Brush up on your ninja moves before you shop at Whole Foods

via Whole Foods Brooklyn on Facebook

A FIPS reader recently wrote in to warn us about the dangerous (allegedly!) knife-sharpening station in the middle of the new Whole Foods:

I want to preface this by saying that I am not writing to bash Whole Foods here. This is a seriously dangerous thing they are doing here.

If you went there you may have noticed the knife sharpening that was done right in the middle of the store. Now, its not a booth for knife sharpening, they put a grinder on a shelf and this guy is sharpening his knoves right in the middle of the fray. I saw people bumping him in the back.

If you didnt know, a grinding wheel is running at about 4500 RPM's, if the knife has a burr in it the knife can get easily pulled out of his hands and sent flying across the store at 80 miles an hour. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't want to be standing in front of an 8" chef's knife doing 80 miles an hour at my skull.

I have already informed OSHA of this and they were kinda horrified about it and told me they will send someone "when they can", its the holidays after all.  They said it was against OSHA rules and they can have it forcibly shut down if they don't immediately comply.

Since they didnt give me a day they are doing this I figured I'd give you the heads up if you wanted to tell the nice folks to avoid the place unless they want to start practicing their knife dodging skills.

So, I actually didn't notice the knife-sharpening station when I was there on opening day. But, admittedly, I didn't traipse up and down every single aisle. I did find this pic of the guy who does the sharpening on the Whole Foods Brooklyn Facebook page:

Here's what they have to say about him:

Meet Christ Harth of NYCutlery. We've been cultivating a relationship with Chris for over a year. Chris uses reclaimed wood from RE-CO BKLYN to build custom pieces, and he's built working counter and table tops for us in our meat and bakery departments. Chris has also created home goods for purchase, like the custom #thirdand3rd cutting boards pictured below. And he's in our store four days a week to sharpen your kitchen knives, starting at $5 a blade. He's an all around good guy, we think you'll like him as much as we do.

If you've shopped at the new Whole Foods, have you noticed the knife-sharpening station, and did it seem dangerous to you?