:Right.
Francine:If I walk into multiple types of food that aren't USDA approved and I close that facility, what are they gonna sue me for?
Matt:Right. Yeah. And it it's interesting. True story. That happens.
Francine:Yeah.
Matt:It's fascinating. So there are bad auditors. Right? Valmir and I having 400 subcontractors, I can guarantee you in the supply chain, there are bad auditors. I can name off a couple few handfuls of them that not only have my previous company had issues with, but other companies before them that I didn't know about till after we hired them and found out they had issues.
Matt:There are definitely individuals that should not be health inspectors. I'm 100% sure. But back to what you were saying, it's like they're documenting this. They have to be documenting this. Right?
Matt:So, yeah, I got threatened to be sued a few times by companies, and ours were are very different, like, because your documents are public documents. They are not public documents. But every time I got accused of negligence and that my auditor was doing something wrong, we did an investigation. We looked into it. If we found out the auditor was absolutely correct and that they had issues, they went forward and said that they were gonna sue me.
Matt:I said every single time. Okay. Fine. I'm not settling. I will not settle.
Matt:I am going to take this to court. We will ask for everything to be open in public, and your company will now be shown to the world about what it is my honor found. Never did we get sued because of things like that. Never. Nobody wanted that to be open.
Matt:And that's the part where I'm saying right here is, how is this better for that restaurant to be now dragging this guy through the mud because they just look worse.
Francine:I'll never forget the one thing that was said to me that day when I closed that restaurant because they knew what a ruckus this was gonna cause was, do you have any idea who eats here? And my response was
Matt:Like, that matters. Someone who's gonna die?
Francine:By the way, this is after they got a gun out to intimidate me while I was closing the restaurant.
Matt:Oh, so many things wrong.
Francine:Okay. I wasn't killed that day. And my response was, I don't care who eats here. They should be happy that I just closed this restaurant because if they get sick or somebody in the family gets sick or God forbid dies, who's gonna get sued? It's gonna be me because I didn't do my job.
Matt:Right.
Francine:So the mentality sometimes is just so outlandish. Yeah. Letting this continue to go on isn't helping anybody. It just lowers the standard within the city to somewhere subpar that shouldn't ever exist. And it's just it's so profoundly stupid and I hate to even use that word, but it's just there's no sense in it.
Francine:There's just zero sense in it. And it's happening I can think of there's another auditor out there right now that I hate to use her name without asking, but she's so upset now about what is going on within the system on being lambasted for doing her job too. Wow. What is wrong with people? What is wrong with people that are working within our food system?
Matt:I've had to deal with this too on the supply chain side. Right? Which I think if we're talking thinking about the same person, that's she's working on the supply chain side too. The issue I found on the supply chain side was there are a lot of auditors. I'm sure that on the county inspector or 100% like, 100% audits all the time or a 100% inspections all the time.
Matt:And they walk in. They may not even walk in. We had to put GPSs on some of our auditors just because they wouldn't depending on the segment of where they are auditing because we had issues sometimes of auditors not even going to the facility or farm or wherever it was and in writing the report up. So I could totally see this happening on the inspector side as well. And then 3 years later of 100%, 100%, 100%, you have a guy or a gal that comes in that knows what they're doing, that believes in their job, that understands that their job saves people's lives.
Matt:And they walk in and they're just shocked because they're like, how did this place get a 100%? Like, in the parking lot, driving through the parking lot, you could tell if there's going to be an issue. And a lot of times, those auditors or inspectors are showing up to the building going, oh crap. This is going to be a very long, painful day. And then it is.
Matt:Right? And so now that company is shocked and appalled that they have this terrible inspection or audit because they've done so well for all these years. And so out of pure ignorance, they get beat to hell because they don't even know what they don't know. And the inspectors, the auditors haven't set up the industry well.
Francine:So when I first went to do these inspections, I'm just so naive. I show up to do the first inspection and they're like, you're gonna need to schedule an appointment. And I said, excuse me.
Matt:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Francine:You're gonna need to schedule an appointment. I'm like, that's not how this works. People tell health inspectors all kinds of crazy things all the time. And I really thought they were just new inspector or whatever. And then it happened again.
Francine:And then I started hearing things like, well, we haven't had a health inspection in 4 years or well, she just brings it in and we just sign it or there were a multitude of different things that people were telling me. And finally, it became evident that I was in for a long rough 1st year or 2. And that's what happened. So I can't blame it all on the people on the receiving end of these inspections. And while I try to be very patient and very understanding, it just wasn't working for everybody.
Francine:When a cockroach is crawling across the table between me and the owner of the restaurant, they don't understand why they have to close when that is, like, one violation when there are many and mold floating in the ice, forks, chilled forks sitting on literally ice that's 2 inches thick, that's black. If you go in there for lunch and they give you a chilled fork and the ice that it was laying on was black, that's a problem.
Matt:And we're not talking about black ice. Right? We're talking about black ice that We're
Francine:talking about black frost that's built up because the machine's not been defrosted.
Matt:That is so disgusting.
Francine:Oh my. The I did second and third party audits. I've got first, second, third party audits, and I've got years of stories. But some of the stuff and some of the pictures are just crazy and it takes a lot to shut down a restaurant. There's a lot of work involved.
Francine:Plus you have to fit the reopening back into your schedule, which is already full. So this certainly isn't something that you do on a whim. It's not something you wanna do. Yeah. So that situation in Maine is I feel so bad for those individuals that were doing their job and now they're being harassed and ridiculed for doing what they should have done.
Francine:If you read the reports in that what their emails now that went back and forth between the owner of the facility and one of the town council members, I believe. Then there's an email from I believe a town council member to that code enforcement officer asking him for leniency. What kind of b s is this? So because he didn't give him leniency, now we're just gonna eliminate his job.
Matt:That doesn't look shady at all. Yeah. There's definitely been times where well, we've I've said this before. Like, my partners and my goal was to have no client equal more than 8% of our business so that we have the ability to, a, get fired by them or, b, fire them and not have to lay off any employees. And there were a few times, probably a handful of times where we were having conversations with the VP of food safety that managed a whole lot of facilities and something went wrong in a facility, and they're asking me to tell the auditor to falsify information.
Matt:And I'm like, dude, what you're asking me to do is not just unethical. It's illegal. It's wrong. And no, of course not. I'm not going to jail.
Matt:I have 10 kids. Not going to well, back then, I didn't have 10 kids, but I still had a lot of kids. No. I'm not no.
Francine:Well, and we both throughout our career have had people ask us to do things that are both illegal and unethical at the same time. And it's like, oh, it can't even and it's not all customers are good customers. They're just not. It's sometimes it's just better to say, you know what? I just I can't work with you.
Matt:Right. Oh, yes. Yeah. A lot of times, some of my biggest customers weren't my best customers. Usually, they needed big discounts.
Matt:They knew they were big, and so then they wanted favors, us to falsify information. Now I'm not saying all my large clients. In fact, the vast majority of them, that was not the case. They wanted to know what was happening. Each of their facilities and or all their farms, and they stood behind us.
Matt:Whatever we found, they were on the facility or farm to make sure the corrective actions were done. That was the vast majority. But there were occasionally, we had a company, a big company that would just be like, no. We pay you for this, and you need to be able to change it if we want to. Like, no.
Matt:That's not how this works. That was definitely not in the agreement. Right. Can you imagine putting that in there? And, yes, thou shall falsify information upon request.
Matt:Yeah. That's not getting signed.
Francine:There was a company that I really wanted to work with when we were doing a lot of training. I really wanted this account. I met with, he was the CEO of the company, vice president of the company, and we were talking. He said, I need you to promise me that everybody will pass the exam. And at first, I thought it was cute.
Francine:I thought he was joking. Right? And it became evident that he wasn't. I said, I can't do that. That could cost me my company I can't do that.
Francine:Not to mention. It's just Ethically wrong And needless to say we did not work together.
Matt:No kidding
Francine:I'm like if you can find somebody to do that good for you, but it's not gonna be me.
Matt:Yeah. Well, it'll be interesting. So this Maine, they punted the decision to March.
Francine:So why do you think they moved it to March?
Matt:Well, I already know what you think because you told me already. Uh-huh. Which I a 100% agree with. They moved it to March so because they're thinking everybody's gonna forget about it.
Francine:Yeah. They think it'll die down by then and not as many people be paying attention to it.
Matt:Right. So sad. Which are probably accurate. Americans we have a political attention span like a goldfish.
Francine:So there's a a woman up there that seems to be pretty much all over paying attention to what's happening and going on with it. In fact, she dug up a whole lot of their older health inspections and was making it a point to let people know what really happened behind the scenes and it was more than 1 cockroach and you know a whole lot of violations Hopefully, she will keep track of what's going on. And
Matt:Yeah. Oh, man. I hate that backroom dealing type of stuff that people who get, like, a tiny bit of power feel like that they can just hoard over somebody else, that just drives me absolutely insane. We're talking about the city council of Lewiston, Maine. Well Like, it's not like they're hugely in power.
Matt:And that little bit of power that they have, man, they're going to wield it. And not for the benefit of their citizens, but for their friends in the back room.
Francine:Well and this guy, it was been doing his job for 20 years, did what was right. Yeah. And now it's, oh, well, you know what? You wouldn't help out my friend, so you don't have a job anymore.
Matt:That's just Yeah. It's totally wrong. 100% wrong.
Francine:Totally wrong.
Matt:Well, do we have any anything fun?
Francine:Wait a minute. Yeah. Yeah. Wait. So that restaurant sent me a cease and desist.
Francine:They sent a health inspector cease
Matt:and desist. Back
Francine:inspector a cease and desist? You can't do that.
Matt:I mean, you can. I it just won't stick.
Francine:Okay. I'm sorry. I just wanted to digress for a second. Okay. So, yeah, what do you wanna talk about?
Matt:So Darren Detweiler, multiple times he's been on our show. Great. Amazing guy. Very active. Right?
Matt:He's a professor. He he was one of the main guys on boys and very active in the food safety community. I think that would be the most understated thing that we've said on the show. On LinkedIn, he posts that video of the guy in he posts a video of this guy trying to get something in the top of a shelf of a restaurant cooler, and he starts stepping on buckets. And I love Darren.
Matt:All he does on LinkedIn is he repost this thing with 1 with a comment. You can put your own comments when you repost something on LinkedIn. And all he did was put my name in it, Matt Ragushi. And then, of course, I've gotta repost this thing, and it blew up like crazy. And it was this guy stepping on a like, a big dude.
Matt:Looks like me, probably even a little taller than me. So 230, 250 pound guy steps on a white bucket that's on top of another white bucket. So he steps on 1 bucket, then he steps on a bucket with 2 buckets, and he's reaching for this thing at the top shelf, and his foot goes through the bucket and is covered in cream. And you don't have any audio in this thing, but the guy didn't even see him face. Did you notice that, Francine?
Matt:He didn't see face at all?
Francine:Not at all.
Matt:And, yeah, the comments were great because there was a ladder in the corner of the city. You can see it in the video. Like, there's the step stool. But, no, this dude goes and he steps on the buckets. So then, of course, I had asked, like, does this happen all the time?
Francine:So that bucket appeared to be, like, a 5 gallon
Matt:Yeah.
Francine:Storage bucket for, like, liquid. It looked to me like it was probably shake mix in there with the shake mix.
Matt:Oh, yeah, that makes sense
Francine:That's what it looked like it was to me and you're right when he stepped on it they're not meant to hold that kind of weight nor are they meant to be stood on. And it did. It caved. It just caved, and he went down in the mix.
Matt:And he kept going for the box. Like, it didn't faze him at all. He kept yeah. Like, no problem at all. So that made me think it wasn't his first time that his foot went through one of those buckets.
Francine:So to answer your question, does this happen regularly? Those buckets are stood on regularly. Yes. How often do people fall through them? I don't
Matt:know. Yeah. Because you're so tiny.
Francine:I'm not that heavy. So keep in mind, I've worked in this industry for a really long time, and that's where I started. Before I knew better, did I ever stand on those I stood on pickle buckets all the time. They're a little sturdier than those buckets. I don't know that I ever stood on one of those buckets.
Francine:Have I ever stood on a 5 gallon pickle bucket? Have I ever stood on a double stack?
Matt:I have to tell you that when you talk about your days working in fast food restaurants, your Ozark slang
Francine:comes out. Sorry.
Matt:No. It's, have I ever stepped on that pickle wagon?
Francine:I digressed.
Matt:You digressed?
Francine:Adam, sorry. I didn't mean to say that either.
Matt:You literally did digress. But, like, mentally, you're, like, your brain trunk is fascinating.
Francine:So, anyway, so, yes, when I worked in the restaurant before I knew better this is back when I was still putting produce under chicken. Guarantee you that I did that. I'll guarantee it. And I stepped on them when they were double stacked. I never fell through.
Francine:It horrifies me to think of the stuff I did. I know they're still doing it. There's no doubt in my mind they're still doing it. Again, back to I said this a couple weeks ago. Darren and I talked about this.
Francine:They don't know what they don't know.
Matt:Yeah. They don't know what they don't know. Yeah. Yeah. But Darren tells me if there's a step stool in the cooler.
Francine:But listen. First of all, Darren and I had that conversation right before he posted that video, like, right before he shared that video. It wasn't, like, a day before he shared that video. We had just had that conversation. And then he posted that video.
Francine:I thought I was gonna die. But look at how many buckets were stacked there. Not only that, they're all sitting on the floor. They're all sitting on the floor. Every one of those buckets was sitting on the floor.
Francine:So it was much easier to step on that bucket than it was to move every one of those buckets out of the way and move that stool. So
Matt:And it was much easier I could grant you. It would be much easier to step on that bucket, assuming the bucket doesn't cave in. Well, I was amazed. A sudden, there's a lot more work.
Francine:It was much easier and would have been much faster had he not fallen through the bucket.
Matt:Yes. Yes.
Francine:That's his thought process. Now he doesn't understand the level of contamination that he's causing by stepping on that bucket.
Matt:Oh, because of all the crap on the bottom of his foot now is on the top of that bucket.
Francine:And that's what we're doing wrong when it comes to food safety culture in these establishments. We're not explaining at that level.
Matt:Yeah.
Francine:That's what we're doing wrong. That's what we can do better. Crazy. Had to be cold. Had to be cold.
Matt:What? And then how do you explain that to everybody as you're walking out, holding the box of of product that you got for the top shelf, and you have this cream? Knead you're knee deep in cream.
Francine:That got me very self conscious about the way I'm speaking. So first of all, I'm gonna bet he did not walk out. He handed it to that other individual who's standing there. And how did they just happen to have video?
Matt:Yeah. Well no. They probably had video because they probably tried to minimize shrink. The video was from the top corner. So that video was there.
Matt:They've been videotaping for a while. Or it could have been day 1. Who knows? But that was definitely a permanent video there. I'm assuming it's there to make sure nobody's stealing stuff.
Matt:And maybe that people are doing their processes correctly. And if so, they show that they're not. I'm guessing the video was not put up there to make sure that people's processes were or the company's processes were done. It was probably there to minimize shrink.
Francine:Well, hopefully, somebody took a corrective action.
Matt:Oh, for you those of you who don't know, shrink is basically what the retail and the food service industry talks about with food that has gone to waste, was stolen, whatever. It's food that they cannot sell or did not sell is shrink just for the industry.
Francine:Was that mix shrink?
Matt:That's a good question. The video cut out. We don't know what he did with that. Did he just put the cap back on and call it good? God, I hope not.
Matt:Oh my god. Well, he probably totally did.
Francine:So you remember my story in my book about the Knicks. Right?
Matt:Yes.
Francine:It was in that kind of bucket.
Matt:Ugh. It's amazing that we actually still eat at restaurants.
Francine:Most are good. Most do a very good job. They do a very good job.
Matt:They do
Francine:a very good job.
Matt:Most do. Yes. Vast majority. Not just most. The vast majority do a good job.
Matt:Except for this poor restaurant in Lewiston, Maine that thought they were gonna get something over on this guy and then ends up becoming national news.
Francine:Ace, I read. He owns more than 1 restaurant.
Matt:Nice. Nice. If it's the same strange of cockroaches, it migrate over to the other restaurant with somebody's because it could. Right? Cockroach could land on somebody, fall in their hood from their
Francine:Step on a pregnant one and take the eggs in try to lose shoes.
Matt:Step on a pregnant one.
Francine:My Here I went over in the hem of their pants.
Matt:Yeah. That's what I'm thinking. Yeah. On the hood of the of a hoodie or whatever.
Francine:In their purse?
Matt:In their purse? With their braids?
Francine:For real.
Matt:No. 100%. That's that's what I was saying. It'd be interesting if the cockroaches were from the same strain, like, from the same yeah. I don't know.
Matt:Okay. I think we've done this in, Francine. Don't eat poop.
Francine:Or cockroaches.
Matt:Or cockroaches, which is basically poop. Or
Francine:bad shake mix.
Matt:Yeah. Don't be stepping on buckets to get product, particularly if there's a step stool in the ring.
Francine:Do that ever. Don't do it. Alright.
Matt:Bye, Francine.
Francine:Bye, Matt.
