Tim Horton’s Did It Again Unsanitized Food Handling

It was just about a year ago when I wrote about Tim Horton’s coffee lid being highly un-sanitized and thought I saw a change in some of the behaviour of the Tim Horton’s employees in my area – maybe I was paranoid – maybe the Tim Horton’s head office sent out a memo in relation to the concerns I laid out in my last article but I doubt it. I’ve decided I’m now going to turn on the camera of my cell phone and start recording random happenings while I’m ordering coffee at Tim Horton’s and post them here and on YouTube. Why not?

So Tim Horton’s did it again. They disgusted me  today and honestly. Before you go on and decide not to believe me, read on and I’m sure whether you’re  a Tim Horton’s employee or an employee from Health Canada (food handling), you’ll agree that what I went through this afternoon was purely disgusting.

So today’s state of disgust stemmed from an incident where Tim Horton’s ran out of creme for my coffee. The young man behind the counter placed my sugar in my cup, placed it on the counter out in the open and went into a back room to get another big bag of cream to replace the empty bag with. By the time he got back into the work area with the new bag of creme I was already a little concerned at my cup sitting out in the open whilst people were walking back and forth around it, but I remained patient and focused much more on what he was going to do with that big bag of creme and how he was going to open it to let the cream start pouring out. I wasn’t sure and haven’t seen a Tim Horton’s employee change the creme back before. I was exited cause I knew I was going to be ever so disappointed. I was.

As is obviously the right process, the Tim Horton’s employee lugged the big bag of creme into the silver box like creme dispenser and fuddled around with placing it properly for some time. My imagination started running wild wondering how that bag is actually going to be punctured so creme can come out of it. I couldn’t imagine how. I thought maybe the placement of the bag in the silver container would some how trigger something that put a hole in the bag but that wasn’t the case. The following most disgusting this was. Again, I’m posting this here now but my next article will have a video explaining whatever I see next with respect to food handling and Tim Horton’s.

The creme bag was in place. i watched the Tim Horton’s employee pull the outer layer of this tube that was connected to the bag of creme and realized that the tube is where the creme will be coming out but how? What would he use to cut a whole in the bag of creme? I couldn’t believe what I saw next.

Everything all in place – the bag of cream ready to get snipped, the young Tim Horton’s employee picked up the pair of scissors that were sitting on top a small sugar machine and I couldn’t help but utter under my breath “oh no, he’s not going to use those scissors is he?”. He did. I was shocked cause I knew those scissors were NOT stored properly and according the Health Canada guidelines but I had to have proof. I’m so disturbed that I didn’t have the presence of mind to pull out my phone and take a picture of what I saw.

I asked the young man to pass me the scissors for a second so I could inspect them and what I saw was, as I’ve said before – disgusting. Not only was cream dripping down the metal part of the scissors but there were chunks of other material stuck and sticking to the scissors. I handed the scissors back to the Tim Horton’s employee and asked that he give me individual creamers instead.

I want to stress the last occurence again: the scissors had guck all over it, bacterial guck that obviously spreads from the scissors to the slit in the cream bag. Now cream will build there and interact with that bacteria from the scissors and get into our coffee. What more can I say?

My whole experience at Tim Horton’s today was ruined and now I know that although Tim Horton’s may chance the way they handle their coffee lids, this problem with the way the bag of cream is opened won’t change for a long time. Now what do we do?