For 15 years, the B & B Do it Center, a local hardware store in the small California town of Camarillo, has been putting out coffee and doughnuts for its morning customers. Actually longer, says owner Randy Collins; the previous owner did it too. Customers liked the courtesy, but... well, you know where this is going.
An anonymous customer complaint to the county brought health inspectors to the store, who determined its tradition of more than 15 years of offering coffee and doughnuts to customers violated food-handling regulations...
Inspectors told Collins that unless he was willing to install stainless-steel sinks with hot and cold water and have a prep kitchen to handle the food, he was violating the law.
As California government has solved all of its other problems, it seems appropriate to regulate coffee and doughnuts. The county bureaucrat, apparently with a straight face, described what Collins must do before he can offer the doughnuts to his customers:
“What some establishments do is hire a mobile food preparation services or in some cases a coffee service,” said Huff. “Those establishments have permits.”
It’s amazing that they still allow people to have children without permits.
You know - because you and I just aren't quite capable of judging for ourselves whether or not eating something could be a health risk. While they're at it - why doesn't California spend some tax dollars sending a team of people into the forest to put health warning labels on berries, mushrooms, and other potentially dangerous plants.
America is becoming the Tyranny of Nice.
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
-C. S. Lewis
