I am very impressed by this post. First I want to note that producing “thinkers” has been a challenge for my department related to undergraduate students. There are a few consecutive generations of cohorts that have collectively wanted to be spoon-fed information. They push back when professors and/or graduate teaching assistants do not fill in all the gaps for them. However, those involved in working with food, even those at the entry level, have to think critically. Think of this scenario – A restaurant employee must make decisions relating to cross contamination of pathogens on a regular basis. You can’t see pathogens, so this becomes a little difficult. Can the lettuce be chopped up on this cutting board after raw poultry was sitting there? No. But can raw poultry sit on a cutting board after lettuce has been chopped up on it? Yes. Employees are continuously having to think about what they can or cannot touch after performing a task and doing so in a fast paced environment. There are so many things that can go wrong in the food industry, but what an individual decides to do after something has gone wrong can literally be the difference of someone living or dying.
The topic of automation within foodservice (i.e. a robot cooking a burger rather than a human) has come up frequently but continues to be shot down because a robot cannot make risk management decisions like a human can. This is always an interesting debate.
I also appreciate that you brought up the topic of mindfulness. I attended a lecture at Virginia Tech’s CIDER Conference this year having to do with mindfulness. Before then, I really didn’t understand how powerful it is. I have been trying to practice with choosing a certain task and then following through with it. In this day in age, we can be distracted so easily. And even when we are present physically, we’re often not present mentally.
