 |
| Shut down by a barefoot woman |
(I originally blogged on this last year… hence the “revisited.”)
A member of the Society for Barefoot Living (SBL) was told recently by a cafeteria manager that the cafeteria would be *shut down* if the health department found him in there barefoot. I myself have been told the exact same thing by a restaurant manager. Either this is a standard line you learn in food management school, or this is one seriously common myth.
As far as I know, for every law in the United States, it is the person who breaks the law who pays the penalty. It works that way for theft, murder, tax evasion... everything. Except apparently for the health code "laws" that regulate restaurants and businesses. Evidently in those cases, person X (restaurant manager) loses his business and his job because person Y (restaurant customer) committed a “crime.” This is ludicrous. How can anyone think such a thing?
What if person Y goes into the cafeteria not only barefoot, but completely 100% just-like-the-day-he-was-born naked? What happens to the cafeteria then? Well, nothing. Mr. Nudie, however, will probably get metal bracelets to wear (at least, in most parts of the USA). The person who commits the crime, does the time.
Silly. But many, many people believe the law works differently when you're barefoot.
Silly. But many, many people believe the law works differently when you're barefoot.
Actually, here in Ohio there is that sort of law, about smoking. It is Ohio Revised Code Chapter 3794, passed by referendum in 2006. It says that "No proprietor of a public place . . . shall permit smoking in the public place", and it further says that the law will be enforced by Ohio Department of Health. So these things do exist.
ReplyDeleteHowever, they are extraordinary. Five years later it is still being fought out in the courts as to just how much responsibility establishments really have, exactly how they are supposed to enforce it, and what sort of efforts they have to make to enforce it.
But to think there might be something like this made up by a Department of Health on its own is ridiculous, as is the idea that bare feet would be in the least similar to smoking.