But how can you take issue with our insistence that people use hand sanitizer at a 4-day retreat with 40 people sharing food and close quarters?
This is not something that would cross my mind if I was organizing such a retreat. Making sure people who handled food washed their hands with soap, yes, but not hand sanitizer. Perhaps this is a cultural difference between (parts of) US and Europe.
I think hand sanitizer is more feasible for practical reasons? Generally in the sorts of spaces where people gather for things like this, there is not a sink near the food. So I’m used to there being hand sanitizer at the beginning of the food line, not because hand sanitizer is great, but because it’s inconvenient and time consuming (and overbearing) to ask everyone to shuffle through the restroom to wash their hands before touching the food.
Not to mention that if people touch the bathroom door handle, sink handle, etc. after they washed their hands, they’ll get many of the germs they just washed off back onto their hands, whereas with hand sanitizer, all you need do is touch the pump and you’re good to go.
This is not something that would cross my mind if I was organizing such a retreat. Making sure people who handled food washed their hands with soap, yes, but not hand sanitizer. Perhaps this is a cultural difference between (parts of) US and Europe.
US Americans are overly obsessed with hygiene from the point of view of the average European.
I think hand sanitizer is more feasible for practical reasons? Generally in the sorts of spaces where people gather for things like this, there is not a sink near the food. So I’m used to there being hand sanitizer at the beginning of the food line, not because hand sanitizer is great, but because it’s inconvenient and time consuming (and overbearing) to ask everyone to shuffle through the restroom to wash their hands before touching the food.
Not to mention that if people touch the bathroom door handle, sink handle, etc. after they washed their hands, they’ll get many of the germs they just washed off back onto their hands, whereas with hand sanitizer, all you need do is touch the pump and you’re good to go.