13.apr.09
Detroit Free Press
Sylvia Rector
http://www.freep.com/article/20090412/COL20/904120338/
It's fun to visit a restaurant with a restroom so gorgeous that you come back to the table and tell your friends, "You've got to see the bathroom."
It's no fun at all to find the other kind -- one that makes you go back and say, "Don't go in there."
Grimy door handles, dirty floors, chipped toilet seats and cruddy soap dispensers give me an icky feeling about the whole place. Suddenly, I'm not eager to finish my dinner.
Maybe that's unfair, but it's not uncommon.
An online survey of 2,175 adults by Harris Interactive last year found that 88% of people who visit restaurants believe that restroom cleanliness reflects the restaurant's overall hygiene, including sanitary standards in the kitchen and prep areas.
But is that assumption correct -- or just a myth?
Health Department officials contacted about the survey said they couldn't say because they've never studied the subject -- and they wouldn't speculate.
But many diners aren't waiting for a statistical analysis to convince them that an unclean bathroom at a food service establishment isn't a good sign.
"When I go to a restaurant for the first time, the first thing I do is look at the bathroom, and if it's not clean, I turn around and walk out," said David Hill, a businessman who splits his time between metro Detroit and San Diego.
"I think I've reached 82 by being careful," added Hill, a self-described nut on the subject.
Julie Kohn of Bloomfield Township may be more typical. "I'm not an inspector," she joked, but at the same time, "I try never to go to restaurants with dirty restrooms."
The Harris poll, admittedly done for a company that sells restroom supplies, found that 29% of respondents -- nearly a third -- said they wouldn't return to a restaurant with very dirty facilities.
Half of those surveyed said they'd tell a friend if they had a bad experience with a dirty restroom.
But the first person customers should tell about cleanliness concerns, LaBelle said, is the restaurant's owner or manager, whether the issue is restroom conditions, food-handling practices or employee hand-washing.
