Week 2 completed. Outlook is bleak.

I really don’t have much to add so far. Week 2 ended yesterday with no real drama to speak of other than a customer having a heart attack while dining. I was on my way out when I was passed by a couple of EMTs with a stretcher. I didn’t stick around to see how the situation resolved. Hopefully the gentleman is alright. I’m sure I’ll find out tomorrow.

The episode did bring back a sad memory of an older man who died on the sidewalk right outside the door of the first restaurant I ever worked at. It was awful seeing him lying motionless on the ground and no one could help him, his wife sobbing while kneeling by his side.

And on the same subject, a woman in her early 40’s died in one of the factories I worked at too. The supervisors tried to resuscitate her but could not. She was also just lying there without any kind of response. It was later concluded she had a heart defect and was dead before she even hit the ground. It’s really tragic and a bit frightening to think that in a split second, it can all be over. Even though I hate my job, I do love life.

Anyways, enough with the drivel. As I wrote before, there really isn’t any drama to bitch about. All of the servers are either sweethearts or cool as hell. They can all get spastic during the stressful times, but so does everyone else in general. My fellow co-cooks, the few that exist, are really swell people too. Since we are so ungodly understaffed, there isn’t a mass of idiots to piss me off. I basically cook by myself until one of the two other day cooks comes in for the day. There should actually be at least four more but this place can’t keep competent help either. When I worked here last time there were eight of us just to cover the morning shifts, and we’d still run short once in awhile.

There are some really retarded changes that the all-knowing corporate dumb shits decided to switch around that make it even harder to do an already incredibility difficult job. Last time I was here it was a privately owned franchise so we had plenty of wiggle room on how we chose to do certain things so long as we followed the core principles. Now it’s run by people who make the policies and really have no idea how to do the jobs as efficiently as a veteran.

One thing that really annoys me is how we are required to cook at all times when there are only two cooks on. I briefly explained our kitchen set up in the last post; it’s essentially two lines in one, just mirrored. Back in the day, there would be two and sometimes three of us on the one side of the line. This worked exceedingly well as we could cover all the stations with ease and hammer out some serious food. Everyone could back each other up if need be. Now it’s corporate policy that if there are only two cooks working, there has to be one on each side with both cooking solo. It’s so stupid.

Two good cooks can easily pound out considerably more food and in much quicker time with double the tickets on one side. But no, let’s make it harder because they think it’s more efficient. That part really pisses me off. In theory it sounds like a good idea, but in reality it doesn’t work at all, but they apparently refuse to believe so, therefore that’s how we have to do it. If any of those dickheads would actually test it out, they would see it blows and food ends up taking longer.

Another thing is that some people work fine solo or with a teammate, while others are terrible solo and only good with a teammate. So when you get a partner that sucks ass by himself or herself, you have to pick up the extra slack from the other side and it increases you workload by volumes. It’s much easier to help out a person who is right beside you than running back and forth to the other side to help start food, plate, or even to just take tickets from their printer. I’ve tried to squeeze that rule aside and the moment a manager sees two of us cooking together, they break that shit up immediately. So I’ve successfully tested that law and it is indeed set in stone.

An additional bitch of mine is the smoke break routine. Yeah, I know it’s a disgusting habit and I’m actually trying to cut back and eventually quit. As I’ve stated many times before, I just need like maybe three to four minutes to grab a few puffs and get away from the evil printers and then I’m good to go for hours on end. We can no longer use the back doors (there are two) to go outside. They have to remain closed and locked unless you’re taking out garbage or there is an incoming delivery. Some assholes messed this up because they were going out to smoke sometimes twice an hour so now that’s policy too, and they don’t even work here anymore.

So now we have to go through the pantry, out into the dining room, through the waiting area, and then eventually out the door leading to sweet freedom. After another two minute trek around the building you finally reach the employee parking lot, where we are allowed to smoke. Said parking lot is all of five feet away from one of the back doors. You could go out to smoke and be back within literally three minutes if we were granted access, but nope.

The other thing that sucks about this ordeal is sometimes you have to plow through like fifty people standing in the waiting area, all the way though the doorway, and piled up down the sidewalk for about twenty feet, all wanting a table. I always put on a smile to seem friendly while walking past customers and hold the door open on my way out, but if it’s been a busy morning/day, my uniform is generally covered in all of the shit that was flying around throughout the shift, and that just can’t look good. No to mention I smell like smoke and grease within an hour of entering the kitchen, so I’m sure that is offensive as well.

The other day I made eye contact with an older bird. I was reaching to open the door for her and the bitch rams me with it and just looks at me with a scowl on her face and walks by. I wanted to put her head through the fucking glass, but of course it was only a fantasy which would never come to be realized. I’m sure she complained about her food or something too, dumb cunt. Hit me with a door when I’m not working you old bat and you may trip and fall down, probably not but I can dream, plus I could have at least yelled at her. Some people just don’t deserve to live. How servers deal with people like this on a daily basis I will never know.

Anyways, so rather than just hop out and back in super quickly, it’s a task to get out and back in. Normally I will just go out right before the rush begins and then that’s it for the day. I’m tired of trying to meander through the sea of patrons both ways. So I’ve accepted that fact also.

So far, the only time I’ve been pissed off at a co-worker is when we were getting creamed all damn day and there was a super tiny lull in the orders. He told me to hurry up and go smoke. I declined after I looked out into the entry way and seen it was packed wall to wall. I told him to go ahead and that I’ll just wait until I get off for the day, hopefully six hours from then. This dude is a faster smoker than me and he has always understood the sense of urgency to get your ass back to the line because we are about to get crushed at any given moment. This doesn’t dawn on him this time for some reason.

He first goes to the bathroom to take a dump. Yeah, gross. Do that shit (pun intended) at home. I can understand if someone needs to take a quick piss but not plop down on the pot for ten minutes in a community toilet. That’s just disgusting, but maybe that’s just me. After his discharge, he asks me if he can use my lighter. Fucker better had washed his hands. I hastily give it to him and tell him to hurry up. Ten more minutes pass by and I’m getting so backed up with orders there is no way I can drop all of the food. He comes back in laughing and goofing around with one of the waitresses. Fuckin’ dickhead. Now we are completely buried and we’re both one step behind for the next four hours or so. That one little instance fucked us up entirely. It’s bad enough that you always, and I mean always, have a few orders throughout the whole shift. You literally never stop cooking until someone takes over for you and you can go for the day. It sucks immensely more when you don’t do your best to ensure you can keep up. Playing “catch up” is nearly impossible during the busy times. So that completely ruined my day.

I leave for the day, again squeezing through loyal patrons and around the building into the parking lot, and I finally reach my vehicle and whip out a smoke. Ah, finally, after nearly seven hours of being smokeless, here comes sweet relief. I go to retrieve my lighter out of my pocket and it is missing! Oh my fucking God! That butthole didn’t give it back to me! Argh!! Now I have to make a choice of trying to crawl through the mob of people to get my lighter or just suffer on my twenty minute commute home.

If you don’t have the misfortune of making the horrible choice to start smoking you won’t understand the dilemma. When I leave for the day, the first thought in my brain is that I finally get to smoke a cig. Now when this thought pops into your mind, you cannot get it out of your head until you’ve had that evil cigarette. So it’s maddening to a smoker when it gets delayed even just a little bit, and even more infuriating when it’s because of a co-worker that borrowed your lighter and didn’t return it and coincidentally previously had already ruined your day. I decide to just suck it up and curse his name on my drive home. Twenty minutes later I receive my toxic chemicals and all is right in the world again, if even for only that short while.

Well I guess it’s not hard for me to find something to bitch about after all. I’ll try to update more often if the chance arises. It’s just the constant barrage of orders takes all of my energy and I’m so damn tired when I get home. I don’t get a break and never sit down so I don’t eat and it’s actually a challenge some days to get a glass of water. There’s just no time. The place is so busy that it’s a non-stop race each and every day. Every bit of slow time you have is used to restock or prep your items and clean. It’s quite overwhelming at times but here I am anyways. I’m going to end this here before it gets any longer and go enjoy the rest of my day off. Until next time, in another day in the life of a line cook.