burning down the house

There is a new candidate for 'brain of the camp'. We have a pretty normal way of bringing the dishes to the dish pit here in camp. Nothing too fancy or strange which, personally, is quite simple if you follow behind someone in front of you. Scrape your plate of garbage into the bin, put silverware into a tub of water under the sign that says "Please put silverware in the bin. Thank you" and then you put your tray on a speed rack (like you see in Ikea or any other big kitchen working area) and, this part is optional but kitchen staff appreciate it, call out to say either "thanks for the meal" or "good meal guys!". Pretty simple.

However, there have been many different times that someone has not done the routine completely to the letter. We either correct them politely or do the routine for them and hope that someone else will catch them and correct them later. We sometimes have had to scrape plates, put silverware in the bin or even throw napkins away. Though the other day there was one guy that made me shake my head and go "huh??". He had followed the procedure down to the letter of scraping the food from his plate and he even put his plate on one of the brown trays that was already on the rack, he put his silverware in the bin like he was supposed to and then he stood there with a confused look on his face holding his brown tray. He looked to the left, looked to the right, then looked at me through the speed rack which happened to have two identically looking brown trays like the one he was holding and he asked "where does this go?" Of course I was professional and all and just said "on the rack, sir...thank you". He smiled, put the tray on the rack like he was supposed to and walked away.

The other fun thing that happened tonight was that it was steak night. We got a new grill from one of the older camps that cooks steaks really nice. Gives them those black grill marks on it and all. It is the closest thing we will ever get to a BBQ steak inside without the charcoal. Anyways, the 1st and 2nd cook are a good pair to work together because they are both slightly looney. For instance, tonight they decided to recite poetry and talk pretty much all night long like Winston Howell III from Gilligan's Island. They would talk like it to order up steaks, would recite poetry and song lyrics in it and even tell crude jokes in that voice as well. They were laughing and having a good time when their concentration must have lapsed cause the broiler caught on fire. We are not talking one or two flames here, we are talking a full fledged fireball shooting out of the grill. Somehow it got two hot and caused a bit of a flame which ignited all the grease and oil that had accumulated over the night in the reserve pit as well as the grease that was there all week from them not cleaning or changing the tin foil after using it. It was so interesting hearing them go from their rich, almost snobbish, accept of Howell to a panicking pair of cooks screaming out "bring me water...bring me baking soda..quick bring a pan...wet towel that is what I need a wet towel".

After it was all said and done they slowly lapsed back into their joking ways. I just let them cool down and get back to normal. Finally I had to go up and ask the 2nd cook "so, how long do I have to wait before I call say to you guys 'wow, you guys are on FIRE tonight'?" He just looked at me, blinked, laughed out loud and then walked away. I still don't know if that was a serious humours laugh or a 'you smart ass' kind of laugh.