Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Workplace hazard, or tricks of the trade lost?

Apparently, a Canadian court has ruled that scooping ice cream from standard bins used in ice cream shops constitutes a "workplace hazard."  Now, certainly some ice cream shops do NOT use well designed, ergonomic cabinets for their product, but I remember my dear sainted mother's counsel on ice cream.

Specifically, there are two temperatures for storing ice cream.  One is well below zero, and is useful for storing it for longer periods of time.  However, there is also a "serving temperature" at which ice cream can be held for a few days to a week.  At this temperature, the product scoops easily, reducing greatly the likelihood of injuries.

Old style soda jerks also know the trick of having a container of warm water for warming the scoop to allow easier scooping of the product--one type of scoop owned by my family even has a liquid inside for conveying warmth from the scooper's hand to the end of the scoop. 

It may be true that this workplace had a hazard due to the placement of the product, but my hunch is that whoever owned this ice cream shop failed to convey to his employees proper techniques for scooping ice cream easily and safely.    Engineering.You.Can.Use.

2 comments:

RobertDWood said...

The graphic in this story is a classic.

The warm-water-ice-cream-scoop is a good one.

Bike Bubba said...

I bet you'll tremble before ordering vanilla fudge ripple ever again!