I can't believe Radio actually said those words to me. I get to camp, look at the flight manifest and notice a name of an employee that we had working for us about a year ago. The guy is in his late 60's, native and has either the memory span of a goldfish (cause he often forgets to do the duties that he has been told to do) or the energy level of a sloth (cause he often doesn't do the duties that he has been told to do). He was dismissed from the company awhile ago cause he got drunk on his way out of camp and held a party in his company paid for hotel room and trashed the place. I remember hearing talk about booze spilt, cigarette burns in the carpet and blood everywhere. When confronted about his inappropriate behaviour he broke out in anger and quit. Now he is back and on nights doing about 1/4 of the job that a normal night shift janitor has to do. So, that means now we have 3 night shift janitors (all northerners) to do the job that one night janitor used to do. When I looked at Radio in disbelief in this little thing all he could say was 'it is better to hire the devil you know than the devil you don't know'.
Luckily I was smart enough to check my southern common sense at the airport before getting on the plane and had my camp sense in my head so that made perfect sense. After all my southern common sense in the work place would have screamed "better to hire the person that does the job right instead of the lazy butt head that you know cant do the job". It would have made connections of the fact that the logic he was spouting was like going grocery shopping and saying "I remember buying this cheese and it made me throw up, gave me horrible stomach cramps and I had the runs for a week afterwards cause of it....but, better to eat this cheese and know what is gonna happen than buy a different brand that I might have no problem with". However, since I had my camp sense in my head I nodded and went "great plan chief" and walked away.
I will try to make this rant shorter than the rest. Wont go into too much detail but for some reason they have decided to cut back on vegetable buying, or they know that the new 1st cook loves to cook with vegetables and does so on a regular basis but instead of buying more vegetables to meet his needs of cooking they buy the same amount and hope that he sees that he isn't getting all the vegetables he cooks with and will stop cooking with them all the time. Which means I have no got the challenge of putting out a leaf salad for lunch AND dinner with only 5 heads of iceberg lettuce (4 of which I already used to the two tossed today) and 5 bags of spinach (of which I used a bag and a half already bulking up the tossed due to small amounts of iceberg available) and no romaine. I also still have to put out 2 vegetables at dinner and make 3 mixed salads for supper. I went to the freezer thinking that they would have some frozen veggies to help in this situation. All I found was 2 bags of frozen peas and two boxes of frozen corn. So at least that means I will be safe for Sunday (frozen peas and carrot cubes for one) and Friday (corn on the cob for one). Ahh, talk about the thrill of the job.
Since it is late and I should be going to bed I will add one more funny thing and will continue with my head shaking rants next day. I tried to open up my comics pages to get some funny relief from the day. I was disappointed to note that all 25 websites for my comics were blocked by the netnanny. The reason was the classification of the websites. Some were labelled as 'advertisements' some were labelled as 'shopping' but the best was that a couple were labelled "humour/jokes". Apparently in camp you can block a site because it is considered amusing and funny. This I find to be the most amusing and funny considering the stupidity of the decisions made around this place by some of the higher ups. Well, maybe not stupid since I am sure, or at least hope, that the decisions they make have favorable outcomes in the area that they are made eve though they are considered ass backwards at the lower levels where we sit. Even better was that I opened up the 'to read' folder that I have in my favorites which bring up news pages, flickr accounts, letters to the editor of the Edmonton Sun, the Edmonton sunshine girl and the Mrs' xanga webpage. Seems the sunshine girl came through no problem (though not the best one they have had) but my wife's xanga blog page has been banned cause of 'adult/mature material'. A girl posing half naked in underwear and a bra is acceptable but my wife blogging about vintage cars and lightening storms are adult/mature subject matter? like I said, I hope that these decisions have favorable outcomes higher up cause at my level they are just plain stupid.
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Monday, June 28, 2010
Ignorance is bliss
I guess ignorance truly is bliss. Here I thought that Canada was a free speech/free to protest nation where as long as you were peaceful, didn't carry weapons (pitchforks, flaming torches) and basically hung around someplace you could do it unmolested by the police. It is when you start to break up windows and throw things or taunt the police that you turn from a peaceful protesters to a violent one and the police can take charge on the situation. After seeing this video on youtube that the Mrs showed me yesterday, and watching the extended one later on, I am wondering what else is happening out here that the real news are not reporting but is happening around the country.
Here is the thirty second clip of the ending of the protest:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Heb9BXjYcII&feature=player_embedded
Here is the extended version, complete 9 minute showing:
http://www.vimeo.com/12907488
From what I can tell of the 9 minute video the only thing that the protesters are guilty of would be doing a really bad voice impression of William Wallace of Braveheart.
Granted tensions are high there because of other protesters doing bad things in other areas. I have heard that there are some cars burning, hundreds are being arrested and all...however, when you have a crowd singing O Canada carrying only cameras and doing bad renditions from movies and the police have police shields, horses, handcuffs and batons...how can the police feel threatened by such people?
I do like the last words of the camera person at the end of the full length video. "And that's why I don't have faith in anything anymore".
Here is the thirty second clip of the ending of the protest:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Heb9BXjYcII&feature=player_embedded
Here is the extended version, complete 9 minute showing:
http://www.vimeo.com/12907488
From what I can tell of the 9 minute video the only thing that the protesters are guilty of would be doing a really bad voice impression of William Wallace of Braveheart.
Granted tensions are high there because of other protesters doing bad things in other areas. I have heard that there are some cars burning, hundreds are being arrested and all...however, when you have a crowd singing O Canada carrying only cameras and doing bad renditions from movies and the police have police shields, horses, handcuffs and batons...how can the police feel threatened by such people?
I do like the last words of the camera person at the end of the full length video. "And that's why I don't have faith in anything anymore".
Thursday, June 17, 2010
4 weeks of hell over, out of camp now
Out of camp I am. I have to say that these last 4 weeks in camp had to be one of the most stressful and annoying that I have ever experienced. I dont know if it was just the huge stack of work, the grumbling of the people in the kitchen or the fact that it seems that everytime Radio opened his mouth I, along with a few others, wanted to shut it with a meat tenderizing hammer.
The last week in camp had to be one of the most relaxed and enjoyable times, though a couple things had me looking at the camp managers going "are you serious?" Like, for instance, when I was on 2nd cook duties I was told that the breakfast cook had a lot of things to do so I was responsible for whatever breakfast and sandwich prep I could do. I would come in to work in the morning and have a little list of things like 'roll bacon, slice meat' and that sort of thing. I would do my 2nd cook duties and then do his prep work and all. So when I was on breakfast I had all my breakfast prep done easily enough but I was running low on sliced meat for sandwiches. I asked the camp manager if they would be slicing my sandwich meat during the day (like I did) and was told that he wasnt comfortable with having the day shift people slice the meat and I would be responsible for doing it at night. It seems that out of all the camps in the company that we are in, we are the only camp that has an actual meat slicer and if we have one injury on it either when slicing meat or by cleaning it then we lose the slicer and have to go to pre-sliced/fabricated meat. The pre-sliced meat would be easier to use but not as tasty as fresh sliced meat. As a result of this fear of injury on the slicer there are only two people in camp that are 'adequately trained' meaning 'have used it for over a year with no injury' to operate it. Those two people are the day 1st cook and myself. Since the 1st cook was busy helping the new 1st cook and assisting the cover 2nd cook I got the job at night. Even the baker was shaking his head at that saying that it was unacceptable for that sort of thing since he knows how much work the breakfast cook has to do.
However, it is sooo relaxing working night shift because there is no one around to ask stupid questions and the baker puts his head down and works as hard as I did. Neither of us got breaks so we were both on equal ground. Nothing more annoying than me being 2nd cook and always having something to do (either stuff for my salads or prep work for the 1st cook) and seeing the dishwashers and 1st cook taking hour breaks every day. Also the things that people do during breakfast make me smile and give me some comic relief. For instance, there was one guy that came through the line and asked "can you poach an egg?" which of course when you ask me in that way you are not going to get a simple 'yes'. My response was "we have the technology to do that, yes". He looked at me like I was a nut and said he wanted two poached and to my 'easy, medium or soft' I got "I dont f*&king care". Some have no sense of ha ha in the morning. Though I found out later from the baker that when he was cooking breakfast he had a run in with the guy a week and a half ago. The baker saw the guy standing at the steam line looking sort of down and lost. When asked if he was looking for something specific he answered "what I am looking for you havent got". The baker asked "what is that?" and was told "breakfast sandwiches". Apparently he said it in such a way that it reminded the baker of a 6 year old pouting that he wasnt getting his favorite breakfast meal. The baker laughed and in a loud voice so that people a few tables over could hear he said "awww, that is so cute...can you say that again but with your lip a little lower to the floor". Guess the guy was so embarrassed by the way he was responded to that he didnt come and ask for eggs the entire time the baker was on breakfast. After my response he stuck to scrambled eggs for the entire week as well.
Another time I was standing at the line waiting for an egg order when a guy came up to the french toast tray. He lifted the lid, that had a set of tongs sitting right on the top of the lid, and reached in with his fork from his tray and stabbed two pieces of french toast and put them on his plate. Normally when we have seen this done we lecture them not to do that since they usually use forks that they have already eaten with and they are coming back for seconds but since this was a new fork I decided not to make a big deal out of it. However, I had to smile and nearly laugh when the guy then stuck his fork into a piece of french toast in the line and then left the fork there. It was like those times when you are at the dinner table and you use your spoon to take out some cranberry sauce or something but then forget to take your spoon back and you realize a second later that your spoon has now done the round of the table and you have no spoon. The guy looked over at me and saw me smiling and gave me a half hearted smile back and I said "that is what we have tongs for but thanks for donating your fork". The guy looked at his plate and then at the fork stuck in the french toast on the line and broke into a big smile and started to laugh. He took his fork back and smiled and I gave him a final "since it is the morning I wont bust you for that" and he went to sit down. After that I took the french toast he stabbed plus the other 3 under it (in case there was too much penetration) and threw them out for appearances sake.
After seeing that and knowing peoples habit of using their fork to take stuff from a buffet steam line, dont think I am gonna be eating at a buffet anytime soon, if ever again in my life.
So yeah, was an interesting time in camp and now have 2 weeks out to look forward to before returning to camp. Oh oh oh, one last thing. The day before I left I heard that the 1st cook was talking with a couple other underlings about the possibility that Big D was going to be transferred to the other camp opening soon as the baker. I think it is because she is definitely a more small camp baker/worker than a big camp worker. We need fast, efficient and talented people in the kitchen at the big camp and she lacks in all 3 areas. So with her in the smaller camp it was wondered who was going to be the baker in the big camp. Of course when I heard that I let my fantasies, hopes and dreams go wild. My dream was that I would be breakfast cover for the breakfast cook when he is out for his two weeks and then baker cover for the baker for his two weeks out and then I would get my two weeks out. That would mean that with three people they would have breakfast and baker position covered without worry. Of course, that dream was shattered a second later when reality kicked in. Reality being that in the span of a two months we have had three 2nd cooks quit and the only 2nd cook that has stuck in the position, and seem to be fast and efficient enough to do the job well, is myself. So either that means I am considered a great asset to the company or I just have no real spine to stand up and tell them "screw this job, you cant walk all over me like that, I can find work anywhere in a second and I dont have to put up with your crap" I just take their big bowl of steaming crap and happily ask for seconds. Though, that second of hope and dream was pure heaven.
The last week in camp had to be one of the most relaxed and enjoyable times, though a couple things had me looking at the camp managers going "are you serious?" Like, for instance, when I was on 2nd cook duties I was told that the breakfast cook had a lot of things to do so I was responsible for whatever breakfast and sandwich prep I could do. I would come in to work in the morning and have a little list of things like 'roll bacon, slice meat' and that sort of thing. I would do my 2nd cook duties and then do his prep work and all. So when I was on breakfast I had all my breakfast prep done easily enough but I was running low on sliced meat for sandwiches. I asked the camp manager if they would be slicing my sandwich meat during the day (like I did) and was told that he wasnt comfortable with having the day shift people slice the meat and I would be responsible for doing it at night. It seems that out of all the camps in the company that we are in, we are the only camp that has an actual meat slicer and if we have one injury on it either when slicing meat or by cleaning it then we lose the slicer and have to go to pre-sliced/fabricated meat. The pre-sliced meat would be easier to use but not as tasty as fresh sliced meat. As a result of this fear of injury on the slicer there are only two people in camp that are 'adequately trained' meaning 'have used it for over a year with no injury' to operate it. Those two people are the day 1st cook and myself. Since the 1st cook was busy helping the new 1st cook and assisting the cover 2nd cook I got the job at night. Even the baker was shaking his head at that saying that it was unacceptable for that sort of thing since he knows how much work the breakfast cook has to do.
However, it is sooo relaxing working night shift because there is no one around to ask stupid questions and the baker puts his head down and works as hard as I did. Neither of us got breaks so we were both on equal ground. Nothing more annoying than me being 2nd cook and always having something to do (either stuff for my salads or prep work for the 1st cook) and seeing the dishwashers and 1st cook taking hour breaks every day. Also the things that people do during breakfast make me smile and give me some comic relief. For instance, there was one guy that came through the line and asked "can you poach an egg?" which of course when you ask me in that way you are not going to get a simple 'yes'. My response was "we have the technology to do that, yes". He looked at me like I was a nut and said he wanted two poached and to my 'easy, medium or soft' I got "I dont f*&king care". Some have no sense of ha ha in the morning. Though I found out later from the baker that when he was cooking breakfast he had a run in with the guy a week and a half ago. The baker saw the guy standing at the steam line looking sort of down and lost. When asked if he was looking for something specific he answered "what I am looking for you havent got". The baker asked "what is that?" and was told "breakfast sandwiches". Apparently he said it in such a way that it reminded the baker of a 6 year old pouting that he wasnt getting his favorite breakfast meal. The baker laughed and in a loud voice so that people a few tables over could hear he said "awww, that is so cute...can you say that again but with your lip a little lower to the floor". Guess the guy was so embarrassed by the way he was responded to that he didnt come and ask for eggs the entire time the baker was on breakfast. After my response he stuck to scrambled eggs for the entire week as well.
Another time I was standing at the line waiting for an egg order when a guy came up to the french toast tray. He lifted the lid, that had a set of tongs sitting right on the top of the lid, and reached in with his fork from his tray and stabbed two pieces of french toast and put them on his plate. Normally when we have seen this done we lecture them not to do that since they usually use forks that they have already eaten with and they are coming back for seconds but since this was a new fork I decided not to make a big deal out of it. However, I had to smile and nearly laugh when the guy then stuck his fork into a piece of french toast in the line and then left the fork there. It was like those times when you are at the dinner table and you use your spoon to take out some cranberry sauce or something but then forget to take your spoon back and you realize a second later that your spoon has now done the round of the table and you have no spoon. The guy looked over at me and saw me smiling and gave me a half hearted smile back and I said "that is what we have tongs for but thanks for donating your fork". The guy looked at his plate and then at the fork stuck in the french toast on the line and broke into a big smile and started to laugh. He took his fork back and smiled and I gave him a final "since it is the morning I wont bust you for that" and he went to sit down. After that I took the french toast he stabbed plus the other 3 under it (in case there was too much penetration) and threw them out for appearances sake.
After seeing that and knowing peoples habit of using their fork to take stuff from a buffet steam line, dont think I am gonna be eating at a buffet anytime soon, if ever again in my life.
So yeah, was an interesting time in camp and now have 2 weeks out to look forward to before returning to camp. Oh oh oh, one last thing. The day before I left I heard that the 1st cook was talking with a couple other underlings about the possibility that Big D was going to be transferred to the other camp opening soon as the baker. I think it is because she is definitely a more small camp baker/worker than a big camp worker. We need fast, efficient and talented people in the kitchen at the big camp and she lacks in all 3 areas. So with her in the smaller camp it was wondered who was going to be the baker in the big camp. Of course when I heard that I let my fantasies, hopes and dreams go wild. My dream was that I would be breakfast cover for the breakfast cook when he is out for his two weeks and then baker cover for the baker for his two weeks out and then I would get my two weeks out. That would mean that with three people they would have breakfast and baker position covered without worry. Of course, that dream was shattered a second later when reality kicked in. Reality being that in the span of a two months we have had three 2nd cooks quit and the only 2nd cook that has stuck in the position, and seem to be fast and efficient enough to do the job well, is myself. So either that means I am considered a great asset to the company or I just have no real spine to stand up and tell them "screw this job, you cant walk all over me like that, I can find work anywhere in a second and I dont have to put up with your crap" I just take their big bowl of steaming crap and happily ask for seconds. Though, that second of hope and dream was pure heaven.
Saturday, June 12, 2010
finally..night shift
It happened, I have switched over to night shift as the breakfast cook. We got our new 1st cook (guy has worked with us before in another camp and has come back for more punishment) and dishwasher so I was finally switched over to nights.
The first night I had as breakfast cook was pretty simple since I worked the day leading up to it and did all the prep already so all I had to do was walk in at 2:30am and start cooking and heating stuff up. Today was a little bit more complicated as I started my 8:30pm to 8:30am full shift.
First shift was a total storm of people. First off it was fly day so everyone was getting off work early and coming in for their last big meal before getting on the plane to leave. I couldn't keep stuff on the steam line fast enough. I would put out 10 french toast and 6 pancakes then I would get orders for 5 different types of eggs and by the time I blinked and looked back at the line we were down to 1 french toast and pancake. I remember the breakfast cook I was replacing was put on full time baker and he was hanging around giving me tips and pointers on timing. He said that he would do some prep work while cooking breakfast in the slow time. It was so busy I didnt even have time to get the mushrooms out to slice for omelette prep it was so busy.
Today was the total opposite. I basically pushed the limits of my speed to get all the sandwiches made and breakfast prep done before breakfast cause I figured it would be like the day before and I would get no work done. Come 5am when I opened the line I had 18 french toasts, 10 pancakes, full pan of bacon and hash browns, 12 slices of ham, 10 bologna, 25 beef sausages and around 80 pork sausages all on the line (not counting the scrambled egg bin full, oatmeal, 30 hard boiled eggs and a full container of hot beans) and ready to take orders for eggs. By 15 minutes past, when the day before I had about 10 orders plus a quickly depleating steam line of food, I had 2 egg orders and maybe 5 people come through the line for oatmeal and boiled eggs. Problem was that I had prepped up everything so there was really nothing to do but hang around and wait for orders to come in. Nothing more frustrating than having all this free time to do prep work but not having any prep work to do since the stuff for breakfast can not be prepped too far ahead or else it goes funky.
I do really enjoy the night shift because you dont have to deal with people always stopping your work to ask stupid little questions like "do you have any rye bread?" or stuff like that. I go by the thought of camp life, if it aint on the shelf than chances are we dont have it. The kitchen staff is not so bored out in camp that we make a game out of hiding food or hoarding the good stuff in the back and not putting it out for people. Nights you go in and start work and with the exception of the night baker walking around talking to himself (eg. "I gots the carrot cake in now, comes outs at 1am then the chocolate cakes goes in but thats nots done till 1:45 buts I have the cookies to trays......" as he walks away mumbling to himself) you dont see a single soul for hours. I likes the peace and quiet just fine. Now I just have to train the baker into knowing my work habits since all day shift knows that I am not the talker when I work. It is not a sign of stress or overworking but just I dont do the small talk chatter while I work like some do. The baker must have thought I was really stressed and all cause he kept coming by and asking "are you alright? you doing fine? you behind, yous just lets me knows" (if you havent guessed the baker is a newfie through and through...he is so newfie that he will throw in a few newfie slang now and then that makes us in the kitchen shake our head and go 'try that again?').
The only problem with night shift is that I have to deal for 3 hours with the people in camp when they come to place their order. Now I don't really mind the way some of them have made up words for how they want their eggs done. Like when the french guys come up and ask for their eggs "well done", or there is one guy that says "two eggs cooked good around the outside of the yolk yet still runny in the centre"...yeah dude that would be eggs over medium, but ok, your way sounds so much more professional. I can even handle the way they give me hand signals like it is a universal language of eggs. Like when they give you two fingers (sort of like the British two finger salute) and then hold their palms upwards and flips them over so that their palms are face down. This is egg sign language for two over easy. It is quite easy to figure out though the one that threw me for a loop was when one guy held up the two fingers and then made the hawaiian 'hang loose' gesture with his knuckles facing towards me and then shook his thumb and finger up and down. Apparently that is an egg swimming so he wants two poached eggs.
All is good but the one thing that I can not stand that annoys me to no end is when they stand at the toaster to place their order. Picture the end of the steam line to be about 20 feet away from the grill. I will be at the grill cooking some eggs or something and I will look down and see someone standing there. Some guess dont know the egg sign language so he talks but because of the chatter from the dining room and exhaust fan I cant hear him so I have to start walking towards him. Depending on how loud he is talking I usually get half way before I hear what is being said then I have to turn around and go back to the grill to start his order. Once his eggs are nearly ready I then have to walk back to where he is at the toaster to get his plate to walk back to the grill to get his eggs to walk back to the toaster to give him the plate. Then what does about 90% of the people do? walk down the steam line to get bacon and sausage, which is about 10 feet tops away from the grill. I can literally turn from the grill, take 2 steps and be at the steam line to hand him his plate.
Before anyone says "why dont you just take their plate when they place their order?" I had thought of that however when there are 5 egg orders on the grill and everyone has some type of toast or fruit on their plate, it is difficult in the rush to remember whose bread/fruit goes with whose egg.
So now I am slowing training the monkeys. Instead of going cold turkey and making them all walk down the line, which would be too much for some of these guys, I am slowing getting them closer to the line. I will hold my hand to my ear like I cant hear them but go about 1/4 of the way there and make them walk a bit down the line. I am hoping, in a few rotations, to have them trained so that they will automatically come down the line to place their order.
So yeah, am on night shift and am still loving it.
The first night I had as breakfast cook was pretty simple since I worked the day leading up to it and did all the prep already so all I had to do was walk in at 2:30am and start cooking and heating stuff up. Today was a little bit more complicated as I started my 8:30pm to 8:30am full shift.
First shift was a total storm of people. First off it was fly day so everyone was getting off work early and coming in for their last big meal before getting on the plane to leave. I couldn't keep stuff on the steam line fast enough. I would put out 10 french toast and 6 pancakes then I would get orders for 5 different types of eggs and by the time I blinked and looked back at the line we were down to 1 french toast and pancake. I remember the breakfast cook I was replacing was put on full time baker and he was hanging around giving me tips and pointers on timing. He said that he would do some prep work while cooking breakfast in the slow time. It was so busy I didnt even have time to get the mushrooms out to slice for omelette prep it was so busy.
Today was the total opposite. I basically pushed the limits of my speed to get all the sandwiches made and breakfast prep done before breakfast cause I figured it would be like the day before and I would get no work done. Come 5am when I opened the line I had 18 french toasts, 10 pancakes, full pan of bacon and hash browns, 12 slices of ham, 10 bologna, 25 beef sausages and around 80 pork sausages all on the line (not counting the scrambled egg bin full, oatmeal, 30 hard boiled eggs and a full container of hot beans) and ready to take orders for eggs. By 15 minutes past, when the day before I had about 10 orders plus a quickly depleating steam line of food, I had 2 egg orders and maybe 5 people come through the line for oatmeal and boiled eggs. Problem was that I had prepped up everything so there was really nothing to do but hang around and wait for orders to come in. Nothing more frustrating than having all this free time to do prep work but not having any prep work to do since the stuff for breakfast can not be prepped too far ahead or else it goes funky.
I do really enjoy the night shift because you dont have to deal with people always stopping your work to ask stupid little questions like "do you have any rye bread?" or stuff like that. I go by the thought of camp life, if it aint on the shelf than chances are we dont have it. The kitchen staff is not so bored out in camp that we make a game out of hiding food or hoarding the good stuff in the back and not putting it out for people. Nights you go in and start work and with the exception of the night baker walking around talking to himself (eg. "I gots the carrot cake in now, comes outs at 1am then the chocolate cakes goes in but thats nots done till 1:45 buts I have the cookies to trays......" as he walks away mumbling to himself) you dont see a single soul for hours. I likes the peace and quiet just fine. Now I just have to train the baker into knowing my work habits since all day shift knows that I am not the talker when I work. It is not a sign of stress or overworking but just I dont do the small talk chatter while I work like some do. The baker must have thought I was really stressed and all cause he kept coming by and asking "are you alright? you doing fine? you behind, yous just lets me knows" (if you havent guessed the baker is a newfie through and through...he is so newfie that he will throw in a few newfie slang now and then that makes us in the kitchen shake our head and go 'try that again?').
The only problem with night shift is that I have to deal for 3 hours with the people in camp when they come to place their order. Now I don't really mind the way some of them have made up words for how they want their eggs done. Like when the french guys come up and ask for their eggs "well done", or there is one guy that says "two eggs cooked good around the outside of the yolk yet still runny in the centre"...yeah dude that would be eggs over medium, but ok, your way sounds so much more professional. I can even handle the way they give me hand signals like it is a universal language of eggs. Like when they give you two fingers (sort of like the British two finger salute) and then hold their palms upwards and flips them over so that their palms are face down. This is egg sign language for two over easy. It is quite easy to figure out though the one that threw me for a loop was when one guy held up the two fingers and then made the hawaiian 'hang loose' gesture with his knuckles facing towards me and then shook his thumb and finger up and down. Apparently that is an egg swimming so he wants two poached eggs.
All is good but the one thing that I can not stand that annoys me to no end is when they stand at the toaster to place their order. Picture the end of the steam line to be about 20 feet away from the grill. I will be at the grill cooking some eggs or something and I will look down and see someone standing there. Some guess dont know the egg sign language so he talks but because of the chatter from the dining room and exhaust fan I cant hear him so I have to start walking towards him. Depending on how loud he is talking I usually get half way before I hear what is being said then I have to turn around and go back to the grill to start his order. Once his eggs are nearly ready I then have to walk back to where he is at the toaster to get his plate to walk back to the grill to get his eggs to walk back to the toaster to give him the plate. Then what does about 90% of the people do? walk down the steam line to get bacon and sausage, which is about 10 feet tops away from the grill. I can literally turn from the grill, take 2 steps and be at the steam line to hand him his plate.
Before anyone says "why dont you just take their plate when they place their order?" I had thought of that however when there are 5 egg orders on the grill and everyone has some type of toast or fruit on their plate, it is difficult in the rush to remember whose bread/fruit goes with whose egg.
So now I am slowing training the monkeys. Instead of going cold turkey and making them all walk down the line, which would be too much for some of these guys, I am slowing getting them closer to the line. I will hold my hand to my ear like I cant hear them but go about 1/4 of the way there and make them walk a bit down the line. I am hoping, in a few rotations, to have them trained so that they will automatically come down the line to place their order.
So yeah, am on night shift and am still loving it.
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
ways to tick off the camp manager
I sense that I have a different way of dealing with stress than the 1st cook does. I have noticed that in the past few days the 1st cook has taken to coming into the kitchen, running around like a complete and total mad man trying to get everything done in the shortest time possible and then leaving the kitchen for a 'quick smoke' (won't go into my usual confusion of how a smoker can take 8 ten minute smoke breaks a day, plus their coffee break and lunch break, and be considered a hard worker but a non-smoker takes an extra 10 minute break on top of their coffee break and lunch break and they are considered lazy) and then comes back into the kitchen with a frenzied look in his eyes and does the cycle over again. However, my method of dealing with the stress and all is just to basically shut down everything, plod away at what I have to do and have the attitude of 'if it gets done, it gets done; if it doesn't, then it didn't get done'.
For instance, we have to make a vegetarian dish every night for the herbivores (all 5 of them) in camp. The 1st cook had no idea what to make so he grabbed the eggplant (that has been in the fridge for quite some time) and threw together some eggplant Parmesan, or at least the camp version of it. Cut the eggplant into large round circles, dredged them in flour, deep fried them and then stacked them in the baking pan with spaghetti sauce (sauce, eggplant, mozza cheese, eggplant, mozza cheese, parm cheese). They must have looked really good cause most guys during dinner service would go 'wow, that looks tasty' and grab the spatula and just as they were getting one to put on their plate they asked me 'what is it?' and when I said 'eggplant Parmesan' it instantly got put back in the pan and they made a face and moved on. Anyways, he came out with two pans of eggplant and said "ok, I have 20 parmesans, think that will be enough?" I looked at the pans and asked "do you have any more eggplant?" to which he replied "nope" so my simple answer was 'then I guess that is enough'. He sort of looked at me dumbfounded like 'my god, why didn't I think of that logic?!?!?!?' and smiled and went "I like the way you are thinking" and went off on another frenzy run.
So what does our differing attitude have to do with what I am going to say? well, I have discovered that from my total lack of enthusiasm and all in camp this rotation I have discovered 3 ways to tick off Tony.
#1 : Purple cabbage out as a vegetable.
As 2nd cook duties I am responsible for putting out a vegetable. I found that green steamed cabbage seems to go pretty good but I was out of that and wondered how purple cabbage would go over. I had it cut up for Mondays dinner but was told by Tony not to put it out with the other vegetable cause the two were not that strong and no one eats steamed cabbage. I had the cabbage already cut up so I ran it as a vegetable on Tuesday. I noticed his look of disgust when he was walking by the vegetable part of the steam line.
#2 : Play 'guess the spice' in the food.
I made the roast potatoes for supper. As they were coming out of the oven Tony came by and took one and bite into it. Without thinking I asked 'can you taste the rosemary?' to which he said "oh yeah, lots of it". Well there was no rosemary and I told him that there wasn't because "I know better than to put rosemary into anything when you are in camp". Tony hates rosemary in anything it seems. He says it isn't the taste but the fact that you sometimes get the needles stabbing you in the mouth/gums when you bite into the item. He looked at me with either a look of 'you ticked me off, mortal!' or 'no rosemary, so what am I tasting?' I did mention it was another herb he hates and he got it on the next guess. I said there was basil, thyme (the other spice he hates), pepper, seasoning salt and paprika. He said that basil and thyme do not go together since basil goes with food and thyme goes with the garbage.
#3 : say you will get something when you have no right, apparently, to do so
There is a guy in camp that we call craphead (well, technically another word for crap but yeah, you get the idea). We call him this cause he is a pain in the butt and he has dreadlocks that are curled and tied up on his head and, as the 1st cook puts it, he looks 'like someone did a triple coiler on his head'. Anyways, the guy came up to me and asked if we had a set menu (I confirmed our set 8 week menu) and asked if he could get a copy of it to take to a nutritionist. I only said that I would check with the cook and all and see about getting a copy. I asked the 1st cook and was told 'tell him to go to hell'; I asked Stephanie in the office and was told 'tell him to go to hell'; and then I asked Tony and was told 'tell him to fornicate himself and then go to hell'. As well as having the same answer to the request they had the same reason. Apparently they are worried that he doesn't want it for his own personal use but because he wants to take the menu to one of the big wigs to complain that there are not enough vegetarian options and say that we are starving the vegetarians with all our meat eating ways. The big bosses then will force us to make half and half vegetarian to meat eating food items which will make more work for the cooks plus drive food costs up since that means a lot more vegetables. The big bosses however will have no clue that it is not a good idea because there are about 195 mouths that are meat and potato loving men and only 5 pseudo-vegetarians since most of them are the main eaters of chicken wings on junk food night and will kill any poached/steamed fish that we put on the line.
In the end I told craphead that he had to talk to Tony about the menu since they all agreed that a menu does nothing for a nutritionist since it isn't what is on the menu that they need to know but what goes into that food item and how it is cooked. The menu may say "chicken breasts" but there is a difference between a slow steamed chicken breast with no seasoning or skin and a chicken breast that is battered with bread crumbs, deep fried and served with a white gravy sauce. So yeah, Tony was not impressed on that one either since I apparently leaked out that we have a set menu now that is hanging on our back board and the menu isn't a 'make it up as you go along with what is available' type deal.
So yeah, three ways to tick off Tony. Now if that had happened a year or even 6 months ago I would have been stressing out on the fact that I might have done a bad job and be worried about the consequences to my actions. These days I look and go 'it was done, get over it' and go about my regular plugging away.
On the bright side, we are getting our two new cooks (HOPEFULLY) today, if there is a plane coming in and all. Though they wont be going right to work since they have to waste half a day in orientation learning the proper way to dispose of oil and other industrial fluids like brake, transmission fluids and drilling lubricant as well as the proper procedure for laying down drilling hoses on ice so as not to melt away portions that could cause an unsafe working condition. Another general broad spectrum waste of time brought to you by your friendly minds of the company. So we are thinking that I am on days until Thursday afternoon and then I go to sleep for half of the day and get up to do Thursday 8:30pm to Friday morning 8:30am and then I am on nights for one week to do breakfast.
For instance, we have to make a vegetarian dish every night for the herbivores (all 5 of them) in camp. The 1st cook had no idea what to make so he grabbed the eggplant (that has been in the fridge for quite some time) and threw together some eggplant Parmesan, or at least the camp version of it. Cut the eggplant into large round circles, dredged them in flour, deep fried them and then stacked them in the baking pan with spaghetti sauce (sauce, eggplant, mozza cheese, eggplant, mozza cheese, parm cheese). They must have looked really good cause most guys during dinner service would go 'wow, that looks tasty' and grab the spatula and just as they were getting one to put on their plate they asked me 'what is it?' and when I said 'eggplant Parmesan' it instantly got put back in the pan and they made a face and moved on. Anyways, he came out with two pans of eggplant and said "ok, I have 20 parmesans, think that will be enough?" I looked at the pans and asked "do you have any more eggplant?" to which he replied "nope" so my simple answer was 'then I guess that is enough'. He sort of looked at me dumbfounded like 'my god, why didn't I think of that logic?!?!?!?' and smiled and went "I like the way you are thinking" and went off on another frenzy run.
So what does our differing attitude have to do with what I am going to say? well, I have discovered that from my total lack of enthusiasm and all in camp this rotation I have discovered 3 ways to tick off Tony.
#1 : Purple cabbage out as a vegetable.
As 2nd cook duties I am responsible for putting out a vegetable. I found that green steamed cabbage seems to go pretty good but I was out of that and wondered how purple cabbage would go over. I had it cut up for Mondays dinner but was told by Tony not to put it out with the other vegetable cause the two were not that strong and no one eats steamed cabbage. I had the cabbage already cut up so I ran it as a vegetable on Tuesday. I noticed his look of disgust when he was walking by the vegetable part of the steam line.
#2 : Play 'guess the spice' in the food.
I made the roast potatoes for supper. As they were coming out of the oven Tony came by and took one and bite into it. Without thinking I asked 'can you taste the rosemary?' to which he said "oh yeah, lots of it". Well there was no rosemary and I told him that there wasn't because "I know better than to put rosemary into anything when you are in camp". Tony hates rosemary in anything it seems. He says it isn't the taste but the fact that you sometimes get the needles stabbing you in the mouth/gums when you bite into the item. He looked at me with either a look of 'you ticked me off, mortal!' or 'no rosemary, so what am I tasting?' I did mention it was another herb he hates and he got it on the next guess. I said there was basil, thyme (the other spice he hates), pepper, seasoning salt and paprika. He said that basil and thyme do not go together since basil goes with food and thyme goes with the garbage.
#3 : say you will get something when you have no right, apparently, to do so
There is a guy in camp that we call craphead (well, technically another word for crap but yeah, you get the idea). We call him this cause he is a pain in the butt and he has dreadlocks that are curled and tied up on his head and, as the 1st cook puts it, he looks 'like someone did a triple coiler on his head'. Anyways, the guy came up to me and asked if we had a set menu (I confirmed our set 8 week menu) and asked if he could get a copy of it to take to a nutritionist. I only said that I would check with the cook and all and see about getting a copy. I asked the 1st cook and was told 'tell him to go to hell'; I asked Stephanie in the office and was told 'tell him to go to hell'; and then I asked Tony and was told 'tell him to fornicate himself and then go to hell'. As well as having the same answer to the request they had the same reason. Apparently they are worried that he doesn't want it for his own personal use but because he wants to take the menu to one of the big wigs to complain that there are not enough vegetarian options and say that we are starving the vegetarians with all our meat eating ways. The big bosses then will force us to make half and half vegetarian to meat eating food items which will make more work for the cooks plus drive food costs up since that means a lot more vegetables. The big bosses however will have no clue that it is not a good idea because there are about 195 mouths that are meat and potato loving men and only 5 pseudo-vegetarians since most of them are the main eaters of chicken wings on junk food night and will kill any poached/steamed fish that we put on the line.
In the end I told craphead that he had to talk to Tony about the menu since they all agreed that a menu does nothing for a nutritionist since it isn't what is on the menu that they need to know but what goes into that food item and how it is cooked. The menu may say "chicken breasts" but there is a difference between a slow steamed chicken breast with no seasoning or skin and a chicken breast that is battered with bread crumbs, deep fried and served with a white gravy sauce. So yeah, Tony was not impressed on that one either since I apparently leaked out that we have a set menu now that is hanging on our back board and the menu isn't a 'make it up as you go along with what is available' type deal.
So yeah, three ways to tick off Tony. Now if that had happened a year or even 6 months ago I would have been stressing out on the fact that I might have done a bad job and be worried about the consequences to my actions. These days I look and go 'it was done, get over it' and go about my regular plugging away.
On the bright side, we are getting our two new cooks (HOPEFULLY) today, if there is a plane coming in and all. Though they wont be going right to work since they have to waste half a day in orientation learning the proper way to dispose of oil and other industrial fluids like brake, transmission fluids and drilling lubricant as well as the proper procedure for laying down drilling hoses on ice so as not to melt away portions that could cause an unsafe working condition. Another general broad spectrum waste of time brought to you by your friendly minds of the company. So we are thinking that I am on days until Thursday afternoon and then I go to sleep for half of the day and get up to do Thursday 8:30pm to Friday morning 8:30am and then I am on nights for one week to do breakfast.
Monday, June 7, 2010
blasting and signs
So they started blasting on the ridge right behind the cabins yesterday. Seems like it is going to be a daily thing now, though in the last safety meeting we had they said they were blasting three times a day. That I found hard to believe considering the amount of drilling and work that goes into each blast. Out staff were given instructions on what we had to do leading up to, during and after the blast. The housekeepers had to guard doorways leading out of camp and the 1st cook has to guard the door leading to the back of the kitchen while everyone else in the dining room has to keep people away from the windows during the blast. Though Tony had a good point in that if a stray rock or something were to come flying at the camp because of the explosives that were laid under/around it, the debris would fly through the camp wall and pretty much through anyone standing in it's path...window or wall, it would go through you.
Yesterday was the first blast. Of course everyone came to the dining room earlier than they were supposed to and some were even standing at the window or stepping back from it with their camera in hand trying to get the most optimal spot for the blast. When I looked out at the dining room just before the blast happened, everyone was sitting as close to the windows as they possibly could to get a look at this blast up close. After all, we have seen blasts from a distance and we see smoke, dust and rock go flying up in a big display and a lot of noise and who doesn't like to see destruction at that level, right?
So everyone is sitting in the dining room except for one of the big bosses who came to the back kitchen area where the 1st cook was guarding and got a front row seat at one of the windows. I can see the hypocrisy in that statement since the rule we were given was no one was allowed to be anywhere near a window and this boss was standing at the window, basically with his face pressed up against the glass. I guess it is true that there are rules for the rulers and rules for the ruled. Either that or everyone knows that if you lose the life of a grunt underling working then production and all is lost in the company but if you lose the life of a manager/supervisor/big boss, no real time is lost. Shows who is doing all the real work in the company huh?
So cameras are ready, people are milling around in the dining room and I can almost feel the excitement wafting in from them. Mind you, I am in the kitchen still working cause I was already behind on the breakfast prep due to a few snags on the prep for the dinner. Finally there is a call on the radio and we hear a "PHHOMP" and the ground shakes a bit. The sound and feeling I got reminded me of a long time ago in Burnaby with my dad.
Well, not sure if this is an actual memory or a dream of some sort that I had but I keep remembering it. Anyways, I remember standing with my brother just under the balcony of our place. I remember dad telling us to stand really still and not to move. I remember the step he was on was about a hundred miles up in the sky (so, if you rate that from kid to adult to actual height, he probably wasn't more than 2 feet above our 3 foot height at the time) and he dropped a cinder block about 5 feet from where we were standing, or at least dropped it somewhere in the area of where we were. I remember the fascination of feeling the ground shake at the PHHOMP the block made hitting the ground. So that is what the blast felt like. Of course, after feeling and hearing I really wasn't blown away (hee hee..so punny am I*G*) by the whole thing and went up to the 1st cook and mentioned that it sounded like the baker had fallen out of his bed.
So today when the blast happened I noticed a distinct difference in the way that people reacted to the blast. There were no cameras, there was no nervous chatter about what was happening and what the people did that day. You know how when people are nervous or scared they seem to go on and on about the most mundane things, almost like if they talk about the boring and mundane they forget about what is making them nervous or scared. One other thing I noticed is that yesterday everyone was sitting as close as they possibly could to the windows which I am assuming was because they were hoping to catch a glimpse of the blast. Today, however, everyone was sitting as close as they possibly could to the coffee machine on the far opposite side of the dining hall, total opposite side of the hall as to where the window was. The only thing that remained the same was that the big boss was in the back of the kitchen at the window but this time he brought a friend to stand by the window. Guess everyone wasn't told that it was a 'blanketed' blast. They basically covered the whole blast area with a covering and tires. So all you see is the tires go up slightly and go down again. It is like watching the sheets in bed of your sleeping partner when they break wind.
Needless to say, the whole blast thing is wasted on me in terms of excitement.
However, one thing that has me laughing in the kitchen are the two signs that we have posted in the dining room. We had problems with people putting their tray and plates with food on it on the dish rack. The response to this problem was to put up signs on the wrack letting people know to discard their garbage. However, the wording that they used was “please clean your plates” on the wrack with arrows pointing to the garbage can location. So people followed the arrows which lead to the garbage cans BUT the first thing that they hit before the garbage cans were two sinks for people to wash their drinking jugs and all. So people started doing what the signs said and they would throw their garbage in the can and then actually rinse their plate off in the sink before bringing it to the sink.
Now the dishwashers loved this idea since he was the one that started the whole ‘rinse and scrub your pots/pans in the back sink before bringing it to the dishpit’ idea. However, it was causing a problem cause the sink was not designed for the constant plate washing and was plugging up on a regular basis. So what was the solution? If you guessed taking the sign down and rewording it to something like ‘please scrape garbage into bins’ you are wrong. The solution was to make a sign to hang over the sink reading “please do not clean your plates in the sink”. I knew it didn’t make sense but didn’t really realise that people were reading it until I saw a new lady in camp standing there with her plate in hand looking at the one sign to clean her plate and then the other saying don’t clean it here and then back saying to clean her plate. Almost like she was trying to decide which sign to listen to. I had to go up and break her wonderment by telling her the proper procedure of the whole thing.
Got me thinking about the stupid meeting they made me go to a week ago for the health and safety where someone said that there is actually a sign out in one of the pits reading “yield to buried cable”. He asked the safety guy running the meeting exactly how does a truck yield to a buried cable. After hearing about this sign I so want to go out and take a picture of it so that I can send it to a late night talk show under their heading of stupid signs posted in the work area or in public.
Yesterday was the first blast. Of course everyone came to the dining room earlier than they were supposed to and some were even standing at the window or stepping back from it with their camera in hand trying to get the most optimal spot for the blast. When I looked out at the dining room just before the blast happened, everyone was sitting as close to the windows as they possibly could to get a look at this blast up close. After all, we have seen blasts from a distance and we see smoke, dust and rock go flying up in a big display and a lot of noise and who doesn't like to see destruction at that level, right?
So everyone is sitting in the dining room except for one of the big bosses who came to the back kitchen area where the 1st cook was guarding and got a front row seat at one of the windows. I can see the hypocrisy in that statement since the rule we were given was no one was allowed to be anywhere near a window and this boss was standing at the window, basically with his face pressed up against the glass. I guess it is true that there are rules for the rulers and rules for the ruled. Either that or everyone knows that if you lose the life of a grunt underling working then production and all is lost in the company but if you lose the life of a manager/supervisor/big boss, no real time is lost. Shows who is doing all the real work in the company huh?
So cameras are ready, people are milling around in the dining room and I can almost feel the excitement wafting in from them. Mind you, I am in the kitchen still working cause I was already behind on the breakfast prep due to a few snags on the prep for the dinner. Finally there is a call on the radio and we hear a "PHHOMP" and the ground shakes a bit. The sound and feeling I got reminded me of a long time ago in Burnaby with my dad.
Well, not sure if this is an actual memory or a dream of some sort that I had but I keep remembering it. Anyways, I remember standing with my brother just under the balcony of our place. I remember dad telling us to stand really still and not to move. I remember the step he was on was about a hundred miles up in the sky (so, if you rate that from kid to adult to actual height, he probably wasn't more than 2 feet above our 3 foot height at the time) and he dropped a cinder block about 5 feet from where we were standing, or at least dropped it somewhere in the area of where we were. I remember the fascination of feeling the ground shake at the PHHOMP the block made hitting the ground. So that is what the blast felt like. Of course, after feeling and hearing I really wasn't blown away (hee hee..so punny am I*G*) by the whole thing and went up to the 1st cook and mentioned that it sounded like the baker had fallen out of his bed.
So today when the blast happened I noticed a distinct difference in the way that people reacted to the blast. There were no cameras, there was no nervous chatter about what was happening and what the people did that day. You know how when people are nervous or scared they seem to go on and on about the most mundane things, almost like if they talk about the boring and mundane they forget about what is making them nervous or scared. One other thing I noticed is that yesterday everyone was sitting as close as they possibly could to the windows which I am assuming was because they were hoping to catch a glimpse of the blast. Today, however, everyone was sitting as close as they possibly could to the coffee machine on the far opposite side of the dining hall, total opposite side of the hall as to where the window was. The only thing that remained the same was that the big boss was in the back of the kitchen at the window but this time he brought a friend to stand by the window. Guess everyone wasn't told that it was a 'blanketed' blast. They basically covered the whole blast area with a covering and tires. So all you see is the tires go up slightly and go down again. It is like watching the sheets in bed of your sleeping partner when they break wind.
Needless to say, the whole blast thing is wasted on me in terms of excitement.
However, one thing that has me laughing in the kitchen are the two signs that we have posted in the dining room. We had problems with people putting their tray and plates with food on it on the dish rack. The response to this problem was to put up signs on the wrack letting people know to discard their garbage. However, the wording that they used was “please clean your plates” on the wrack with arrows pointing to the garbage can location. So people followed the arrows which lead to the garbage cans BUT the first thing that they hit before the garbage cans were two sinks for people to wash their drinking jugs and all. So people started doing what the signs said and they would throw their garbage in the can and then actually rinse their plate off in the sink before bringing it to the sink.
Now the dishwashers loved this idea since he was the one that started the whole ‘rinse and scrub your pots/pans in the back sink before bringing it to the dishpit’ idea. However, it was causing a problem cause the sink was not designed for the constant plate washing and was plugging up on a regular basis. So what was the solution? If you guessed taking the sign down and rewording it to something like ‘please scrape garbage into bins’ you are wrong. The solution was to make a sign to hang over the sink reading “please do not clean your plates in the sink”. I knew it didn’t make sense but didn’t really realise that people were reading it until I saw a new lady in camp standing there with her plate in hand looking at the one sign to clean her plate and then the other saying don’t clean it here and then back saying to clean her plate. Almost like she was trying to decide which sign to listen to. I had to go up and break her wonderment by telling her the proper procedure of the whole thing.
Got me thinking about the stupid meeting they made me go to a week ago for the health and safety where someone said that there is actually a sign out in one of the pits reading “yield to buried cable”. He asked the safety guy running the meeting exactly how does a truck yield to a buried cable. After hearing about this sign I so want to go out and take a picture of it so that I can send it to a late night talk show under their heading of stupid signs posted in the work area or in public.
Saturday, June 5, 2010
ships log, morale at low....
This rotation in camp has turned into one big happy joy joy work time after another. Figure after all the stuff that has gone down it is hard to believe that it has only been 2 and a half weeks in camp. I can honestly say that morale in the camp kitchen has hit rock bottom and started to dig into the bedrock. The first cook is totally fed up and frustrated with his shift and the working conditions, I have absolutely no fuel or desire to be in the 2nd cook position. I started on Wednesday after the new 2nd cook quit and by this time I normally would have my lunch sandwiches planned 3 days in advance and be pulling all the meats and items required to assemble and put them together. These days I walk into the kitchen and look at the 1st cook and go 'totally no idea what to make for sandwiches, lets deep fry something'.
For examples, yesterday I had no clue what to do so he said that we had three cases of discount bargain burgers (we call them a 'Guido' product cause they come from Buck Saver and I always joke that they are the things that 'fell off the back of some cousins truck' so they are a good deal) to go through so lets run them. Well I opened up the first box and started to cook them (50 burgers in total) and when they were gone I opened the next box and discovered that they were burgers about 2 inches in diameter. Mighty small burgers to begin with so we opened the next box and discovered the same thing. If we were grilling burgers for 70 preschool toddlers, those burgers would have rocked; if you are grilling for 40 camp workers just come in off the plane after having spent 5 hours in an airport in Cambridge Bay with no food or drink, not a good idea. I looked at the burgers and told the 1st cook that we should fire up the deep fryers and make chicken fingers. After all, Tony was coming in on the plane and if he saw chicken fingers he would freak and give someone crap (he hates deep fried foods for lunch) but the guys would love us cause they go nutty for chicken fingers. If we had stayed with the little medallion burgers, Tony would freak and give someone crap (honestly they looked pathetic, even I was shaking my head going 'stupid, stupid, stupid') and the guys would be unhappy and look at us like we were idiots giving them these little things. At least with the fingers someone would still love the cooks.
Luckily Tony must have been warned by Radio about us in the kitchen and all the crap that had gone down because all Tony did was walk in and look at the line. I was standing there ready to take the heat and admit that it was my fault and all he did was look at the burgers, point and go 'what are those?' to which I admitted my fault in running the burgers without checking the amounts of them and all. Instead of giving me crap, like he normally would have, he just shook his head, smiled and gave a chuckle and moved on.
Oh, something else that has happened. Seems the other guy that we had in the kitchen as the 1st/2nd cook worker was having some marital problems a week ago. His wife was apparently giving him some troubles about being in camp, not being there to help with the two boys and the usual stuff that married men hear about while in camp and away from their wives. He tried to quit but Radio and the 1st cook convinced him that if he went on a 3/3 rotation that she would see he was home half the year, the pay wouldn't be that big of a hit from a 4/2 to 3/3 rotation and everyone would be happy. He accepted the idea, in words, and said he would straighten it out with the wife when he got home.
However, something must have been amiss because when he packed up to go home, he took everything. Normally we leave items that we use in camp on a regular basis up here like cookbooks, utensils (knives, spoons, meat thermometers) locked up in the cupboard or C-can for safe keeping. Saves us from lugging two heavy bags south and then back again 2 weeks later to go to work. He didn't leave a single stitch behind, he took everything.
Radio got an email yesterday morning from him saying that he basically walked in the door to hug his wife and after a few quick words it was decided that they were going to get a divorce. No surprise that the email ended with him saying that he would not be returning to camp and hoped that there were no hard feelings.
The 1st cook said he was surprised of this development since there was a study done (he claimed, I haven't checked to back it up so maybe he is just making stuff up) about 5 years ago on isolated workers in camps and all and found that the divorce rate was around 90%. They attributed it to the fact of being away from the other person for long periods of time and all. Granted, it is only 40% higher than the roughly 50% of divorce rate in civilization but still that is a high rate of divorce. He even stated as evidence that he has gone through 8 girlfriends in 12 months. Though I am thinking it is more that he is a charmer and flirter than the distance. Last time I flew out with him he was chatting, smiling and flirting with every single female that came within speaking distance of him. However, I am sure that the camp life has some help to the problem.
So yeah, baker, 1st cook and myself are totally beat and drained. Tony was warned about it all so he is being extra special and nice to all of us. Even Radio has taken to walking around and asking everyone at least 8 times a day "how you doing? how are things?", granted he says it in the most annoying tone possible but that is just him I figure, instead of him asking it once a day in the morning and walking out the door before you can even give two sentences as an answer. Though if you give a negative answer "I am tired" he rattles off numbers and calculations of how much money you are making, how you can use it to buy houses/boats/cars and all the great things camp has to offer. Doesn't take much to realize that he is divorced and has a girlfriend that seems to be busy enough with committees and other things (rich parents, don't think she works much) to even notice he is around much.
Anyways, so far these 4 weeks in camp are the worst 4 weeks in camp I have had and these 4 weeks are in the running for being the longest 4 weeks I have had in camp. I am noticing that even the idiots in camp are not as amusing as they used to be.
For examples, yesterday I had no clue what to do so he said that we had three cases of discount bargain burgers (we call them a 'Guido' product cause they come from Buck Saver and I always joke that they are the things that 'fell off the back of some cousins truck' so they are a good deal) to go through so lets run them. Well I opened up the first box and started to cook them (50 burgers in total) and when they were gone I opened the next box and discovered that they were burgers about 2 inches in diameter. Mighty small burgers to begin with so we opened the next box and discovered the same thing. If we were grilling burgers for 70 preschool toddlers, those burgers would have rocked; if you are grilling for 40 camp workers just come in off the plane after having spent 5 hours in an airport in Cambridge Bay with no food or drink, not a good idea. I looked at the burgers and told the 1st cook that we should fire up the deep fryers and make chicken fingers. After all, Tony was coming in on the plane and if he saw chicken fingers he would freak and give someone crap (he hates deep fried foods for lunch) but the guys would love us cause they go nutty for chicken fingers. If we had stayed with the little medallion burgers, Tony would freak and give someone crap (honestly they looked pathetic, even I was shaking my head going 'stupid, stupid, stupid') and the guys would be unhappy and look at us like we were idiots giving them these little things. At least with the fingers someone would still love the cooks.
Luckily Tony must have been warned by Radio about us in the kitchen and all the crap that had gone down because all Tony did was walk in and look at the line. I was standing there ready to take the heat and admit that it was my fault and all he did was look at the burgers, point and go 'what are those?' to which I admitted my fault in running the burgers without checking the amounts of them and all. Instead of giving me crap, like he normally would have, he just shook his head, smiled and gave a chuckle and moved on.
Oh, something else that has happened. Seems the other guy that we had in the kitchen as the 1st/2nd cook worker was having some marital problems a week ago. His wife was apparently giving him some troubles about being in camp, not being there to help with the two boys and the usual stuff that married men hear about while in camp and away from their wives. He tried to quit but Radio and the 1st cook convinced him that if he went on a 3/3 rotation that she would see he was home half the year, the pay wouldn't be that big of a hit from a 4/2 to 3/3 rotation and everyone would be happy. He accepted the idea, in words, and said he would straighten it out with the wife when he got home.
However, something must have been amiss because when he packed up to go home, he took everything. Normally we leave items that we use in camp on a regular basis up here like cookbooks, utensils (knives, spoons, meat thermometers) locked up in the cupboard or C-can for safe keeping. Saves us from lugging two heavy bags south and then back again 2 weeks later to go to work. He didn't leave a single stitch behind, he took everything.
Radio got an email yesterday morning from him saying that he basically walked in the door to hug his wife and after a few quick words it was decided that they were going to get a divorce. No surprise that the email ended with him saying that he would not be returning to camp and hoped that there were no hard feelings.
The 1st cook said he was surprised of this development since there was a study done (he claimed, I haven't checked to back it up so maybe he is just making stuff up) about 5 years ago on isolated workers in camps and all and found that the divorce rate was around 90%. They attributed it to the fact of being away from the other person for long periods of time and all. Granted, it is only 40% higher than the roughly 50% of divorce rate in civilization but still that is a high rate of divorce. He even stated as evidence that he has gone through 8 girlfriends in 12 months. Though I am thinking it is more that he is a charmer and flirter than the distance. Last time I flew out with him he was chatting, smiling and flirting with every single female that came within speaking distance of him. However, I am sure that the camp life has some help to the problem.
So yeah, baker, 1st cook and myself are totally beat and drained. Tony was warned about it all so he is being extra special and nice to all of us. Even Radio has taken to walking around and asking everyone at least 8 times a day "how you doing? how are things?", granted he says it in the most annoying tone possible but that is just him I figure, instead of him asking it once a day in the morning and walking out the door before you can even give two sentences as an answer. Though if you give a negative answer "I am tired" he rattles off numbers and calculations of how much money you are making, how you can use it to buy houses/boats/cars and all the great things camp has to offer. Doesn't take much to realize that he is divorced and has a girlfriend that seems to be busy enough with committees and other things (rich parents, don't think she works much) to even notice he is around much.
Anyways, so far these 4 weeks in camp are the worst 4 weeks in camp I have had and these 4 weeks are in the running for being the longest 4 weeks I have had in camp. I am noticing that even the idiots in camp are not as amusing as they used to be.
over worked and under paid
Like they say in camp, when it rains it pours. After the last entry I went in on the 2nd with a couple books to lend the new 2nd cook to help him learn a few salads to ease into the whole 2nd cook setting. When I showed him the books he seemed slightly disinterested and then about 30 minutes later I hear the news that he quit and is going to be heading out on the next available plane. It seems that he got lectured on June 2nd about his salads (pieces being too large and the quality being rather ugly) and then the next day got a lecture from the 1st cook about hygiene and health safety. He was wrapping up left over hot dogs from lunch to put in the cooler for the guys to take to work. However, what he was doing was putting the buns on a counter which the medic deemed to be unclean and unsanitary and then grabbing the wieners with his bare hands and putting them in the bun and wrapping them up and putting them back on the counter. So it was brought to the 1st cooks attention which was then mentioned to the 2nd cook to be careful about what the public sees you do as they complain about everything and anything. Seems the new guy didn’t like being told what to do so he went to Radio and said that it was a double standard how the 1st cook speed thaws chicken in the back sink and he can’t put a hot dog bun on a counter. Of course Radio handled it in his own personal style of management skill. Basically told him “if you are a whiner now, you will be whiner in a week or two...you quitting and want to go home?” to which the answer was “yes” and thus ended the new guys glorious career in the camp with us. Think after orientation and all he basically worked with us for three whole days and then he was gone.
So what does that mean to us? Well that means that now baker and 2nd cook have a whole load of extra duties thrown upon us. The baker is now baking during the nights and cooking breakfast in the morning while I am doing all his prep work for breakfast. These duties are making 250-300 sandwiches (plus all the prep work for that of slicing meats, washing lettuce, slicing vegetables for the veggie sandwiches, making tuna and egg salad), omelette prep (cracking 150 eggs into two measuring cups, cutting up green and red peppers, onions, ham, tomato, grate cheese), tray up 10 sheets of bacon as well as sausages, cut up the fruit (2 watermelons, 4 honey dews, 4 cantelopes, 6 pineapples..plus the cottage cheese and two canned fruits) and preparing 45 breakfast sandwiches (45 hard fried eggs, cooked bacon/sausage or ham, cheese on English muffins...think like a McMuffin). All these duties plus my regular 2nd cook duties (lunch and supper salads, hot sandwich for lunch, potato/rice/two vegetables for supper as well as prep work for the 1st cook when required).
Wednesday was a complete and total messed up day with all of us trying to get the things done and run with the idea of what we had to do. Today was not much better since it is all still a mess and I really have not got my head into the whole 2nd cook duties and all. Luckily there are two dishwashers so I scooped one from the dishpit to help out with the sandwich making. Took him all morning to slice the meats and then all afternoon to make the sandwiches. Not going to complain since I didn’t have any time to spare to do that job and I would have had to stay an extra 2 and a half hours after shift to get it all done if he hadn’t of done it. So, on the whole you could guess what my state of mind and attitude toward this whole affair is. Pretty much the same as the baker who said this evening “I have stopped going faster. The faster I go, the more work I get, the slower people go, the less work they get. If it didn’t get done then screw them it aint getting done.”
So today at supper when I am just finishing up the breakfast prep to relieve the 1st cook from the supper line. Radio comes in and puts his arm around my shoulder and acting like the saviour sent from above to give me good news, or acting like some big time CEO, and the conversation went something like this
(R)adio - since I know you are driven my monetary power, I am going to give you one hour over time a day for all the work that you have done
(M)e - *Not in the best of moods, stressed and tired so with mirth and mocking* wow...a whole one hour. Running around like a whirl wind to get the jobs of two people done in a 12 hour shift and I get a whole hour. Wow
R - *slightly defensive* you will be going to nights on Wednesday so don’t worry about that.
M – Oh I know that I won’t be going to nights.
R – sure you will. We have a new 1st cook coming in that has worked with us before and he can take 1st or 2nd duties without even blinking.
M – really? A new guy. You mean you are not going to make Tony 2nd cook? That plan sort of went down hill? Cause I was really hoping to see that plan come to action.
(SIDE NOTE – Tony is like the actual camp manager and Radio is like the cover one. If Tony has an idea what happens in camp, it happens; if Ken has an idea what happens in camp, it happens only if Tony gives the stamp of approval to keep it happening. The idea of Tony being 2nd cook at any point in time is laughable. Kind of like Bill Gates going to the assembly production line of Microsoft cause the acting CEO said he should)
R – nope, he won’t be going to 2nd but you will have the time and freedom to go to nights and you can ‘fornicate the poodle’ (not really his words but you get the idea *G*) all you want for a week. You should be thankful I am giving you the one hour extra a day for this work since you ‘fornicated the poodle’ for the last two weeks on dishwasher. I saw you taking your hour breaks.
M – sort of made up for the no breaks for the last 4 weeks while on 2nd cook but hey, a whole hour...thanks for that whole extra hour.
At this point he walked away to let me finish the work. He did come back about 20 minutes later and whispered on the sly ‘ok you get two hours a day. Just told tell any of these clowns or Tony cause it is against the mines regulations’.
Though on the bright side we don’t have to worry about running out of food. We got our groceries on Wednesday and we ordered more than we really need. For instance we had 2 cases of green peppers and we got 2 more cases, we had 2 cases of romaine and we got two more, we had 32 cases of eggs and we got 24 more cases. I call the cooler Jurassic Cooler because if you don’t follow your guide closely when you walk in it you might get lost and never come out again it is so cluttered.
So what does that mean to us? Well that means that now baker and 2nd cook have a whole load of extra duties thrown upon us. The baker is now baking during the nights and cooking breakfast in the morning while I am doing all his prep work for breakfast. These duties are making 250-300 sandwiches (plus all the prep work for that of slicing meats, washing lettuce, slicing vegetables for the veggie sandwiches, making tuna and egg salad), omelette prep (cracking 150 eggs into two measuring cups, cutting up green and red peppers, onions, ham, tomato, grate cheese), tray up 10 sheets of bacon as well as sausages, cut up the fruit (2 watermelons, 4 honey dews, 4 cantelopes, 6 pineapples..plus the cottage cheese and two canned fruits) and preparing 45 breakfast sandwiches (45 hard fried eggs, cooked bacon/sausage or ham, cheese on English muffins...think like a McMuffin). All these duties plus my regular 2nd cook duties (lunch and supper salads, hot sandwich for lunch, potato/rice/two vegetables for supper as well as prep work for the 1st cook when required).
Wednesday was a complete and total messed up day with all of us trying to get the things done and run with the idea of what we had to do. Today was not much better since it is all still a mess and I really have not got my head into the whole 2nd cook duties and all. Luckily there are two dishwashers so I scooped one from the dishpit to help out with the sandwich making. Took him all morning to slice the meats and then all afternoon to make the sandwiches. Not going to complain since I didn’t have any time to spare to do that job and I would have had to stay an extra 2 and a half hours after shift to get it all done if he hadn’t of done it. So, on the whole you could guess what my state of mind and attitude toward this whole affair is. Pretty much the same as the baker who said this evening “I have stopped going faster. The faster I go, the more work I get, the slower people go, the less work they get. If it didn’t get done then screw them it aint getting done.”
So today at supper when I am just finishing up the breakfast prep to relieve the 1st cook from the supper line. Radio comes in and puts his arm around my shoulder and acting like the saviour sent from above to give me good news, or acting like some big time CEO, and the conversation went something like this
(R)adio - since I know you are driven my monetary power, I am going to give you one hour over time a day for all the work that you have done
(M)e - *Not in the best of moods, stressed and tired so with mirth and mocking* wow...a whole one hour. Running around like a whirl wind to get the jobs of two people done in a 12 hour shift and I get a whole hour. Wow
R - *slightly defensive* you will be going to nights on Wednesday so don’t worry about that.
M – Oh I know that I won’t be going to nights.
R – sure you will. We have a new 1st cook coming in that has worked with us before and he can take 1st or 2nd duties without even blinking.
M – really? A new guy. You mean you are not going to make Tony 2nd cook? That plan sort of went down hill? Cause I was really hoping to see that plan come to action.
(SIDE NOTE – Tony is like the actual camp manager and Radio is like the cover one. If Tony has an idea what happens in camp, it happens; if Ken has an idea what happens in camp, it happens only if Tony gives the stamp of approval to keep it happening. The idea of Tony being 2nd cook at any point in time is laughable. Kind of like Bill Gates going to the assembly production line of Microsoft cause the acting CEO said he should)
R – nope, he won’t be going to 2nd but you will have the time and freedom to go to nights and you can ‘fornicate the poodle’ (not really his words but you get the idea *G*) all you want for a week. You should be thankful I am giving you the one hour extra a day for this work since you ‘fornicated the poodle’ for the last two weeks on dishwasher. I saw you taking your hour breaks.
M – sort of made up for the no breaks for the last 4 weeks while on 2nd cook but hey, a whole hour...thanks for that whole extra hour.
At this point he walked away to let me finish the work. He did come back about 20 minutes later and whispered on the sly ‘ok you get two hours a day. Just told tell any of these clowns or Tony cause it is against the mines regulations’.
Though on the bright side we don’t have to worry about running out of food. We got our groceries on Wednesday and we ordered more than we really need. For instance we had 2 cases of green peppers and we got 2 more cases, we had 2 cases of romaine and we got two more, we had 32 cases of eggs and we got 24 more cases. I call the cooler Jurassic Cooler because if you don’t follow your guide closely when you walk in it you might get lost and never come out again it is so cluttered.
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
new guy to be trained
well, two weeks in the dishpit and things are going...interestingly. The job in the pit is great with no responsibilities or no decision making needing to be done. Dish is dirty, wash it; pan is dirty, wash it; baking sheet is dirty, yep you guessed it, wash it. Ahhh, sweet retirement. However, now the new fun begins in that we have a new guy in the kitchen. He is about 26 years old, red sealed and culinary school trained, worked in restaurants in PEI as well as YK (though by the sounds of it he had one gig that lasted 1 year and the rest were between 6 to 8 months only...kinda telling me something here) and has a deep seated passion for cooking. However, passion for cooking and passionate talent for cooking I am finding are two different things.
I have been told that I get to train him on salads and I am in charge of showing him the ropes of salads to make sure he fits in. So I decided to take a more free style way of training. I gave him my 2nd cook write up on what the 2nd cook duties are and it is even timed (8:30 - clean appliances like deep fryer or griller if required, 9:00 - prepare lunch salads, 9:45 - prepare hot sandwich for the day...etc) as well as all my salad recipes (creamy and vinaigrette) AND a 5 week salad/sandwich schedule that had the 3 mixed salads and sandwiches written down. So basically a blind monkey with one arm could come in (assuming that someone had either read the duty list to him or had it transcribed to braille cause, well he is a blind monkey) and run with it and not screw up. He didn't even have to plan a single thing as all the salads were planned out and scheduled for him. His response to this wealth of knowledge? Mentioned to me 'wow, this is organized, thanks' and put it on the shelf and then just started doing his own thing.
I figured 'fine, let him do his thing for a couple days, see what he is capable of and then turn him left or right if something is wrong'. One day later I get yelled at by Radio for not training him right and that I want to go to night shift and "he is your replacement. He doesn't get trained, you don't go to night shift". I think this is the first time I have ever had a position where I have to teach my replacement to do the job I am leaving. What gets me is that they don't want me to teach him to do things, they want me to make him a carbon copy of how I make salads and sandwiches so that essentially they are not getting a new salad guy who might bring in new ideas and salads, they want me to program this guy to be a robot me cranking out the same salads that I did. To me, that is just mind bogglingly strange. New cooks in the kitchen are good cause they bring in new flavours, new talent, new ideas to a slowly stagnating pool.
For instance, we have two 1st cooks in the kitchen right now, which has already proved in my mind the saying 'too many cooks spoil the soup'. One of the 1st cooks took the chance of having too many people in the kitchen to go on a first aid course, leaving the other 1st cook there to make decisions and prepare supper. On the menu was chicken and the 1st cook in charge asked me if anyone had ever done a teriyaki grilled chicken breast with grilled pineapple on it. No one had ever done that as a supper item but it had been done as a lunch sandwich (I called it the Maui Wowie Chicken Burger). I did mention to him that he might want to grill the pineapple and leave them on the side because not everyone would be receptive to the idea of pineapple. Last I saw in the kitchen he had the chicken grilled, teriyaki sauce in a bowl ready to glaze the chicken and the pineapple draining. I then got hijacked to go to a Health and Safety meeting (basically another way for the safety guy to waste 2 hours of his work time on meaningless crap but still have paperwork to prove that he is doing a job), which I slept through most of it, and when I got back to the kitchen I saw that the other 1st cook had returned and the chicken was now covered in a Dijon mustard sauce that we had on the roast pork tenderloin about 3 nights ago. I thought the Hawaiian pineapple chicken idea was a great one but the other guy didn’t agree so it was thrown out and we had the same chicken that we normally have.
Granted, there have been some issues with the guy concerning size. While I have been told by some that ‘size does matter’ I think that in salad this is especially true. Smaller is often better, to a point. We had a potato salad last night in which the pieces were so big you had to cut them with your knife before eating. Imagine a regular russet potato (baker potato), cut it lengthwise in half, lay that flat and cut it ¾ inch wide and that was his potato salad. Thing was about as big as my mouth, could only get in one at a time and even then I had a full mouth I had to really chew to get down. I saw this once it hit the line and of course Radio came up and gave me crap for not stopping him and forbidding him to put that salad out. I responded by telling Radio that I am not about to punish or lecture the guy for a sin he has not already committed. I am not going to give him crap for the size of his cuts and show him how to cut until I see him make a salad and then correct the salad that he already did. The dressing he used was great but it was just the size that was too large. If I had showed him how to make my potato salad off the bat (dressing, ingredients and size) I would not have learned a new type of dressing. So today I get to tell him about size and portion control when doing salads and thank him for letting me know of a new type of dressing for the salad.
Other than that, the interesting fun that we are having here is that 20 feet from the cabin they are drilling 1600 holes to blast in to the ground. Of course they drill mainly during the day but do some drilling at night as well. I can look out of the window and see the cabins clear as day and just up on the ridge behind them I see the drill as well. Radio still has people living in the cabin and I think our poor breakfast cook has not slept in 2 weeks time, first cause of the traffic up and down that road during the day and now the drill moving and drilling at night. Tomorrow they are going to start blasting the area. Blasting within 20 feet of the cabins. Of course they are allowed to because most of the people in the cabins are day shift so when they blast during the day no one is going to be in the cabin in case of flying rock or someone walking to the bathroom during the time of the blast.
I have been told that I get to train him on salads and I am in charge of showing him the ropes of salads to make sure he fits in. So I decided to take a more free style way of training. I gave him my 2nd cook write up on what the 2nd cook duties are and it is even timed (8:30 - clean appliances like deep fryer or griller if required, 9:00 - prepare lunch salads, 9:45 - prepare hot sandwich for the day...etc) as well as all my salad recipes (creamy and vinaigrette) AND a 5 week salad/sandwich schedule that had the 3 mixed salads and sandwiches written down. So basically a blind monkey with one arm could come in (assuming that someone had either read the duty list to him or had it transcribed to braille cause, well he is a blind monkey) and run with it and not screw up. He didn't even have to plan a single thing as all the salads were planned out and scheduled for him. His response to this wealth of knowledge? Mentioned to me 'wow, this is organized, thanks' and put it on the shelf and then just started doing his own thing.
I figured 'fine, let him do his thing for a couple days, see what he is capable of and then turn him left or right if something is wrong'. One day later I get yelled at by Radio for not training him right and that I want to go to night shift and "he is your replacement. He doesn't get trained, you don't go to night shift". I think this is the first time I have ever had a position where I have to teach my replacement to do the job I am leaving. What gets me is that they don't want me to teach him to do things, they want me to make him a carbon copy of how I make salads and sandwiches so that essentially they are not getting a new salad guy who might bring in new ideas and salads, they want me to program this guy to be a robot me cranking out the same salads that I did. To me, that is just mind bogglingly strange. New cooks in the kitchen are good cause they bring in new flavours, new talent, new ideas to a slowly stagnating pool.
For instance, we have two 1st cooks in the kitchen right now, which has already proved in my mind the saying 'too many cooks spoil the soup'. One of the 1st cooks took the chance of having too many people in the kitchen to go on a first aid course, leaving the other 1st cook there to make decisions and prepare supper. On the menu was chicken and the 1st cook in charge asked me if anyone had ever done a teriyaki grilled chicken breast with grilled pineapple on it. No one had ever done that as a supper item but it had been done as a lunch sandwich (I called it the Maui Wowie Chicken Burger). I did mention to him that he might want to grill the pineapple and leave them on the side because not everyone would be receptive to the idea of pineapple. Last I saw in the kitchen he had the chicken grilled, teriyaki sauce in a bowl ready to glaze the chicken and the pineapple draining. I then got hijacked to go to a Health and Safety meeting (basically another way for the safety guy to waste 2 hours of his work time on meaningless crap but still have paperwork to prove that he is doing a job), which I slept through most of it, and when I got back to the kitchen I saw that the other 1st cook had returned and the chicken was now covered in a Dijon mustard sauce that we had on the roast pork tenderloin about 3 nights ago. I thought the Hawaiian pineapple chicken idea was a great one but the other guy didn’t agree so it was thrown out and we had the same chicken that we normally have.
Granted, there have been some issues with the guy concerning size. While I have been told by some that ‘size does matter’ I think that in salad this is especially true. Smaller is often better, to a point. We had a potato salad last night in which the pieces were so big you had to cut them with your knife before eating. Imagine a regular russet potato (baker potato), cut it lengthwise in half, lay that flat and cut it ¾ inch wide and that was his potato salad. Thing was about as big as my mouth, could only get in one at a time and even then I had a full mouth I had to really chew to get down. I saw this once it hit the line and of course Radio came up and gave me crap for not stopping him and forbidding him to put that salad out. I responded by telling Radio that I am not about to punish or lecture the guy for a sin he has not already committed. I am not going to give him crap for the size of his cuts and show him how to cut until I see him make a salad and then correct the salad that he already did. The dressing he used was great but it was just the size that was too large. If I had showed him how to make my potato salad off the bat (dressing, ingredients and size) I would not have learned a new type of dressing. So today I get to tell him about size and portion control when doing salads and thank him for letting me know of a new type of dressing for the salad.
Other than that, the interesting fun that we are having here is that 20 feet from the cabin they are drilling 1600 holes to blast in to the ground. Of course they drill mainly during the day but do some drilling at night as well. I can look out of the window and see the cabins clear as day and just up on the ridge behind them I see the drill as well. Radio still has people living in the cabin and I think our poor breakfast cook has not slept in 2 weeks time, first cause of the traffic up and down that road during the day and now the drill moving and drilling at night. Tomorrow they are going to start blasting the area. Blasting within 20 feet of the cabins. Of course they are allowed to because most of the people in the cabins are day shift so when they blast during the day no one is going to be in the cabin in case of flying rock or someone walking to the bathroom during the time of the blast.
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