Well, this past week has been my very first full week working in the lunchroom. And since Lilly has been hogging my computer all week, using it to play a game (and I've been too tired after work each day to mess with blogging anyway) I decided to wait 'til today and just give one big update all at once.
Also, I've got Lilly's old laptop working again, so I'm using it to blog on today, because she's still hogging my laptop to play her computer game. This laptop is smaller, and the Shift keys don't work for some reason (maybe they got something spilled in them in the past; who knows), but I can limp along with it by using the On-Screen Keyboard, which is fine. I might try cleaning the keyboard soon to see if it will help.
Anyway, let me try to think back and recap my week for you. Monday the thing that was most memorable was that one student had evidently stepped in a pile of dog crap before coming to school, because when the kids were in the lunch line, it totally smelled like somebody had stepped in crap, and the smell went away as soon as that batch of kids went away.
Tuesday I think I sucked somehow. I'd been confused as to how to determine the 'Use By' dates on lunch meat, and it made me feel a little sad and inept. So I asked a couple of different super-ultra-nice ladies to explain it to me, and I finally got it figured out. So that boosted my confidence back up.
Wednesday was a disaster. One of the ladies had to be out, so they got another substitute to come in. She was nice and friendly enough, but she sort of overwhelmed me. At one point, she began helping me make and package my deli wrap plates, and she just came in like a cyclone, slopping and slinging, and I'd never seen anybody working that fast in all my life. It made me feel like a totally inadequate schmo. I have a method, and I like to go at a steady pace; not ape-sh*t crazy. When it came time to box up the wraps with the raisins, brownies, and chips, the girl just dumped giant loads of raisins, brownies, and chips all over the work table and commenced to packing up the boxes so fast that her hands were just a blur. It kind of freaked me out, and her going so dang fast made me nervous, and I'm pretty sure that she rolled her eyes and muttered something under her breath at my slower method. So that made me feel a little intimidated, inept, and sad. On top of that, when it came time to serve the Frito Pancho in the serving line at lunchtime (which is basically a little pile of Frito chips with a little pile of chili on top of it), I messed up and plopped out what I thought was the chili, but it turned out to be the refried beans, but I didn't know it. I did that on about 10 to 14 plates before another lunch lady noticed it and corrected me. Of course she was nice about it, and told me not to worry about it (just to fix it by plopping the chili on top of the refried beans). So I continued on with my serving. It was Mexican Food day, so the other choice was Chicken Fajitas. I thought that the Manager had told me that to serve the fajitas, all I had to do was just lay down a tortilla flat on the tray and plop the chicken mixture on top of it. So I went through almost the entire serving time doing just that. It wasn't 'til we were about to serve the last batch of kids, that the lunch lady that had told me that I had messed up on the Frito Pancho, told me that I had been messing up on the Chicken Fajitas. Apparently, instead of putting down a tortilla and plopping the chicken mixture on top of it, I should have been just plopping down the chicken mixture, and placing a couple of folded-in-half tortillas on the side, next to the meat. So that made me feel bad. Of course she was nice about it, and told me again not to worry about it, but naturally it made me feel like crap. Whenever I do something, I always want for it to be done just right, and I feel bad if I mess up. That's just my nature. Finally, the serving time was over; all the kids were gone, and it was time for us lunch ladies to take our afternoon break. I was utterly exhausted and still feeling a little down on myself for messing up. After lunch, we clean up the kitchen (and I have to first focus on cleaning up my own serving line), but I was so tired and feeling not as confident, so it took me forever to get everything done. The other substitute lunch lady, however, was still going ultra-fast and strong, which made me feel even worse about my own abilities. I did notice the next day, however, that the other ultra-fast lunch lady's cleaning job seemed a little messy and slightly sub-par to me. I mean, I know I'm a perfectionist, which tends to cause me to go a little slower to make sure everything is done well, but what use is it to go ultra-fast, if your cleaning job looks like you took a soggy rag and just threw it at all the stainless steel? So that made me secretly feel just a little bit better about myself.
The next day, the girl that had been absent the day before came back from being out, and she said that while she was off, she realized what kind of food we had to serve that day (Mexican), and she knew it was one of the hardest days that there is to have to do, and she said she felt so bad about having to be out. I told her that yeah, it was rough, but that we made it.
So Thursday, I was determined to kick @$$. I started off well enough, but quickly realized that I had already messed up before I had begun, because I only had enough deli meat to do maybe 12 wraps, but I needed to do 40. I wasn't aware that I was supposed to be responsible for taking more deli meat out of the freezer enough days in advance to thaw out in the cooler, to be ready in time for when I needed more. Nobody had told me (or I forgot if they had), so I just assumed that somebody else took care of it; I didn't know.
So I confided in another super-ultra-nice lunch lady about my dilemma, and she graciously explained everything to me and helped me quickly defrost enough deli meat for me to finish the number of wraps that I needed to get done that day. The meat was still a little icy when I was assembling the wraps, but hopefully by the time they got served several hours later, they were OK. I never heard a complaint. That was the only snag that happened that day. The rest of the day, I was determined not to mess anything else up, and it actually turned out to be the best day ever. The other lunch lady that had been absent the day before usually serves along with me in the other, separate lunch line. She explained to me that their goal is to have the "salad bar" and my serving line all fully cleaned up by the time we lunch ladies take our afternoon break, which starts at 1:30. She said that we hardly ever meet that goal, and it's OK if we don't. It's just a goal to strive for. Well, somehow between her and mine hard work, we actually met that goal. We managed to get the "salad bar" and my serving line totally cleaned up just as it became time for our break. I was so proud, and it gave my confidence a boost, which is just what I needed after feeling like I was in adequate, mistake-ridden suckwad the day before. It did help that all we had to serve that day was pizza and sloppy joes, and those things are super-easy to serve (most kids took the pizza, so all I had to do was just throw it on the tray, and throw the tray with pizza on it on top of the line for the kids to grab). So by the end of the serving day, I still had lots of energy left to be able to clean up the lines quickly. I was so happy!
The next day, Friday, I was even more determined not to screw anything up. I know I'm really hard on myself when it comes to making mistakes, and I have a tendency to feel like it's the end of the world if anything goes wrong, no matter how minor. But I'm working to get over that. Also, I tend to feel like whenever I make a mistake, that I'm the only dumb@$$ in the world that ever makes mistakes. Well, of course that's wrong, so if I ever notice or hear that someone else I'm working with makes a mistake, it secretly makes me feel better about myself. It kind of sucks to be a perfectionist, because of course it's impossible for humans to be perfect, so it makes no sense whatsoever to beat myself up for not being perfect. It's an impossible goal. So just striving to be the best you can be, trying not to make any mistakes, learning from the mistakes that you do make, and just carrying on about your business without feeling like a dummy is what you need to do. I finally just now learned that lesson after 37 years in the world! Better late than never! :)
Friday was another good day. I don't think I messed anything up at all. The only wild thing that happened was during serving time. Thankfully, it was another easy serving day, because the choices were either a cheeseburger, or a hot dog. Most of the kids wanted a cheeseburger, so all I had to do was just plop them on the trays. If they wanted a hot dog, it was only slightly time-consuming, since I had to open up the bun and slap on the wiener.
Anyway, the line was moving swiftly. All of a sudden, a girl that had just gotten one of the trays with a hot dog on it FELL DOWN ON THE FLOOR! I didn't know what in the world was going on, so I stopped and watched for a moment, and heard the kids saying, "she just fell down"! The girl got back up, and I asked her if she was OK. She said "yeah", but then her eyes got all woozy and she fell down again! And her friend that was beside her told me "No! She's not OK!" I had noticed that the girl had one of those bands holding a cotton ball in the crook of her arm, like she had blood drawn or something.
So I rushed over to the lunchroom manager, who just so happened to be standing in the other serving line next to mine, fixing a plate of lunch for one of her sons. I told her something to the effect of "there's a girl over here who's fallen down...she needs help"! And the manager rushed over to see what was wrong. It was so scary! The poor girl could not stand up to save her life, and just kept on passing out time and time again. Someone brought a rolling office chair, and one of the coaches helped get her in the chair. The manager had someone hand her over a sweet tea. What happened is that the girl had given blood earlier that day, and evidently her blood sugar had crashed or something, causing her to pass out repeatedly and be too weak to stand. It wasn't her first time giving blood, and she hadn't had any trouble giving blood in the past, but I guess something went a little wrong this time around, causing her to pass out. Anyway, they wheeled her out into the lunchroom, where I guess she recovered. But boy, that was sure scary! It got us jangled for a while!
The rest of the day went really smooth. We had all busted our butts harder than usual that day, so everything seemed to get done in record time.
The only other mishap that happened wasn't anyone's fault, and couldn't be helped. It was just a fluke. Somehow, inexplicably, one of the lunch-sized bags of Doritos was all moldy inside! The bag was in date. And it had been all sealed up; it didn't have a hole in it. It was weird. Only one of the kids had gotten a bag like that, thankfully. The manager opened up another bag of Doritos from the same box they had come from to test it, and it was fine. So it was just a weird fluke with that one moldy bag. It made me feel a little better about the couple of buns that were in date, but a little moldy on the bottom (where I wouldn't have seen), that I had ended up serving on the lunch line the week before! I guess crap happens!
Before I left for the day, the manager had told me that they only needed me to work on Monday the following week, and she asked me if I could work the entire week of the 17th, and then just on the 28th. Of course I said yes. Then she said something which made me glad, which was "I wish you'd just tell Courtney (her manager) that you wanted to come on and work full time!" Proud, I exclaimed "I would"! So I'm thinking that at some point in the future, they will definitely hire me on full time. There are a couple of ladies I know of that will be retiring for sure within about the next year, so that will probably be my opportunity. I'm so glad!
And I estimated our Federal Taxes using TurboTax's TaxCaster last night, and according to it, we'll be getting about a $5,300 refund this year! So I'm excited and relieved that things are finally starting to really look up.
Yay! :D
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