Restaurant staff carrying out temperature checks and offering hand sanitizer to diners has become the new normal in Hong Kong. But some, it seems, could use a little more practice.
According to a post shared in a Facebook group on June 14, a careless waiter at a restaurant accidentally sprayed alcohol into a child’s eye thinking that the bottle was a temperature gun.
“A ‘smart’ waiter mistook an alcohol spray bottle for a temperature gun, then [tried to] take the kid’s temperature,” said Cheng Man-chung, the child’s uncle.
Cheng added two hashtags to his post: “[His] eyes immediately could not open” and “the kid is on the way to the hospital.”
In an update posted the next day, Cheng said the kid is fine and that he had been checked by a doctor. He added that the restaurant had paid for the relevant medical fees.
“Alcohol coming into contact with the eyeball can cause damage to the cornea… this time, the child is considered lucky,” he wrote.
The restaurant did not respond to Coconuts Hong Kong at the time of writing.
The post had over 2,500 reactions on Facebook within two days of posting, and more than 350 users had shared the post.
In the comments, many expressed sympathy for the boy and hoped that he wasn’t badly hurt. Some criticized the waiter for “daydreaming.”
One user wrote: “How come the waiter mixed up the spray bottle and the temperature gun? Do they look the same?”
Temperature checks have become routine at restaurants and bars across Hong Kong since March, when a spike in imported virus cases threatened the city with a second COVID-19 wave.
