Ventura County Star, Calif., Colleen Cason column: Cason Point

Mar 7, 2010 — Ventura County Star

Colleen Cason

Mar. 7, 2010 (McClatchy-Tribune Regional News delivered by Newstex) -- .

The unemployment rate hovers just under 10 percent, and more jobs were lost in February than in the previous month, or so say government figures released Friday.

We need jobs, and small-business owners are making them as fast as anyone. Yet, the little guy just seems to keep getting squeezed.

If you walk into B&B Do-It Center in Camarillo today, you will see lug nuts but no doughnuts.

The Ventura County Environmental Health Department ordered the family-owned Camarillo hardware store to stop offering free pastries and coffee to customers, and it is complying, as of my phone call to the store on Friday morning.

The story about this bear claw ban broke recently in this newspaper. News outlets across the nation picked it up and cited it as another example of how you can stick a fork in common sense, because it's done.

County officials did not take well to this media feeding frenzy, and Environmental Health Director Bob Gallagher was summoned before the Board of Supervisors.

Gallagher stated his employee originally was dispatched to B&B over a complaint about store clerks grilling meat and serving that to patrons.

That reason for the inspection had not been shared with The Star's reporter, so that fact did not appear in this newspaper's original report.

According to Gallagher, it was while the health inspector was there grilling the owner about the barbecue that he discovered the outlaw doughnuts and coffee.

A report published in this newspaper quoted Gallagher as telling the supervisors, "Normally, a hardware store or other business that's putting out comparatively low-risk items like coffee, or lollipops for kids, we're not regulating that."

So everything is jake, the supervisors would have us believe. The Star's coverage was overblown. Ventura County officials would never be so silly. End of story.

Whoa. I am not swallowing that explanation.

Clearly, a hardware store has no business serving meat more ornate than jerky in a wrapper, and I am thankful our Health Department ordered the owner to put the tongs away.

But what is troubling is what happened next. The health inspector cited the store for giving away the doughnuts and coffee, adding it could not do that again until it installed a restaurant-style sink, refrigerator and approved flooring.

Clearly our Health Department has bitten off way more than it can chew in this case, and here's why: If our inspectors plan to stamp out bear claws in the beauty salons, crullers in the custom body shops and long johns at the Lexus dealers, they will need to operate on a round-the-clock sugar rush. Complimentary doughnuts are a waiting-room fixture across Ventura County and the rest of these United States. It's a way businesses can sweeten a long wait or a big repair bill for its customers.

While focused on the pink boxes holding all those Danishes and cinnamon twists, the health inspectors will be way too busy to inspect places serving food that really can make people sick. I'm talking about the ones we read about on the agency's own Web site. You know, the little cafes with crawling cockroaches, rapacious rodents and overflowing lavatories.

As it is, Health Department officials repeatedly resist the call to letter grade the kitchens of local restaurants. The public, by and large, favors the simplified, at-a-glance system, but county officials say they don't have the staff to do that kind of grading.

Somehow now they will have to find time to swing by your favorite auto repair shop and see if the owner has put out contraband apple fritters.

And face it, to be fair, inspectors can't cite one business and not all others involved in this practice.

But that is exactly is what is going on now. B&B is under order to cease and desist the doughnut giveaway. Meanwhile, its competitors can still please the clientele with sugary snacks.

It's a cliche and one I never find as entertaining as others I know: the only place you know you can find a cop when you need one is at a doughnut shop.

If Ventura County health officials decide to pursue all businesses offering free sweets to customers, just call them the doughnut police.

-- E-mail Colleen Cason at ccason@VCStar.com.

Newstex ID: KRTB-0210-42648353