Episode 1: Out for blood

for a preface, see the home page of my work stories: Paradise (aka The Job)


Today's work story involves one main character: I’ll call her All-Star because she is the self-appointed chairperson of everything she thinks is wrong with our facility. Yesterday she was out for blood because of some redundancy in the menu. By out for blood, I mean she came to the kitchen door with a sharp knife and a bucket and used her most chastising tone to demand from me a gallon of my own personal supply of human blood. Ok, not really, but metaphorically, yes. She wanted my blood.

Anyway, before I get to that, some background may be needed. We’ve been running a new 16-week menu for a while now and there are hordes of problems with it, all the fault of our food supplier who wrote the menu in the first place. One problem is that items are being repeated several times within one week. What elderly Minnesota farming community doesn’t want the southern favorite of okra five times in one week? Clue: yeah, none. Then there’s the problem of fancy names no one comprehends, the seafood and fish five times per week, the disregard of food standards, double vegetables, skipping the starch that is required, and having four weeks of chocolatey desserts followed by four weeks of fruit desserts. Needless to say, we are constantly hearing complaints and reassuring residents that on our next rotation of the menu we will have this fixed.


This is where All-Star comes in. We had served “Spanish Omelet” at breakfast, which in bulk means tomato and onion in a slab of egg, very like an egg bake. Then for noon we had Frittata (another “fancy name” that no one understands), which is basically an egg bake. So…the ridiculous menu had me serve everyone veggie egg bake for both breakfast and noon meal. They turned out nicely, beautiful veggies in golden egg with a buttery edge. I thought it was good for what it was. However, it was redundant. Nothing I can do about that until the next rotation! Enter All-Star, wheeling her walker up to the kitchen door to ask me “what happened with the menu today?” She’s on the Food Committee, so she already knows why the menu is flawed. She just wants to watch me squirm. I explain as matter-of-factly as possible what the situation was and that it’s something we will fix on the next rotation. “Very sorry…” as I walk away to do the numerous piles of dishes. I start telling my manager what message All-Star had lovingly brought me when the other kitchen door opened. All-Star apparently had more to say.

“Oh, hey All-Star, I was just telling Manager what you told me…” I say, approaching the door. I study her searching look. “Or did you need something else…?”
“Well,” she stammers. “They’re just…very upset. They’re very upset about the menu today.”
Didn’t I just explain? I make what the menu tells me to make. When there’s a menu error, we discover it day-of and fix it for next time.
“There’s nothing I can do about it now. It’s good to know what the residents are thinking, thank you. We’ll fix it for next time.”
She answers me with stares. She stares the hobgoblin witchery stare that seems to be searching my skin for weak points where she can begin peeling it off with her fingernails. I do my best to stare back. I can smell her lust for my blood. I wish suddenly to run to the spice shelf and douse myself in garlic powder. Maybe she’d follow me, teeth bared, eyes wide with thirst, a hiss escaping her pale white lips.
“Get back!” I’d cry, and pray that the butter knife in my hand contains some silver. A silver dagger, a silver bullet…the only way to combat the undead.
But as it turns out, she’s only standing at the kitchen door, calmly staring death into me.
Finally I break the silence: “I’m sorry; if I had a time machine I could fix it.” And I close the door.

What more could I say? Nothing. What more could I give? Blood. Buckets of my blood and an apology on my knees.

But it’s not gonna happen. I’ve lived to fight another day. Until next time…All-Star.



P.S. I feel compelled to mention that this whole story falls under the category of "First World Problems," in which people who get three square meals a day complain that two of them were almost the same thing. Seriously.