Ah, signal problems: What would the Red Line be without them?
Nothing like signal problems on a Monday morning. This morning's best Red Line tweet:
T stuck between alewife & porter. missed the shuttle. mbta bus late. cornered on bus by stranger who Likes To Talk. yay monday.
And file this under: good to know:
So the food stand at the JFK/Umass stop was out of coffee. The employee went into the MBTA bathroom then proceeded to fill pot. No joke. Yum
filling coffee pot from T station bathroom
I'm pretty sure that isn't advised in any food handler's training manual. :)
Perhaps that food stand will be getting a visit from whatever inspection authority it's under.
E. coli... Hepatitis... Cooties...
Assuming they used the tap ...
I don't see why this would be a problem. The temperatures involved in coffee brewing would likely kill anything that wasn't already dead or filtered out by the MWRA. Tap water is tap water.
It may not be the recommended method of getting water for coffee, but I don't see there being any real health issue.
Assuming ...
They also washed their hands before touching anything, right?
or used gloves
Gloves work pretty well, too.
In any case, coffee is way too hot.
When I was in Mexico, I was amazed to see the food service staff with face masks and bare hands - particularly when the sort of famous tourist diseases we all hear about are spread by unwashed hands.
If they're filling up coffee
If they're filling up coffee pot in T station bathroom, I bet they're not diligent enough to keep from contaminating their hands and pot in the bathroom, and then subsequently contaminating coffee cups and food items.
Water?
You mean, like, from the toilet?
Do yourself a favor
Don't ever travel abroad. Even in a T station bathroom, you can assume that the water from the tap is potable - doubly so if you plan to boil it. Nice and tidy places in the developing world? Not so much.
It's surfaces, not water,
It's surfaces, not water, that concern me. But I'll defer to SwirlyGrrl on questions of public health.
Have you seen the color of
Have you seen the color of the water filled in a pot that has even the slighest drops of coffee leftover from the previous pot?
Just sayin'...
Twitter T updates
Speaking of tweets and the T, there are a few Twitter accounts set up to relay subway delays:
http://twitter.com/t_redline
http://twitter.com/t_greenline
http://twitter.com/t_orangeline
Imagine a world with only gruntled Red Line riders
Gabrielle Gurley reports she got stuck on a train in the tunnel between Harvard and Central for 30 minutes today - and that the driver didn't even get on the intercom to announce why until 20 minutes into the wait: