People are people, no matter their age. Some will be kind, curious, rude, condescending, bitter, or funny, and so on. I’m an “old people chef,” and this is my journal.
--
There's a golden moment here and there. I push open the dining room doors at 7 and say a "good morning" to the residents who've been waiting right outside for breakfast. I scoop up plates of scrambled eggs and sausage links and toast and place them in front of the early bird residents.
One of them finishes quickly and speeds away, mouth clenched tightly shut as she urges her Hoverround out of the dining room at the speed of light. It was Crankster, the one who bullied Elf last month about being "a moron." I swing by the table to clear her dishes and prepare for the next person.
"She has no patience, that one," says one man from her table.
"Yeah," says Sir Talksalot, sipping on his third giant glass of orange juice, "she was pretty peeved that you didn't butter her toast."
"Well, I only butter toast for people who can't butter it themselves," I say, beginning to fume inwardly about spoiled people. I figure if you have laundry, food, and cleaning all done for you, there's not much left to exercise, and what you exercise (buttoning clothes, buttering toast, dialing the phone) should be left for you to do. Use it or lose it.
Mr. Gentleman had a comment to add as he passed by the table: "Hey, I don't suppose you could put some sugar in my coffee for me?"
"Sugar?" I replied, confused for a moment until I saw the sarcastic expression on his face. I laughed. I threw my head back and laughed. He was making a joke about Crankster being ticked off at having to butter her own toast.
"Mr. Gentleman," I smiled, "you don't need any sugar in there. You are already sweet enough."
He just smiled back and shuffled away with his coffee, shaking his head in amusement at all the crazies in the world.
And that's one of those moments when work is ok. There are kind, funny people in the world. I can stop searching Indeed for remote work. I can stop planning a wilderness cabin for escaping the people and the endless dishes and food. Someone understands. And that changes everything.
Showing posts with label First World Problems. Show all posts
Showing posts with label First World Problems. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 13, 2016
Tuesday, November 8, 2016
Ep. 21: Gourmet
People are people, no matter their age. Some will be kind, curious, rude, condescending, bitter, or funny, and so on. I’m an “old people chef,” and this is my journal.
--
--
"Gourmet" is the name I've given one of our residents. She's a very particular person, commenting on the thickness of noodles we use in a dish or how there wasn't quite enough crisp on her apple crisp. This gourmet attitude doesn't stop with her. It's also a habit of mind for most of the people we serve.
Manager and I were discussing this one day. I recalled working at a bar and grill and all the labor and staff involved in one dish or one order leaving the kitchen steaming hot and made to order and just to the customer's specifications. That is the sort of experience our residents seem to expect. What they don't think about is the fact that a bar and grill gets about $20-$30 per person per meal they serve. So I asked Manager, "what is our budget per plate?"
Here's what she told me: It's $5 per person.
Per meal?
No.
Per day.
We feed each resident a breakfast buffet, a noon meal, an afternoon snack, and a supper meal on five dollars.
If this was my personal food budget, we'd be eating mostly ramen noodles at home.
In the meantime, our residents get turkey and mashed potatoes, prime rib, spaghetti and meatsauce, tator tot hotdish, salmon patty on a bun with remoulade sauce, lamb with mint jelly...and an uncountable horde of cookies, bars, and bowls of fruit.
Yes, we buy in bulk. Yes, we have a contract with a food supplier. Both of these things cut the cost of what we do. However, five dollars a day per person just plain blows my mind.
In light of how we manage to feed these people well on such a tight budget, I'm thinking we must be magicians of some kind.
But then I return to work:
...Someone whistles me over to her table. The way you would whistle a reckless puppy away from traffic...
...A coworker swings by to chortle with me about a complaint he overheard: that the kitchen's plating technique leaves much to be desired...
...And I see a resident, Gourmet herself, pulling her rice krispy bar apart with a face of disgust. "There's too much goo in this."
These moments seem even more ridiculous when seen in the light of our budget. There's hardly room for meat and potatoes in there, much less the expectation of something Gourmet.
Saturday, October 15, 2016
Episode 19: Two Cents Times a Million
People are people, no matter their age. Some will be kind, curious, rude, condescending, bitter, or funny, and so on. I’m an “old people chef,” and this is my journal.
--
--
Every resident has an opinion to share, whether you ask for
it or not.
Here’s a collection of real complaints we have received. Many of them contradict each other, as each person has a different definition of “good food.”
Most of them make us laugh. We can’t please everyone.
“
I wish the oatmeal bowls were smaller.
I only wanted half a grilled cheese!
This soup is way too hot.
This soup is lukewarm.
Here’s a collection of real complaints we have received. Many of them contradict each other, as each person has a different definition of “good food.”
Most of them make us laugh. We can’t please everyone.
“
I wish the oatmeal bowls were smaller.
I only wanted half a grilled cheese!
This soup is way too hot.
This soup is lukewarm.
I’ve had so much scrambled eggs I’m afraid I’ll grow
feathers!
I prefer hard boiled eggs.
(On sausage gravy and biscuit day) I prefer scrambled eggs.
These desserts are too big.
I wish you’d used a bigger noodle.
These noodles are too soft.
The noodles are too chewy – look at how everyone is chewing and chewing!
We want more meat and potatoes.
We’d rather have potatoes than rice or pasta.
We have too many mashed potatoes.
The kraut soup is too salty.
The kraut soup is not sour enough.
I really love these chicken strips.
Chicken strips are not an acceptable entrée.
I prefer hard boiled eggs.
(On sausage gravy and biscuit day) I prefer scrambled eggs.
These desserts are too big.
I wish you’d used a bigger noodle.
These noodles are too soft.
The noodles are too chewy – look at how everyone is chewing and chewing!
We want more meat and potatoes.
We’d rather have potatoes than rice or pasta.
We have too many mashed potatoes.
The kraut soup is too salty.
The kraut soup is not sour enough.
I really love these chicken strips.
Chicken strips are not an acceptable entrée.
These eggs are not
fit.
”
Tuesday, October 11, 2016
Episode 18: Crafty's Salad
People are people, no matter their age. Some will be kind, curious, rude, condescending, bitter, or funny, and so on. I’m an “old people chef,” and this is my journal.
--
--
It should not have surprised me when a couple resident assistants approached me at 9:15 and said that Crafty had just called to change her lunch order. I explained about the deadline (9:00), and we all agreed that Crafty had called them because she hoped they wouldn't know about the deadline.
Then about 11 a.m., she showed up with a new list of alternatives for the week, including the change she had attempted at 9:15. It was still too late, and I just shook my head at her further clumsy attempt at gaining exception where no other resident could.
She had requested her meal sent to her room, so at noon the tray with her salad went up. About ten minutes later, I had the delight of receiving a phone call from her.
"When I talked to you earlier, you said I could have a hot dog," her indignant words bit through the receiver.
"You did not talk to me. You spoke with the gals on the floor."
"Well, they told me I could have it." Her indignation was growing, and the grating scrape of her voice rising in volume.
"Then they were mistaken. And you know that the deadline is 9:00. You had ordered a salad and so that's what we sent."
"Well," she screeched, "I WON'T EAT IT!"
As if it was going to really bother me. We all know she has piles of junk food in her apartment.
"I'm very sorry," I stated, and hung up before she could continue.
Later she accused the RAs of not supplying her daily pain pills - as in, she wanted double pain meds.
Then she screamed at someone in her room that she had never received her noon meal - even as it was visible on its tray across the room on her countertop.
Crafty was on a roll.
Now today she left a note asking to please be moved from Table 1 to Table 9. We change seating monthly and we do not change seats unless there is serious conflict between two residents at a particular table (which has happened maybe three times in the last year). I tore up the note as I've torn many others. It was a surprise to see that she didn't swap her place card with one at her desired table. That has happened many times before.
The fact that these things are even issues boggles me. Screaming at someone about a salad. Bold faced lying about a salad. Acting like deadlines apply to the other 69 people in the building and not to you.
Over a salad.
If it wasn't real, it'd be sheer comedy.
Tuesday, August 23, 2016
Episode 3: Exit Mr. Placemats
for a preface, see the home page of my work stories: Paradise (aka The Job)
Once upon a time at work, we would set out paper placemats at breakfast. On each placemat we would set a paper napkin and our sturdy metal silverware. After each resident ate, the papers would get thrown away. The papers served almost no purpose so it always seemed like such a waste. In the last year, as the budget has been cinched tighter and tighter, our manager decided to begin setting breakfast with a cloth napkin and the metal silverware. No more placemats.
No one seemed to miss them, except one particular gentleman, whose outrage at their disappearance was his topic of conversation for weeks afterward. He would lay out his cloth napkin flat and use it like a placemat. He would even bring in his own paper napkin to compensate for the loss of the cloth napkin's use. One day, several weeks into the change, he made a point of loudly conversing about his method of "coping with the loss of the placemats," stating that without a placemat the silverware is simply too loud when set on the wooden table. Finally, he restated the whole thing directly to me.
"See here, I lay out my napkin flat to use as a placemat," said Mr. Placemats. "Those silverware are just too loud against the table otherwise."
Doing my best to remain professional, I responded with the most blank face I could muster. "That's very inventive of you," I said, managing to be truthful and polite.
"No," was his response as I continued working, clearing the places near him. "It's called making do with what you have."
"Isn't that what inventive means?" I asked, to which he looked a bit dumbfounded.
"Well...I suppose," was all he said before falling silent for once.
Mr. Placemats is probably the most polite name I can give him, as the obsession over placemats is not the only drama in which he stars.
He has loudly proclaimed in the dining room that the French Fries are "horrible...soggy...HORSE SHIT."
He has reamed cleaning staff for throwing out rotten, moldy food from his refrigerator. "I was gonna eat that..."
He has complained about my cooking one day and then approached me the next to say with a glowing face that I always do "such a fine job. You've really outdone yourself today."
He throws his used pads on the floor (not the garbage can) of his apartment as a gift to cleaning staff.
He has made inappropriate comments about the underaged kitchen aides:
"I don't suppose they could take their break on my lap..?"
"No. Then we'd have a problem."
If he makes a demand and meets with any resistance, he begins to manufacture poisonous combinations of insults and cursing, splurting them loudly and repeatedly at the person who has dared draw any kind of line in the sand.
Needless to say, "Mr. Placemats" is not a favorite of staff.
Just yesterday as I was clearing a table, he approached it and said, "Well...she took my napkin...my nice, clean napkin."
I had no patience for this, admittedly. "Oh...life is hard. I'll get you another one."
He then had to wait 60 entire seconds for me to take away the dirty things, bring back a new napkin and silverware, and wipe down the otherwise dirty table. If waiting 60 seconds is your biggest problem, your life is pretty darn good. Just saying.
When I get back to the table, he continues lecturing. "Couldn't you tell by me coming in and getting breakfast and laying out my napkin that I was going to sit there??"
No, honestly I wasn't paying attention to you. I was helping the people who need it and cleaning off this dirty table.
Newsflash: you are not the center of mine or any other universe.
Then today he does a total 180 and approaches me after breakfast, smiling. "My dear," he begins, "I won't be seeing you after awhile."
"Oh? Why is that?"
"Well, I'm going away."
"Oh, like on vacation?"
"No, honey...I'm moving away. This Saturday." Then he explained the details of his move and how he may have to come back to our facility to "say hello" to us. And to me. Really? Lay it on a little thicker, man.
Again, doing my best to be both honest and polite, I say not "we'll miss you," but rather, "good for you."
His response? A glowing smile and a "Thank you, dear."
That man is a puzzle. A coworker of mine told me today that he just does and says what he does to get a reaction. He feeds on the power trip of knowing he's gotten under someone's skin. He's one of those people that other people need protection from. He's one that I have walled away from myself with my blank looks and vague politeness and by letting his words, good and bad, go in one ear and out the other.
So exits Mr. Placemats from our little corner of the working world.
His absence will be felt by every last one of us.
It'll also be followed by champagne.
Once upon a time at work, we would set out paper placemats at breakfast. On each placemat we would set a paper napkin and our sturdy metal silverware. After each resident ate, the papers would get thrown away. The papers served almost no purpose so it always seemed like such a waste. In the last year, as the budget has been cinched tighter and tighter, our manager decided to begin setting breakfast with a cloth napkin and the metal silverware. No more placemats.
No one seemed to miss them, except one particular gentleman, whose outrage at their disappearance was his topic of conversation for weeks afterward. He would lay out his cloth napkin flat and use it like a placemat. He would even bring in his own paper napkin to compensate for the loss of the cloth napkin's use. One day, several weeks into the change, he made a point of loudly conversing about his method of "coping with the loss of the placemats," stating that without a placemat the silverware is simply too loud when set on the wooden table. Finally, he restated the whole thing directly to me.
"See here, I lay out my napkin flat to use as a placemat," said Mr. Placemats. "Those silverware are just too loud against the table otherwise."
Doing my best to remain professional, I responded with the most blank face I could muster. "That's very inventive of you," I said, managing to be truthful and polite.
"No," was his response as I continued working, clearing the places near him. "It's called making do with what you have."
"Isn't that what inventive means?" I asked, to which he looked a bit dumbfounded.
"Well...I suppose," was all he said before falling silent for once.
Mr. Placemats is probably the most polite name I can give him, as the obsession over placemats is not the only drama in which he stars.
He has loudly proclaimed in the dining room that the French Fries are "horrible...soggy...HORSE SHIT."
He has reamed cleaning staff for throwing out rotten, moldy food from his refrigerator. "I was gonna eat that..."
He has complained about my cooking one day and then approached me the next to say with a glowing face that I always do "such a fine job. You've really outdone yourself today."
He throws his used pads on the floor (not the garbage can) of his apartment as a gift to cleaning staff.
He has made inappropriate comments about the underaged kitchen aides:
"I don't suppose they could take their break on my lap..?"
"No. Then we'd have a problem."
If he makes a demand and meets with any resistance, he begins to manufacture poisonous combinations of insults and cursing, splurting them loudly and repeatedly at the person who has dared draw any kind of line in the sand.
Needless to say, "Mr. Placemats" is not a favorite of staff.
Just yesterday as I was clearing a table, he approached it and said, "Well...she took my napkin...my nice, clean napkin."
I had no patience for this, admittedly. "Oh...life is hard. I'll get you another one."
He then had to wait 60 entire seconds for me to take away the dirty things, bring back a new napkin and silverware, and wipe down the otherwise dirty table. If waiting 60 seconds is your biggest problem, your life is pretty darn good. Just saying.
When I get back to the table, he continues lecturing. "Couldn't you tell by me coming in and getting breakfast and laying out my napkin that I was going to sit there??"
No, honestly I wasn't paying attention to you. I was helping the people who need it and cleaning off this dirty table.
Newsflash: you are not the center of mine or any other universe.
Then today he does a total 180 and approaches me after breakfast, smiling. "My dear," he begins, "I won't be seeing you after awhile."
"Oh? Why is that?"
"Well, I'm going away."
"Oh, like on vacation?"
"No, honey...I'm moving away. This Saturday." Then he explained the details of his move and how he may have to come back to our facility to "say hello" to us. And to me. Really? Lay it on a little thicker, man.
Again, doing my best to be both honest and polite, I say not "we'll miss you," but rather, "good for you."
His response? A glowing smile and a "Thank you, dear."
That man is a puzzle. A coworker of mine told me today that he just does and says what he does to get a reaction. He feeds on the power trip of knowing he's gotten under someone's skin. He's one of those people that other people need protection from. He's one that I have walled away from myself with my blank looks and vague politeness and by letting his words, good and bad, go in one ear and out the other.
So exits Mr. Placemats from our little corner of the working world.
His absence will be felt by every last one of us.
It'll also be followed by champagne.
Saturday, August 13, 2016
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.
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.
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