The crazy thing is she works about a mile from the Texas Medical Center, the largest in the world.
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As I discovered in college (w/r to UPenn’s Student Health Services which was housed in the “world-class” UPenn Hospital complex), the old saying, “nearsies don’t count except in horseshoes and hand grenades” applies to medical facilities as much as it applies to everything else (except horseshoes and hand grenades…
)
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I always thought thermonuclear weapons should be added to that category. 
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I realize you are joking about reporting the chef with mask on his chin but in case you are not keep this in mind:
Hopefully they have put some protections in place now but I have no idea. This was pre-mask mandate so the complaints at the time were about businesses such as restaurants not following the take out only orders.
Nah, that was more of an ‘oh Rob, I see you’re still a douchebag, if you wore a mask it wouldn’t be so obvious’ moment.
I’m not sure how to feel abut the city encouraging reporting. There was a tea shop that put a sign in the window declaring it a mask-free zone along with anti-mask manifesto, that deserved a public shaming because they are encouraging people to put themselves and others at risk. But then there’s posting a pic of a person in a restaurant kitchen without a mask on a food group page with no context and much conclusion-jumping. I don’t wear a mask when I’m alone in my kitchen, should I be shamed? I do when other people or there or if I go to the window to help a customer, and when I go in public places. There’s always someone out there taking it to the extremes, hopefully most of us can meet in the middle and get this pandemic under control.
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Interesting. We’re all in on masks and shaming here in Ashlandia.
By the time we get 10 miles north to Medford, they’re having anti mask rallies in the streets. All too much for me.
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I’d read the BBC buffet article. It was interesting the journalist chose to write about the American experience, rather than the consequences for British buffet places.
I live in hope that possibly the lone benefit of the virus here might be the permanent demise of the invariably piss poor Chinese buffet restaurants.
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The article suggests that if distancing can be maintained, the risk to be managed is fomite (hard surface) transmission from common serving utensils. Yet, there was no discussion whether steps such as requiring patrons to wear gloves or be equipped with personal (not shared) serving utensils are effective and feasible in mitigating the possibility of fomite transmission.
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Chinese buffets are the gold standard for bad food but pretty much all others are in the running.
I don’t get buffets. I’d rather enjoy freshly prepared food of my choice and since we usually end up with leftovers it is de facto all you can eat.
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She showed up for work Monday AM, the boss admitted she was wrong and she’s back at work and missed time will be restored, allegedly, this is the city we’re dealing with.
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Sweet Tomatoes, which offered an extensive salad bar as well as several soups, provided a place where one could get a reasonably healthy lunch. It is now defunct. It has joined the choir invisible. Etc.
The Chinese (or these days, pan-Asian) buffets usually had a few good items, but everything tended to be way too salty and oily. My standard lunch at one was sushi (mediocre), bok choy, stuffed mushrooms, stuffed hot peppers, clams in black bean sauce (alas, often gritty) and salmon. There was little else in the hundred or so items that was appealing.
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Will wonders never cease! 
PS: It didn’t seem worth writing an entirely new post, but after this earlier exchange, it did occur me to cast a sideye in a southwesterly direction over the idea of your wife’s boss “intercepting” faxed medical test results in the first place, even if she didn’t actually “intend” to. I mean, yeah, it’s a place of business, and yeah, faxes aren’t “sealed”, but unless the fax was being sent - with authorization - to “the office”, it seems a bit sketchy for someone other than the intended recipient to keep reading them once they realize what they are… sigh (or at least not to pretend that they haven’t even if they have out of sheer nosiness…
)
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I brought that up immediately but the Wifeacita is very non-confrontational and the boss is not.
Half the office has been out but mum’s the word on their status. 
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I live in a borough of some 220k people where, until the last year or so, the best restaurant in the town centre was a very poor Chinese buffet. We didnt even have a chain restaurant in the centre. Yep, that bad.
I have come across a couple of South Asian buffets which have been pretty decent. There’s a local one which is massive - it’s in an old cinema - and is always packed, mainly with South Asians. Now, I know that the ethnicity of diners is no guarantee of quality but it’s starting point.
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Yes, we had several very good and one exceptional Indian buffet here in Berkeley. The exceptional one closed last year as the owner retired. They regularly had goat vindaloo, and lots of hard-to-find vegetarian dishes, in addition to the chicken tiki-masala, and the best dal in town.
That’s kind of a double edged sword. If they go out of business that means servers and cooks are out of work. On the one hand, maybe the cooks are bad cooks. On the other hand, maybe they’re good cooks but are limited by the business owner. Who knows. I guess if people want to frequent a piss poor Chinese buffet, let them.
Not sure what it’s like in the U.K, but here in the US, business owners are having a hard time hiring new employees because of the extra $600 added to weekly unemployment. We’re talking about almost $1000 per week. That’s going to end in the next couple weeks though. We’ll see what happens then.
The employment situation is, I suppose, not too bad here - the government supported furlough scheme still has some weeks to run. The crunch comes when that stops. Restaurant reopenings have been allowed since early this month but it is a slow process. Only about half of my regular places have opened or stated they plan to open soon. And business is very slow - a report in my local evening paper suggests that, even though restaurants have had to reduce capacity for social distancing, the foot fall is much less than expected. Folk have not been in a rush to get back to restaurant visiting. This is not good for the future.
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Here in the US as restaurants open there has been some flocking. I think there are two components: cabin fever and people who can’t cook. We seem to have a LOT of people who can’t cook. Regardless, I suspect that who can, especially those who have learned in extremis and figured out how much money they save, will result in a shift in restaurants.
Tomorrow we’re doing two big shops. We going to Sam’s Club (warehouse store) to get our freezer and pantry back up to “a little more than full” and then a grocery curbside pick-up. We see steadily increasing infection rates and I anticipate another run on groceries so want to be ahead of the curve.
In Houston we have a Mexican restaurant the WAS wildly popular, El Tiempo Washington Ave.
There were lines out the door but not anymore. People aren’t eating out here anymore.
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