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Should you REALLY be eating there?

You see them almost everywhere you go nowadays (or at least, you're supposed to): food establishment inspection scores posted on a door, a window, behind a counter or over the bar of places that sell/serve food.  They warn you if you need a HAZMAT suit and a full course of antibiotics to eat at your local pizza parlor, or whether your only worry at the nearby burger joint is whether the habanero sauce on the table really WILL eat a hole in your tongue.  Many newspapers even print the names of the restaurants with great scores or poor scores, so you can flock to them or steer clear, respectively.

The scores are supposedly indicative of the hygienic level of the restaurant – in most cases, the higher the score, the better the restaurant did in the inspection, with 100 being a perfect score.  For each infraction, demerits are assigned that subtract from the perfect score, so 11 points of demerits would equate to a inspection score of 89, which in most cases corresponds to a grade of a 'B' for the establishment.  (Apparently in some areas they do things back-assward and count UP from the demerits, so 0 is a perfect score and getting 11 points of demerits gives you a somewhat-healthy score of 11.)

So here's the point where I'm stymied.  Google searches turn up all kinds of info on inspections and scores, but I want to get the lowdown from people in the know (or at least who know more than me).  Obviously it's going to vary from state to state and even possibly county to county, but if you know the answers to any of my questions below, care to leave a comment and enlighten the rest of us?  And if you've horror stories about the food industry places you may have worked in, why not share with the rest of us so we can all be on edge next time we visit our local eatery?

1. How often do places have to actually get inspected?  Is it a preset schedule, or does an inspector just show up for a surprise inspection? ("Quick Lisa, hide that 3-week-old milk while I keep the inspector busy checking out our dirty bathrooms!")
2. Does anyone have a GOOD breakdown of what infractions correspond (approximately) to what kind of point deductions?  I found a couple in this article (note for the squeamish: don't read past halfway unless you want to find out what the folks in the Thai restaurant were doing wrong): things like
• Improperly cooking food lowers the restaurant’s score by five points.
• Employees’ failures to wash their hands lower the score by four points.
• A lack of soap in the soap dispensers loses the restaurant three points.
3. What's the worst score a place can get and still stay open?
4. What's the worst score you've seen at a place and still been willing to eat there?
5. Can a restaurant "appeal" an inspection or ask for an earlier-than-scheduled re-inspection if they've made corrective actions that they think should warrant a higher score?
6. How, in the case of some of the places in the Charlotte area that I've seen, can you get a score higher than 100?  Is there extra credit?  How high can the score actually go?

So how DO you get a score of 101?

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This year, we decided to forgo our normal July 4th weekend tradition of lazing around and doing virtually nothing.  Even though it seems there's no better way to celebrate our independence from British rule than by sitting around and drinking beer, we thought it might be a convenient time to undertake a project we've been planning on doing this summer: putting together a new playset for the girls.

After hiring a professional to take care of the "hard stuff" (i.e. dealing with drainage issues, grading, and the landscaping timber border), my father, my brother-in-law, and I went to work early Saturday morning, and in just less than 28 hours, we transformed this:

Playset border

this:

Pile o’ parts

and this:

Big-ass pile o’ mulch

into this beautiful and entertaining playset:

Finished Product

Needless to say, the girls were in love with it even before we were done and wore themselves out playing on it most of Sunday afternoon.  The exhausted-yet-triumphant construction crew retired to the shady patio, where we spent the rest of the afternoon drinking beer and reveling in the kids' enjoyment of their new play area.

Playset building, by the numbers:

• Play area dimensions – 28' x 21'
• Number of folks involved in the construction – 3
• Total man-hours from start to finish – 23 man-hours
• Number of times we were asked by kids/wives if we were done yet – 17
• Number of playset parts ~ 50 + hardware
• Number of playset parts it felt like we had ~ 1,000
• Amount of mulch purchased – 9 cubic yards
• Approximate weight of mulch – 3500 pounds, transported one wheelbarrow-load at a time
• Approximate weight of mulch it felt like we moved ~ 7 tons
• Number of folks who used sunscreen – 2
• Number of folks who wished they had re-applied sunscreen in the afternoon – 1
• Number of parts the manufacturer had drilled wrong and had to replace before we could begin – 2
• Number of parts it looks like the manufacturer may have drilled wrong that we just made-do with – 1
• Number of parts we initially installed backwards/in the wrong place and had to correct – 2
• Number of places in the instructions we could not figure out what the heck they wanted us to do (until we sat down and stared at it for a bit) – 4
• Leftover parts – Lots of extra deck screws, nuts and washers, but no significant parts
• Injuries sustained – 2 (minor cuts to my right index finger, on two separate occasions!)
• Number of hours spent watching the kids enjoy the playset – 4
• Number of days expected until the kids lose interest in the playset – about 12

Seriously though, the playset (a gift from my parents) is absolutely wonderful, and I am so happy that we spent the time to put it together for the kids to play with.  I think they're going to enjoy it for many years to come, and it should provide a great place for them and their cousins to play when my wife is pulling her hair out and tells them "Go play outside and give Mommy a break!!!"

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