Can we talk about how much kitchen gloves have changed since I started?

I was digging through old boxes yesterday and found a pair of those yellow latex gloves from my first line cook job back in 2003. They were so thick you could barely feel a tomato. Now I use these blue nitrile ones that cost like 8 cents a pair and let me feel every bone in a fish. Saw a stat online that said glove usage in restaurants went up 400% since 2010, mostly because of allergy rules and health codes. It's weird to think how we used to just grab hot pans with a towel and call it good. Anyone else remember the rubber glove days or was that just my cheap first kitchen?

2 comments

2 Comments

terryk101mo ago

Man oh man those yellow latex gloves were the worst. I had a pair back in 05 at a seafood place and they made my hands sweat so bad in summer I'd have prunes for fingers by the end of a shift. The blue nitrile ones are a game changer though, I can actually fillet a salmon without guessing where the bones are. And yeah the health code stuff is crazy now, we used to just rinse a cutting board with bleach water and call it sanitized. These days my manager makes us change gloves between every ticket basically.

shane_fisher371mo ago

Bruh wait you really used to just dip a board in bleach water and call it good? @terryk10 that's wild, health inspectors would shut a place down for that now in like 2 seconds flat.