Foodservice experiences

[shaberon]

Food is an industry that has night and day differences depending on where you are.

Restaurant work was the first thing I "stuck to" as a teenager, because of the culture and smoothness of it--those were good experiences because everyone was trained appropriately. I was warned at the time, "you don't want to go away from us into the wilderness", because chances are those jobs won't pay as much and the situation will be significantly worse.

I did different stuff for around twenty years until that all went to smithereens and I wound up in foodservice again.

I bailed on my first return because they were somewhat blocking me from building up hours, and, then, get this--we lost a point from the health inspection due to an employee in another area, in fact in a different company--Starbucks--had their drink up too high. I was then told I had to keep my drink in the break room, and, in order to get at it, I would have to ask someone to cover my area. So I basically told them to bite it.

It is typical that you get feedback and something to do from those points, which is usually ok, and that was not.

The next two places I went to wound up closing, so, I picked up another one on the spur of the moment. And right now firstly I would like to debunk the following product:


Vigor pans

https://www.webstaurantstore.com/images/products/extra_large/388914/1536644.jpg



A long gusset-style handle is securely welded to the pan for easy transportation, and minimizes the possibility of bacteria collection.

To keep your employees' hands cool, this pan has a hollow handle that helps keep heat concentrated at the pan.


Examine closely:

https://www.webstaurantstore.com/images/products/extra_large/389085/1535258.jpg



That is Webstaurant, which anyone would recognize as a major wholesale supplier.

Happens to have its own praise in a seeming "independent" website where we may be reading a native Chinese speaker:


October 15, 2021 by Linda

Where is vigor cookware made? Vigor cookware is currently manufactured in the United States.


This cookware is made out of steel that will never break or chip like glass and ceramic products. It’s also has nonstick surfaces, so you don’t need any oils or butter for cooking!


Vigor Cookware is made with aluminum interiors, stainless steel exterior surfaces...


The supplier simply calls the item:

Stainless Steel Fry Pan with Aluminum-Clad Bottom


As far as I can tell, that is horrid advice, you can't cook it without oil. She is going on about something at Walmart and it is correct the company also markets mixed sets for home use and they do make items of a different construction. I don't care about that.


What they don't show you anywhere is this aluminum bottom which does not say it was made in the U. S.

And so I don't know if the photos above are in some way legit. Maybe they really make it that way. Part of it looks right--the edge--except it's not "rolled" even slightly. It sticks straight out to the side like a 360 degree knife. Except you'd rather get cut by a knife. That edge gives you a widely separated gash.

"Its rolled edges increase its durability and strength while allowing for easy pouring, reducing messes and spills."


I guess so. Linda tells me:


The handles on the pots and pans are ergonomic to prevent burns while cooking

This ergonomic handle never slip to your hand because it is designed very cleverly. This sturdy handle gives you a secure grip on your hand and will not slip, even in wet conditions.


First of all, the hollow handle will burn you every time.

Secondly it will easily slip vertically or roll horizontally.

It is possible that in the pictures above you are seeing the version that is sent out for home use. That is not what you get commercially and what home user orders them by six packs. It is technically "welded" but it is four tiny little tack welds that you could easily see at the handle junction if it were this kind.

In commercial use, after not that many heating cycles, the junction warps, and the handle will fill with water when being cleaned.

Not much further along, it just breaks.

You can't knock stuff out in the garbage can. You will kill it.

You can't touch them on the shelf. It will hurt you.


I do not understand these things, I have never seen a set of pans that did not look like it had been dragged through both World Wars. I don't think I've ever even heard of losing one. I had one of these fall off in my hand, in fact I was holding it upright to see how badly damaged the joint was, and it literally fell in the trash.

They might give you a better product for home use but even at best I would say it is inherently dangerous for commercial use.

One time a finger simply slipped across an edge and I came back with a hematoma about like a red grape.

Right now I have two partially healed splits, which are about like decorating yourself with the mouth from a rubber doll of something like It Came from That Lagoon. I got these from what I would describe as minor contact. The injuries I have received from the features of this product are countless.

[ExomatrixTV]

FDA Confirms Toxic Nonstick Cookware Chemicals Are Contaminating Our Food and Water Supply (https://www.cookinglight.com/news/fda-non-stick-pans-toxic-contamination)

Above 570°F (300°C), Teflon coatings may begin to break down, releasing toxic fumes into the air. These fumes can cause temporary, flu-like symptoms known as polymer fume fever.


How to Know If Your Nonstick Cookware Is Safe to Use? (https://www.cnet.com/home/kitchen-and-household/is-teflon-safe/) :dog:


Certain "nonstick cookware" made before a certain year may contain harmful PFOAs (https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news/new-generation-forever-chemicals-toxicity-exposure-contamination-and-regulation) (Notorious version of PFAS (https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news/new-generation-forever-chemicals-toxicity-exposure-contamination-and-regulation)) . Here's how to tell if your Teflon or nonstick cookware is safe to use.


ewg.org/sites/default/files/2021-05/EWG_PFAS-Table_ShortLongChain_C01.pdf (https://www.ewg.org/sites/default/files/2021-05/EWG_PFAS-Table_ShortLongChain_C01.pdf)

Us29M-7A_0o


Breaking Down Toxic PFAS/PFOAs (https://earthjustice.org/feature/breaking-down-toxic-pfas)
Is ceramic coated cookware safe?(Advertising vs Reality) (https://safetouseit.com/is-ceramic-coated-cookware-safein-detail-review/)
Are Nonstick Pans Safe? Here's The Truth About Nonstick Cookware? (https://rumble.com/v11iwi3-are-nonstick-pans-safe-heres-the-truth-about-nonstick-cookware.html)
You Can’t Always Trust Claims on ‘Non-Toxic’ Cookware (https://www.consumerreports.org/toxic-chemicals-substances/you-cant-always-trust-claims-on-non-toxic-cookware-a4849321487/)

7ZxC4qlIGzE

The Truth About "Nonstick Cookware": Teflon

https://sp.rmbl.ws/s8/2/F/9/7/u/F97ub.gaa.1.mp4


ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4488002 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4488002/)
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28913736 (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28913736/)
static.ewg.org/reports/2003/canaries_in_the_kitchen/CPSCbirds.pdf (https://static.ewg.org/reports/2003/canaries_in_the_kitchen/CPSCbirds.pdf)
ewg.org/research/canaries-kitchen (https://www.ewg.org/research/canaries-kitchen)
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23079607 (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23079607/)
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19176540 (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19176540/)
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20089479 (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20089479/)
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2072850 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2072850/)
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21873601 (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21873601/)
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24007715 (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24007715/)
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4544973 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4544973/)
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8272977 (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8272977/)
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16922460 (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16922460/)
cancer.org/cancer/cancer-causes/teflon-and-perfluorooctanoic-acid-pfoa.html (https://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancer-causes/teflon-and-perfluorooctanoic-acid-pfoa.html)

cheers,
John 🦜🦋🌳

[ExomatrixTV]

How to Properly Cook With Stainless Steel Pans

zRMUGiGtXPE


4 Types of Toxic Cookware to Avoid and 4 Safe Alternatives:

0uATfA_WoTA
8,375,272+ views

We all know the importance of eating healthy, but not everyone knows that the cookware you use to prepare your dishes is just as important as the food itself. Even the healthiest diet can result in severe health problems if your pots and pans are toxic. Find out which cookware you should avoid by all means for the sake of your own health and the health of your family.

The non-stick properties of Teflon cookware are achieved with a coating of PTFE. This is a plastic polymer that, when heated above 572°F (300°C), starts to release toxins. These toxic fumes lead to flu-like symptoms called polymer fume fever, informally known as Teflon flu. Another chemical compound found in Teflon cookware is especially threatening since it tends to stay in the body (as well as in the environment) for long periods of time. Try cast-iron cookware instead. It even comes in non-stick varieties. It doesn't leak anything toxic into your food and is actually a nice natural way to increase your body’s iron levels.

Though aluminum cookware is usually coated, the coating is prone to chipping, allowing the toxic metal to get right into your food. As for aluminum foil, using it while cooking is even more dangerous. In fact, there’s an established safe amount of aluminum the human body can manage daily, and that’s 20 mg per pound of body weight a day. When you wrap your food in aluminum foil and cook it this way, the amount of this substance that leaks into the food significantly exceeds the permissible level. Consider using glass cookware instead.

If you’ve just enjoyed some fish in lemon juice or stewed tomatoes cooked in an uncoated copper pot and you find yourself suffering from extremely unpleasant symptoms (such as vomiting blood, light-headedness, yellowy skin, or gastrointestinal distress, among others) call 911 immediately. Try this safe alternative instead: stainless steel. Just make sure you're buying food-grade stainless steel since this is the only type that doesn't contain any nickel or chromium.

Soft ceramic coating isn't durable enough and starts chipping after a few months of daily use. When this happens, lead and cadmium sometimes found in the coating will end up in your food and, thus, in your body. Lead poisoning is one of the most dangerous types of metal poisoning and can result in abdominal pain, headaches, infertility, and other health complications. Try this safe alternative instead: 100% ceramic cookware.

SUMMARY:


Teflon contains a plastic polymer that, when heated above 572°F (300°C), starts to release toxins. Try this safe alternative instead: real cast-iron. This is a nontoxic cooking option that truly withstands the test of time. It heats well and evenly throughout.
Aluminum is a neurotoxic (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurotoxicity) metal. Elevated levels of aluminum in the body have been linked to several central nervous system diseases, including Alzheimer's and ALS. Try this safe alternative instead: glass cookware. It’ll never release anything toxic when heated, it doesn’t hold onto any old flavors or odors, and it's not only durable but also eco-friendly.
Copper cookware, especially when it isn’t coated, can easily send you to the ER with a bad case of metal poisoning. And that’s because it can release copper when you cook acidic foods. Stainless steel is a great cookware option: it's relatively lightweight, scratch-resistant, and comes in non-stick varieties.
Soft ceramic coating isn't durable enough and starts chipping after a few months of daily use. When this happens, lead and cadmium sometimes found in the coating will end up in your food and, thus, in your body. Try this safe alternative instead: 100% ceramic (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceramic) cookware. This is one of the best and safest options out there since it's made with completely natural materials, it isn't toxic, and it won't chip or peel off.

--o-O-o--


"Fun Factoid":

"Ceramic nonstick pans" are not even Ceramic (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceramic)!

They're actually metal pans with a finish that uses silicon to prevent sticking. Like ceramicware, the coating is made of sand and has a slick, glossy surface, which is how it came to be called "ceramic" without being actually ceramic (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceramic).

cheers,
John 🦜🦋🌳

[palehorse]

I personally stick with the following types of cookware:

- cast iron
- stainless steel
- ceramic (mud pot)

The cast iron is very heavy if you are not used to it, but is the one the food will taste better, my second option is ceramic pots to make soups or cream (like yummy corn cream).

Another downside of the cast iron, it will get rust if you do not use it often, since I got about 10 different cast iron pans and I use 2 or 3 more often, the other ones are a bit rust now, but you can fix it yourself in a very easy way, but it will take a few hours, usually I keep the cast iron pan submerged in a solution of hydrochloric acid and water overnight, it will do the trick to remove all the rust, then you can clean up the remaining dirt on it, dry well and apply vegetable oil (I don't know if other types of oil will do better, I used coconut oil last time, but I guess any oil will work), then take it to the oven, heat it up to 250-300 celsius for about an hour and that is it. It will look like new, you can always "cure" your pain when it start to show symptoms of rust. It is my favorite cookware, I don't change it for anything.

I like the mud pot as well, those home made, the ones you can buy on the road side when traveling haha (they have lots and lots here), you can also cure it with oil, but the good thing is, it won't be rusty of course, and maintenance is almost non-existent, you just need to wash well and be careful because they are a bit fragile, if you drop it, good bye.

My third option is stainless steel, I use for quick meals, it is more practical no doubt and lightweight.

I would add a fourth option to the list, copper cookware, but I don't know if it is "health" to use on everyday cooking, probably not, I have a couple here, because we do sweet desserts with that only, I never cooked anything else with those pans, wife would kill me if see me using it to fry bacon! lol

[Mari]

I've had my old faithful, a cast iron frying pan for many years. It weighs a ton and like a cockroach, It will survive a nuclear war. I've used this pan as a hammer to bash down a nail - it's that tough. ;) I never 'scrub' it, just wipe it over with kitchen towel and a very thin smear of olive oil to prevent rust. The outside of it is completely carbonated (with all that high heat) but the business part, the inside, is smooth and can deal with the softest of omelettes to the searing heat of a well cooked sirloin or a stir fry. I can shove the whole thing in the oven to finish off a dish.
I also have a cast-iron Dutch oven which makes a fantastic casserole or stew and can be used on the hob as well.
My other cookware (non-stick) doesn't come anywhere near to performing as well as the cast-iron stuff.

[Johnnycomelately]

Cowboy Kent Rollins just put up this vid about different qualities of five currently available made-in-USA brands of cast iron frying pans. His chan has a playlist of previous vids on cast iron, including seasoning them.

As he says, and Mari says, they will outlast you, so they should be chosen as an investment. These comments, including pricing, 11:50-12:25

I have pasted the five companies’ links just to show they are available on the YT (as well as to name them), but haven’t fixed them. I have added the prices there.

Don't Buy a Cast Iron Skillet Without Watching This! Which Cast Iron Brand is Right for You?

Cowboy Kent Rollins
2.47M subscribers

18,794 views Mar 19, 2023 #castironskillet #castironcooking #cowboycooking
“Are you confused as to what cast iron brand will be right for you? Check out our cast iron skillet review to help you decide.
#castironskillet #castironcooking #cowboycooking
Stay in touch with our email newsletter: https://kentrollins.com/email-sign-up/

Used in this video:
$145 Field Company: https://bit.ly/2yoUoYh

$115 Stargazer Cast Iron https://bit.ly/2VOqiZ9

$250 Marquette Castings: https://www.marquettecastings.com?aff=53
code “Kent” that takes 5% off at checkout

$24 Lodge Cast Iron https://amzn.to/3loXtmD

$200 Finex Cast Iron: https://finexusa.com/”


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9_LlrCYpRQ

[pyrangello]

One time I was at home and wanted to put some water in the air, it was very dry in the house, filled up a Teflon pan and let it boil, however I was on the couch and then fell asleep. When I woke up the entire house was filled with smoke from that Teflon burning . It was bad. I then had to rent 2 of those oionizer fume extractors to get that out of the house. Never again.

As for the cast iron Dutch oven, one time at my cabin north I put a pack of ribs in that Dutch oven and placed it on my wood stove that was going, I thought I would marina is them a bit on there, after working 3 hours I came back to check on them and they were fully cooked. I couldn't believe it. But yes made a believer out of me.

[shaberon]

I might have been a little mixed up about Linda's remarks on non-stick, nevertheless, it is probably best to avoid any types of coating.


I suppose manufactures are changing. What I call "pans" has the appearance of this Choice non-stick pan, but minus the coating:

https://cdnimg.webstaurantstore.com/images/products/large/60694/2050259.jpg



The handle does not slip, roll, or break. I can easily carry eight of them with just my fingers.

On the whole website, I can't find much that really resembles pans I am used to, none of which could have come about before around 1990. The place I am now is new, but the previous was from the early 90s and, I think, was mostly running on its original equipment.

That lady stuffed a sour cream container over the trash can and told me she could not afford to lose a fork. When we closed the place, we outloaded enough boxes of brand-new silverware to at least open a whole restaurant.

That was nearly thirty years of giving precious storage space to something that was never used, while moronically whining to me about the dumbest thing I have ever heard. You'll drop a fork in the trash. Oh noes!! Pity party for the klutz in progress.

Whenever she walked away I would remove the container.

In fact I found she was the biggest interference to anything that could possibly go on in her own business. So daft that I literally erased my name off the schedule from parts I did not want to work. Anyone else ever do this? Negotiation's over. Eat it or fire me, who cares.


When I started at the current place, before I became aware of the hundreds of injuries I was about to receive from these Vigor pans, I found they had a problem called we knock them over so they fall behind the range and we never pick them up. Can you say deer-in-headlights helplessness? They are like that with everything. I have regionally-influential five star gourmet experience, "you" have a job that you have not been fired from. None of them know how to work. Nothing is right there. It looks like a cartoon right out of Safe Serve with all the predictable common-sense ways not to do things.

This is the first place I have ever been where I literally grabbed a knife blade buried under a stack of those pans in water.

Let's review: it goes without saying, usually they say it at any workplace, and it is just common sense. Never happens because ordinary people are just not that dumb.

I am relatively ancient by now in terms of working class, and, I regularly see examples of the dumbest things for the first time ever. As in this never happens, and now I am in the most dangerous place I have ever been, because these people do not know how to work and no one cares. Of course I have already made verbal remarks, escalated to a written page of these issues, in response to which, nothing happens. I have literally been watching the same marinara sauce scab off a trash can for nearly a year. There are still a few spots left.

I used to do stuff like that on my day off, as a way to figure out whoever is slacking, and then you can deal with it. These cans are supposed to at least be rinsed every day and if anything is stuck you scrub it. No brainer. Takes a few minutes of your time. Normal.

Keep that in mind. When it comes to disease outbreaks, such as Hep C, that has no statistical correlation to health ratings. It simply depends on whether an infected person comes in. Less-descript things from bacteria that thrive in unclean conditions are a different story. And you can get a decent health rating while at the same time being fairly unclean in a very simple way.

That, I guess, is the "wilderness" that civilization warned me about. They also told me that poor work habits increase stress, and that we work a certain way physically in order to retain our sanity. True enough. Here, low quality work has never dawned on anyone's radar, but, it leads to angry outbursts, which so far is what everyone gets fired for. I replaced a guy who got kicked because of "mouth" and I keep seeing it over and over.

If I applied for something else now, I would not be asking someone to give me a job, rather, I would be interviewing them to see if they had a facility that was acceptable. My guess is that in the right areas they would be 90% ok, and around here they would be 90% not ok. Like it is severed from civilization, trapped in, perhaps, the 1950s or so at best.

[Johnnycomelately]

One time I was at home and wanted to put some water in the air, it was very dry in the house, filled up a Teflon pan and let it boil, however I was on the couch and then fell asleep. When I woke up the entire house was filled with smoke from that Teflon burning . It was bad. I then had to rent 2 of those oionizer fume extractors to get that out of the house. Never again.



Oooo. I’ve long known that burning plastic produces bad smoke, so I can believe that that pan-liner material is bad.

At one rental house-share, I had fire trucks there twice from forgetting I had an oiled pan on heating (house system, door alarm too, sent calls automatically, but I was right there in the kitchen, just with my back turned doing adjacent meal-tasks......my other sub-renter housemate had a hilarious story about forgetting the door-pass number, coming in wasted one night). One of the times, I went out to talk to the truck, and my landlord took care of it and told me to go away. Later he told me it could have co$$$t me, and so warn me for future. Sketchy guy, yet with ominous powers.... later, he kicked me out...😎

[shaberon]

I took another look at the idea behind some equipment. And, I am not sure how this would make sense to anyone:


This sink features a sturdy, 18" drainboard so you can easily wash and dry dishes and utensils in one convenient location.


https://www.webstaurantstore.com/images/products/extra_large/590431/2393836.jpg






I do not understand how that is supposed to work in the most ideal situations. But let's mount it in a corner so the board on the left is flush against that wall, and put another hand sink to the left, and rinse food in it, and put a sign over it saying don't rinse food. At that point, you have made the board on the left mostly inaccessible.

So if you set this thing up what looks to be backwards, with the soap scrubbing on the right, your work surface is effectively that approximately three inch brace between the sinks.

And so you do this at a rate of around a hundred pans an hour, and what that means is whenever you have to power into something, it will simply shake anything you are drying back down the board and into the water, as if it were water. Fortunately, those piano legs--which don't appear to involve any bracing--do have the following feature:


Galvanized steel legs with sockets and adjustable bullet feet provide added stability.


Oh. Well, if there were any less, I am not sure I could tell a difference. I am just glad they go all the way to the floor.

Back in human resources, I saw one of the most bizarre things I ever saw, except, there was a re-run and I saw it twice. New person starts a job. Tells me, well, the third week, I have that off. Taking a week off.

What? I mean, ok. Never heard of that. But ok.

After, something, I am not sure what, right after this mini-break, and the guy quit I guess. Then next week apparently changed his mind and was told no, not for the week off or quitting, but because some equipment such as those pans were found in the garbage.

At that point, it sounds to me like you don't work there any more.

Only a little while ago, I turn around and same person is back. Tells me, oh, the third week, I already have that off.

Oh. Eh, ok...sounds reliable.

Vacation's over, and, same person is just gone, blocked the calls.

During that part, I think I burned out a fourteen year old in about four days. It started to feel a little like we were violating child labor law. Hello? Extremely vacant personality. I mean prize specimen there. No way to tell what happened.

What is strange is that the first person I worked with there was completely fine and stayed for about six months. By now, that was almost a year ago, and, my findings are that this ability is irreplaceable.

Tenure of a new employee ranges from a few days to maybe a month. I can't remember them any more. Just a few outrageous incidents. Except for the one person who was valid for about six months, this matches my recollection of the previous year before that. I don't know what that is a sign of, I can only say it is probably at least fifty members of the public who are all hopelessly broken in some way.

[Bill Ryan]

Food is an industry that has night and day differences depending on where you are.

Restaurant work was the first thing I "stuck to" as a teenager, because of the culture and smoothness of it--those were good experiences because everyone was trained appropriately. I was warned at the time, "you don't want to go away from us into the wilderness", because chances are those jobs won't pay as much and the situation will be significantly worse.This may or may not be on topic. :) But the thread title (if the title's a good description!) suggested this reply from me.

Some Londoners may have heard this story, which I recall from maybe 10-15 years ago. (If so, do please substantiate it with anecdotes and references.)

There is or was a restaurant in London's West End (I believe in Soho) that became infamous for its truly terrible service. It was so awful that it became a source of entertainment for young businesspeople who went there after work to enjoy and make jokes about the unplanned chaos.

Then, the restaurant owners caught on to the fact that their dreadful service was actually boosting business. So they started to ham it up deliberately with the serving staff doing their conscious best to offend and upset the customers. It all became like a kind of slapstick live comedy show.

Does anyone remember this? :)

[Ivanhoe]

I think this is the one you're talking about Bill. :bigsmile:
*CAUTION!, Rude and crude language!
ozTTwO8E1RE

[Darrin]

I think the restaurant you're thinking of, Bill, is Wong Kei's in Wardour Street. Memorably abysmal Chinese restaurant, even before they started hamming it up!

[shaberon]

Then, the restaurant owners caught on to the fact that their dreadful service was actually boosting business. So they started to ham it up deliberately with the serving staff doing their conscious best to offend and upset the customers. It all became like a kind of slapstick live comedy show.

Does anyone remember this? :)



No, but I wish I did.

By the thread title I just have in mind any memorable experiences from either side of the counter.

Tomorrow I get to experience someone back to their first job in about three years after a heart surgery. That guy seems a little more serious and stable than most. And then there are two new attendants of some kind. I don't know what to tell them except they will be in my way. The issue already is the furniture vs. the volume. I don't know if there is a name, but there used to be these puzzles made in a square, which had numbered pieces in a grid, except one piece was missing out of the grid, so you could slide the numbers one spot at a time. That describes our traffic flow.

The end result is a quality product and on that aspect I have hardly ever seen rejects or complaints. That's not an easy spot to get to. If you have ever gone in retail then you find that some members of the public actively look for something to complain about. That is what they are doing. They are looking for something like, to quote Upright Citizens Brigade:


A tiny little dried-out grain of rice slathered with a half-dollop of mooshoo sauce

except that was about a fat person crawling up the stairs, but these people would whine about it. You know the type! And so we wait for them, like a vast pool of quicksand and even when there isn't anything wrong, take their chicken talons to our corneas and go above and beyond the threshhold of existence, even if it means free pickles.

There's no one you can't please unless you change your mind.

I have practically crushed countless lives, but, I have not thrown out a food customer yet.

Co-workers, if that is what you can truly call them, have become an entirely different story. The reason I do this is because where I come from, everyone was cool, and this has been living proof of everything they said about "some other places". I have no way to further validate this, I have not been in a Union, but I was brought in by people who had been. And from that view, the Union was not about whining at all, it set a standard which was like "performance expectancy" and all I got from it was ethics. Just seemed normal. I did not know at the time that some of it was health code, but it is. And so by the lack of Unionization, and not being able to find these same ethics for the most part, maybe you do miss something if you do not have this influence.

[silver birch]

The moderate and painadministering overlords holding this forum in a firm chicken talon grip, will read any membership application (if they have absolutely noting else to read) from any stupid ****, except from "flat earthers" and "karen diner personell". So be it, and no prisoners are taken.






Mod note from Bill:
I didn't understand any tiny part of that. Could you explain? And why is it posted on this thread?
:)

[shaberon]

I have to put this down before the details fade.

Now this might sound a little strange to foreigners. In America, to be legally "historical", a building has to be, I believe, eighty years old. I looked at the one I go in and it said 1922. This is like a status symbol or something.

One of the buildings has a manual dumbwaiter that could work, but of course it is not used. That is because part of the downstairs was converted into a bathroom. So you go to the bathroom and there is just a dumbwaiter there and I guess it is oh so quaint. It's authentic, or something, and takes you back to the good old days of Carpetbagging.

The Plantation consists of a number of these buildings which have been commercialized for various purposes. And so when you go in with food, you are exempted from certain modern requirements, such as a mop sink. At the same time, there are limitations and restrictions, such as for example if you have a slate roof, you can only repair it with exactly-matching slate. So the area I am working in is a newly-renovated interior, which is limited by the situation of it being smaller than anyone would make anymore. For instance I am used to double-door kitchens. Not unusual.

Not as any surprise, the "new person" wasn't, and I wound up dealing with only two of them, but for the moment I am at least willing to say they are not the worst sort of people. Alleviating enough.

I show up and the main impeding piece of furniture has been moved.

So, the building had been recently renovated when I started there. I noticed a low-lying area that would have been ideal for a floor drain. In fact I think this would have been obvious to the contractor and certainly to anyone who has ever been in a kitchen.

It is a tile floor which was theoretically water-tight, but who cares. The thing is, for anyone who actually does cleaning then the first principle is not to drip water. And so I start noticing that there is a puddle usually waiting for me when I come in. It is larger than a floor mat. Otherwise, it is hidden under the floormat.

Note that effectively sealing water with a rubber mat is not particularly hygenic.

I try to start talking about this a few times when I back mop the puddle into a bucket. But this is not feasible when the business is busy. So the effect is practically permanent. Even if I absorb it at the end of the night, you still have something of a rivulet that comes back. Next day it is refilled.

The point is that this low lying spot is basically where I am standing, and I can easily prove it is not necessary because it is the result of garbage work. Over the course of time, I watch a few of the tiles bend, twist, and crack, and I imagine that the subfloor must be turning into a sponge of a rather septic variety. But who knows.

My guess was that most of the water source was coming from the individual that I had complained about, then another time I laughed at him in a way that he certainly did not like, until eventually I half snapped at him at which point he definitely backed down. After that, I never really saw him while this water thing was going on, until a couple of months ago, was fired for verbal reasons.

Accurately enough, most of the Biblical deluge has receded since then, but, may have been a bit late to be an actual cure at this point.

And so I go in and the furniture has moved and of course I presume someone will say something about logistics with additional staff.

The furniture has been moved to act as a type of barricade so no one will hit the low spot since it was seen as saggy enough to be hazardous and maybe cave in.

Now, the plan is...we're getting a floor drain.

I thought I had made a fair enough offer, I said I would work all the doubles if that is what it takes to eliminate and replace this person, it was not a joke.


That is what you get when you hire and tolerate sloppy work.

I wish I was making that up. Brand new floor rotted out over ca. two years.

[Johnnycomelately]

The moderate and painadministering overlords holding this forum in a firm chicken talon grip, will read any membership application (if they have absolutely noting else to read) from any stupid ****, except from "flat earthers" and "karen diner personell". So be it, and no prisoners are taken.

Need a hug? 🥰🥰🥰

Last night, after a pool game, I hugged my opponent (who had won). It was a guy who had actual goldielocks hair and a dress, and said she preferred to be called the Queen of scratches, when I asked. Just mean to say, nothing personal. Maybe I’m the weirdo here haha.

Boyz I wish the pic-post thing was working, I had a few salient memes lined up.

Cheers.

[silver birch]

Bill, thank you for your moderate note.
When I read your post #11, I got interested in what mechanism would be at play for diner customers to appreciate "dumb waiters".

Next post supplied a videodocumentary from one of these restaurants, so I watched it, and had a strong adverse reaction with great sadness in my heart and impaired digestion for several hours.
I can not understand how the customers can digest the food and get something positive out of the eggsperience.

This is serious stuff, as it obviously is a trend involving at least one "chain" if I understand it right.

As I am usually kind and understandig, even when confronted with stupid people, I thought it would be interesting to make a very rude post (safeguarded against personal harm by using wording from the video and suggesting (between the lines) that the most lovely moderators and forum owner maybe would add "karen diner personell" to the rules based order text in the membership application information.
Instead of safeguarding myself against criticism like you did in your post #11, I wanted to be rude and eliglible for working in a "karen diner" as part of the concept is NOT being sorry, on topic or generally understandable.
(from post #11 "This may or may not be on topic. But the thread title (if the title's a good description!) suggested this reply from me.")

I have many questions about this trend, one is how the dumb waiters can go home after work and be nice to their partner or family. Are they all singles, or have they exhausted their rudeness and foul wording at work, so they can be loving and nice at home?

To sum it up, my rude post was an attempt to be like a dumb waiter, as an illustration mainly. As the origin and visualisation for this behaviour is playing out in the thread, my innocent thought was that it must be on topic ...

I am sorry if I have caused any suffering, and promise to never again be rude or difficult to understand.

Please, delete my post if you think it is too hard to connect it to the reality on this thread, or simply impossible to understand for ordinary diners.

[Bill Ryan]

[ ... ]
To sum it up, my rude post was an attempt to be like a dumb waiter, as an illustration mainly.
[...]Thank you! That was very clever, way too clever for dumb me first thing in the morning over here on US time. :coffee::)

To your other points, re the entertainment value of someone being compulsively rude to everyone in sight, do watch Fawlty Towers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fawlty_Towers).

The series (featuring John Cleese at his inspired best) ran for just 12 episodes way back in the 1970s. Every one was a classic, comedy at its cleverest and finest. It's still regarded by many, self included, as the funniest thing that's ever been shown on the BBC. It has its very own Avalon thread: :)


Fawlty Towers

(https://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?116820-Fawlty-Towers&highlight=fawlty):focus:

[shaberon]

Along those lines I have always been a fan of:


Cheese Shop


Hz1JWzyvv8A





Compared to which, my recent version is "The Cheese Grater(s)".

There was a cheese grater, it was used to grate cheese. Nothing extraordinary so far. One day the handle broke off. So another grater was ordered and at first it broke. The first broken grater was determined to work fine without a handle, nevertheless, two more were ordered to replace the new broken one, I guess so it could be its own replacement. No one needed to use them, so they were put to the side.

"Side" in this case means "top", in fact of the objectionable barricade I recently posted, where they have no purpose being. Thinking this was not the best place to keep them, I went to move them, and, not being all that short, but, not being fantastically tall, I grazed the important handle from the side, which caused the stack of graters to tip, and so instead of grabbing the graters, I grated the tips, of two fingers.

I moved the new graters to a bottom shelf where they have never been touched.

I compared them all and out of twelve possible kinds of grater faces, I had definitely raked the worst one.

That was one of those "etiquette" moves. Top shelf storage of a cheese grater is called "poor taste". It's not really a "rule" unless you use "top shelf" and "cheese grater" together in a sentence with every possible individual. I guess. I mean, I think it may be a rule, but that won't help me much.

It was one of those deeper injuries which felt like it kept happening for months.

You have to be careful with top shelves. The guy with the two vacations nearly nailed me with my own beverage. It missed, but one time I did get pelted with plastic items when I was lifting several gallons of boiling water. A jumpy person could have gotten a very serious injury out of that. I'm just adding it to my lists of "firsts" on the scale of regression.

[shaberon]

This is a piece of equipment:


https://www.webstaurantstore.com/images/products/large/66159/1062971.jpg





If I have the brand right, this has nothing less than rosewood handles. Rosewood! Sounds important, doesn't it? I think it may be. You save so much by switching to those comfortable plastic handles. But we have this large cheese knife, I think, for cutting dough. It may also be used for cheese, but I cannot confirm this.

Today I just want to make a note that I received this, in hand, at the bottom of the sink at the beginning of a shift. In other words, somebody stuffed it in there and walked away. But not before adding a couple of half sheet pans. Now if you scroll back up to that picture of the sink, it should be obvious that the compartment is a bit narrow. Here is what happens when you drop half sheet pans in it: they get stuck.

Combine these items and you get a giant razor that is locked into place.

Never mind that the whole thing should have been empty if no one was working there. To change shifts, you drain and clean, and then no one can exactly "put a knife in the sink".

I can't count how many times that has been screamed at the back of my head when I was never about to do it. At this employer, this is no longer a first, it makes the second knife I have grabbed by the blade which was not just "in there", but immobilized by everything on top of it. Touchy reflexes kept me from getting hurt on those.

So far these are also "no longer firsts":


Multiple fires. Don't think I've ever had this come up.

Multiple entire glass racks dropped. Never heard of this.



And I "found" something outside, in the dark. It is a pallet which has been placed adjacent to the laundry hamper. The only laundry I handle is about sixty pounds of soiled rags. That is because instead of anyone taking some out during the day, they just pile up until it becomes apparent that I will be working with people who cannot put rags in a bag. With grime like that, it should be obvious that it needs to be trotted away relatively soon, not walked on for hours. If I wanted to guess at the least sanitary item possible, it would be a damp rag with mixed proteins such as meat and cheese smeared on it. Bear in mind that almost all we have to sell is meat and cheese. This is probably the lowest rated type of cleaning on the scale of things.

The other kind of mixing you want to avoid is that such as the drain fly moving from mold to uncleaned oily crumbs to water with layers of vegetables and fat, and so on. Same thing that makes roaches a problem. The roach itself is not infectious, but insect bodies repeatedly contact any bacterial and fungal sources that are around, and introduce them where they are not.

I found the pallet while disposing of the great bundle of rags by tripping on it, and again touchy reflexes got me through without incident.

On the other hand I am paid better than some trained hospital techs and I don't want to work in a hospital.

I don't even go anywhere around here, so it is hard to imagine working at all.

I wonder if I can find anyone who will agree with me. Maybe that is the thing to do. The applicant interviews the place, to see if you would work there. I suppose I've never "changed" jobs by choice. Well, that's not true. Once. I think. That seems right. But if I do anything, it will be more commute. The new person has an hour and a half commute and was not there. That is not unheard of around here, in terms of your personal car and the highway, an hour is not uncommon, and in some cases more. Is that really conducive to the right way to live?


I am not sure if you call it the "end of civilization" when neither where you live or work holds up to some basic discussions at approximately a five-year-old level. Anything else is at my own risk.


That is what "they" do with rosewood-handled knives on a commercial basis, is use them for other than the intended purpose, and handle them negligently.

[shaberon]

I noticed two of the aforementioned pans going in the trash.

One was from my hand. I was watching the handle peel off the individual weld spots. At the end, it was held together with two of them. By the feel of its demise, the welds are not as strong as toothpicks.

But that reminded me of another first--and still one and only. One night I picked up one of these pans, and the cutting board it was sitting on came with it, because they had cooked together.

I thought of another interesting situation. When I came back to foodservice, the new thing was gloves and sanitizer. I did not even know how to use it at first, I thought the sanitizer was a dangerous chemical you have to rinse off again. You don't. Gloves are for any time you are handling food that will not be cooked again; if there is a barrier, such as a spoon or ladle, you do not need them. But for a while, I was handling food all day.

Then Covid hit. Eventually we re-opened doing some takeouts. When we ran out of gloves, we didn't get more. I was not told they were unavailable, I was told they were too expensive. So I racked up about a month of handling food without gloves, during this so-called pandemic.

Nothing, of course, happened. I think they may be a little facetious.

I am not sure how humanity survived all these years without gloves and sanitizer, or how I survived that month. Never had my temperature checked, used a mask, or any of that. Nothing. Prowled everyone's garbage and food the same way as always. Now that they are affordable, gloves are back in.

[shaberon]

Here is another one that is somewhat of a first.

Again what must be kept in mind is that on a commercial basis, most things are industrial strength, so it does not go like similar processes at home.

For example, once I found machine soap hooked up to the sink. I could tell something was wrong, immediately, and then I found out that in about two hours it actually dissolves your skin. Because this happens to be quite painful at the same time, I don't recommend experiments to see how far you can push it.

Even worse is de-greaser or oven cleaner. At the last employer, I literally saw someone decide to use this to clean dishes and silverware, and all I can say is that it gives you a severe rash immediately. I can't imagine eating the stuff. So you shouldn't be transferring it onto equipment.

That is my only guess for what I saw tonight. I take one day off, and when I come back, the equipment is filthy. That is to be expected. That is because the American work force can't work. This is a given. That is why I stick to what I am doing. Out of the four recent hires, I think maybe one is still employed. The next three interviews did not even show up.

So, the visible grime on our cooking equipment gets no attention, because no one is able to work, I take care of it while I am there. Today however it got noticed.

Now one of the worst enemies to cleaning is soot. You won't normally even see this at home, since very few houses are set up with open flame burners. When you cook with fire, it makes soot. This is nature at its most basic. If you do not actually remove the soot, then, when it gets wet, it turns in to a form of paint. It will streak everywhere, and especially those pretty white dishes will become smudged by your fingerprints. Again, if you are, in fact, dead, you can be excused from taking care of it adequately. So far the living are not able to contain this unsightly blemish.

Today, instead of baked-on dried grime, the layer of soot had somehow become jellified, it turned into the Black Oil from the X-Files, whatever it touches becomes infected.

I have never seen this happen.

I am guessing someone attempted to clean soot by coating it with a chemical, as if it would be removed from existence.

By this point, my medulla probably consists almost entirely of Benzene, and I am going to have to live on lard or either Crisco.

No wonder people buy vaccines. All it takes to clean things is soap and bleach, very old technology. If people of the twenty-first century fail to recognize this and continue to innovate simple cleaning with multiple kinds of failures, I am not surprised they believe in vaccination.

But more seriously, the plumbing issues that should have been resolved before I started, or when I asked about it three times, and was told it was being done "next week" which is last week, I have found out "may" take place in only a month or more.

In consequence, the piece of furniture that was already bad, remains shifted a few feet to where it is a serious threat. The idea was in preserving the "low spot" in the floor, which of course should never have happened. I have proved more than once there is absolutely no need for water to be there, except your workers are garbage. By moving the furniture to "protect" that spot, now, it receives additional donations of silverware juice.

I believe this is what is called "exactly backwards", like the Earth Summit.

Something that was always wrong is even more wrong and much more dangerous.

This is not to register at all the person who is right there, me, but if someone whines about something trivial, you better believe our lives depend on it.

I don't plan on spending a month or more on bad to worse for no reason other than stupidity, while, as far as I can tell, having failed to replace the first person I worked with in what amounts to about a year by now.

It still looks to me like a Plantation run as a Caste system.

The more I see and hear, the more I want to cast my head in cement.

Anyway, that's new. I am infected with Black Oil. The quantity I discovered when I realized I had contacted something unusual beggars description. I don't know how it happened. Simply astounding.

[Isserley]

This is not really a food service experience, but a coffee service experience... Bosnia has always been the best place for drinking coffee, a special ritual and experience

This is how they serve it :bigsmile:

https://themajka.com/media/images5/1681949089.jpg

[Johnnycomelately]

.

This is how they serve it :bigsmile:

https://themajka.com/media/images5/1681949089.jpg

Seems civilized. ~8D

In Canada, the historical norm of big weaker cups of coffee was to provide warmth at outdoor winter events like hockey games. More warmth for your belly, and for your hands.

[Isserley]

.

This is how they serve it :bigsmile:

https://themajka.com/media/images5/1681949089.jpg

Seems civilized. ~8D


They bought me with a complementary cigarette :bigsmile:

[Johnnycomelately]

They bought me with a complementary cigarette :bigsmile:

I don’t need help with tobacco, but in case I ever get another passport...

So, coffee. Last week my ‘drip’ coffee maker quit, so I went back to ~cowboy coffee. I use a fine grind, and know how to make Turkish/Greek style, but now just do it with water, add a bit of sugar at the cup, and some milk. First cup doesn’t all settled yet, but with care with a soup ladle for skimming, the rest are just rich. Am enjoying this new timeline.

[shaberon]

...coffee service experience...


Coffee is a major food group, it must be. Contains your lifetime supply of Anti-Oxidants. Without these, we would rust. The superiority of coffee over tea is because tea is a major source of tannic acid, which, well, that is used for tanning hides and leather. If I can run an establishment that is mainly based on the coffee drink, I am going to call it foodservice and take care of it same way as everything else.

What you have shown is what we usually call Turkish Coffee (infusion). However the last place I worked at made it and called it Greek Coffee. Otherwise they killed the cuisine. Mexican kitchen. First thing they told me was "we don't eat this stuff". So about the only thing I learned working in Greek sounds something like this:

estriale malaka


which means "stupid American". It only took several thousand confirmations before I was sure this was what was being said. Otherwise it is a difficult language to sneak in to.

[Isserley]

Coffee is a major food group, it must be.

I do get that.
What is interesting to highlight here is that in this part of the world café actually means café where coffee is served, no food. Thats why Starbucks and other coffee chains haven’t quite worked up the gall to set up shops here.

When I spent some time in Canada, I was surprised by this difference in relation to food service. I'm used to having food served only in restaurants. We couldn't sit down for a drink anywhere without the place smelling of food :bigsmile:

[shaberon]

What is interesting to highlight here is that in this part of the world café actually means café where coffee is served, no food. Thats why Starbucks and other coffee chains haven’t quite worked up the gall to set up shops here.


This kind of establishment is to be exalted. They are serving Satan's Drink (https://www.deathwishcoffee.com/blogs/coffee-talk/why-coffee-was-called-satan-s-drink).


It was once banned for sedition in the Ottoman Empire (https://www.quora.com/Why-was-coffee-called-the-devils-drink):


The ban was finally rescinded in 1524 by order of the Ottoman Turkish Sultan Selim I, with Grand Mufti Mehmet Ebussuud el-İmadi issuing a fatwa allowing coffee to be drunk again.

Beg was executed for his troubles by command of the Sultan himself, who further proclaimed coffee to be sacred.



It is thought to have entered Europe from the Ottoman
Siege of Malta (https://waterfordtreasures.wixsite.com/wattreasuresblog/post/the-devil-s-drink-and-disturber-of-the-peace-the-history-of-coffee-in-ireland):


Once the drink was safely cleansed of sin and the people of Europe were successfully protected from it, coffee really started to take off across the continent - but the danger wasn't over. By the mid-seventeenth century coffee houses had sprung up across all of the major cities and they fast became centres of intellectual debate about politics and religion. All of the great philosophers, writers and orators would gather to spread their ideas and discuss the finer points of society while sipping their coffee, and while it ushered in a new age of enlightenment, not everybody was pleased. By 1675 there were over 3000 coffee houses in England alone as as the general public spent more and more time discussing esoteric matters of governance and religion, the authorities - and the King - grew more and more frightened.

In 1675, the King of Great Britain and Ireland, Charles II, was feeling a little uneasy on his throne. He was the first King after the Glorious Revolution saw his father executed, and despite the relative peace of his rule, he was unable to produce a male heir. Knowing of the whispering that was going on in coffee houses across the kingdom he began to fear another uprising, and the figure at the centre of his worry was coffee, the stimulating drink adored by radical thinkers.


Most of what they were making was, of course, similar to Turkish coffee. And so it has this reputation in two continents. That is how it started!

[shaberon]

Before trying to re-evaluate my current experience of "the floor", I realized there is something similar, a legend, The Ice Machine.


It is from Manitowoc, and it has its own territory, which I think may have kept the original floor from the building. I believe it was flat tiles, and may have been The Dressing Room. By minutely examinating upon some old photos, I was able to determine that my storage closet was The Box Office. That is why I keep a refrigerator and a bathroom in the storage closet.

The details are fuzzy because it was only briefly after the beginning of my deployment into the puddle that one of the water lines to the ice machine ruptured, and rotted out part of that old floor.

Well, this was attended to rather promptly and the entire section was re-laid with something like vinyl, which is more suited for the purpose. I am pretty sure that not enough of the sub-floor was replaced. I think maybe some costs were cut there.

After the ice machine was given a whole brand new floor for its bad behavior, it somehow developed an appetite for ingesting multiple bags of ice on a regular basis.

As far as I know, this is a practically brand new ice machine, which already broke, and doesn't work.

The fact that it provides some ice is good enough to justify it being jammed into one of the worst nooks imaginable.

You can scoop ice from it, without actually falling in, but you are better off by throwing the ice into it from a relative distance.

Is that what is called "user friendly"?

If someone were to run the numbers on the amount of energy consumed by "refrigeration" on a daily basis, I bet it is a bigger category than anything except "vehicles". On a commercial basis you have to icepack things on a regular basis, such as greens and seafood, so we have to have it. The habit of putting ice in drinks does not appeal to me. Maybe historically before you personally had a refrigerator. But just to go around sticking ice in drinks is a ton of energy just for that momentary purpose.


Anyway, when you are a machine, your damage will be repaired immediately. When the same situation is caused by employees, apparently, a year later you get a piece of furniture shifted to "protect" you.

Has this reduced the traffic? It has! By about twenty-five per cent!

This means that the rest of them constantly interfere with me.

So they keep getting in the way, while the additional instability leads to substantial quantities of silverware juice adding in to the mix. Meanwhile, the ability to stack all the various foodservice items has become quite volatile, explosive.


Just so we know some of the few governmental functions that are of any use to us, we have the one that covers all labor under OSHA (http://drainagemats.net/pdf/OSHA-safety-requirements-for-restaurants.pdf):


A workplace hazard is anything on the job that can hurt you or make you sick. Ergonomics is the science
of designing the workplace to fit the worker, rather than expecting a worker to fit into a job that has not
been designed correctly.


Design aisles in the kitchen area that are at least 4 feet wide. This is very important between
workstation and the grill, oven or stove.


Part of one's job is to identify and find solutions for hazards.

Within this are specific enforcements towards foodservice, such as Minimum Design (https://foodsafety.ces.ncsu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Minimum-Requirements-Food-Service-10-22-2013.pdf?fwd=no):


Drainboards (must be self-draining), utensil racks, or tables large enough to accommodate all
soiled and cleaned items that may accumulate during hours of operation shall be provided for
necessary utensil holding before cleaning and after sanitizing. Recommended minimum
drainboard length is 24 inches.

When only a 2-compartment sink is provided, the restaurant must apply for a variance and the
restaurant is required to close whenever the dishmachine is not operating correctly. A 3-
compartment sink is strongly recommended.

Can wash facility for garbage cans and mops.


Adequate hot water heating facilities.


That tells you how to set up in the first place, and what tells you how to work is the Food Code (https://ehs.dph.ncdhhs.gov/faf/docs/foodprot/NC-FoodCodeManual-2021-FINAL.pdf):


4-901.11 Equipment and Utensils, Air-Drying Required.
After cleaning and SANITIZING, EQUIPMENT and UTENSILS:

(A) Shall be air-dried or used after adequate draining as
specified in the first paragraph of 40 CFR 180.940 Tolerance
exemptions for active and inert ingredients for use in
antimicrobial formulations (food-contact surface SANITIZING
solutions), before contact with FOOD; and
(B) May not be cloth dried except that UTENSILS that have been
air-dried may be polished with cloths that are maintained clean
and dry.


This stuff really does not matter if you are a boss or employee, it is how things are supposed to go. Everyone does it.

It is not quite a law. I can't call the police about the furniture. It is like in a store, if I see a bag of bread that says it expired yesterday, they aren't breaking any law. Nothing actually says anything has to be done about it. But if a refrigerated item comes out of refrigeration, they have to dispose of it.

Various violations of these codes can cause the agencies to take legal actions which can force corrective behavior, issue fines, and revoke licenses. The Union is that which on the other hand pushed for a lot of the protective standards, but it does not enforce them. It can still push minimum wage, or launch its own lawsuits on issues like stolen pay. I knew someone who had Union defense over what I thought was a lie. So it has a somewhat different role.

The Code, etc., is copied nearly identically in all of the States which means all foodservice work should be close to the same.

I would have to go to City Hall to get them to explain to me exactly what "exemptions" that historical buildings are entitled to, just because of their relatively small space. I think it would be funny to fight City Hall with OSHA. Is there an exemption from a can wash facility, which in turn literally means you never clean the garbage cans?

[shaberon]

In the past month, I have seen that if you are Mexican and speak English, you get deported. But if you don't, you can stay and work, and there is no need to follow the basic safety rules.

What I am noticing now is that I cannot tell a difference between "property ownership" and "Nazi satanism".

What I mean by this is that so-called Nazis are about the same as bad parents who say, you have a roof over your head and something to eat, so you better do exactly what I say.

These people have no thought as to the misery they spread.

Whether it is parents, politicians, or what looks like simple property owners.

Case in point, where I live, was only by a certain agreement, which was ignored and then I was told to f off, so I am stuck in a mess that I cannot do anything about.

Similarly, with work, we enter with a certain agreement, which is usually just the rules of working. But I am with those who place themselves above it. So I am marking two anniversaries, about a year since the normal person left and the place turned to garbage, and, checking back, over a month since I complained about the inappropriate furniture.

Now, again, does this sound familiar:


It's just for a few days.

We'll take care of it next week.

It will be...sometime later on...


Well, two or three days I would understand. But it wasn't. After losing the tug-of-war trying to push the damn thing back, I gave up on it, churned I don't know how many employees because most people won't subject themselves to such nonsense, and wound up with a couple that seemed to stick. Unfortunately, they can't be trained, since our property is in such a disarray.

I know my rental and employer may have forgotten about me, but, surprisingly, that does not mean I forgot anything, and am just standing empty-handed over those agreements we supposedly made.

Fortunately, with work, we have recourse where we go over their heads, which I just did. I would rather not, since it may lead to unintended consequences, such as being shut down temporarily, perhaps permanently. I think if I really tried to stress it, and the level of sheer incompetence, it would be permanent. Did I mention the water?

Yeah, that was like...January...said that suddenly you have a water problem. No explanation about it. No investigation of it. I just checked and the code says that in a manual sink, water needs to be 110 degrees, and, in a chemically-sanitized warewashing machine, 120. That's not a matter of opinion or what you think or feel about it. It is a matter of, can the water coming out of your faucet peg a thermometer that high? And if not, I don't think you are supposed to operate.

I, personally, do not think anyone is tremendously at-risk health wise, if a cooking pan is not sanitized or the water is not that terrifically hot, but--my opinion doesn't count for anything. These are binaries. Is or isn't. If isn't, I don't think you can.

But that is not what I tried to pursue. My main problem at home or work is I can't move. And there is not much you can do to a house owner just because they put things in the way. So I am totally at the mercy of this Nazi-ism, or, whatever you would like to call it, since nothing I say will ever matter, since property owners distribute misery so freely.

I suppose you could call it the absence of civilization.

Maybe to some people, houses and jobs are fluid, and any given one doesn't really matter, since you just go on. The aggravating factor, in this case, was of course the government, which, if I remember rightly, blocked a lot of people from a lot of normal things very recently, as if that is something we should accept from them.

So far in the Covid era I have not perceived anything other than Nazi Satanism.

If I can find a different job, I will definitely be interviewing them first, as in have you got a situation that actually is not morbid and miserable. My expectations are low. I don't go anywhere around here because I think it will be about the same everywhere.

The last time I intentionally left a job, was from over-enforcement of code in a way that did not apply to me. There is a chance that the correction I have requested will work out, and, if the place might run at least comparably like it used to, I wouldn't leave. If, on the other hand, I can find something else that might be normal, then it will feel like escape, from the lack of any code at all.

It does not matter what job you are doing, you must be aware of health and safety issues, you must share this knowledge, report any defects, and make any corrective suggestions you can. You have to at least try to keep it wrapped up. I did, if almost anything I am talking about was brought up more than once, that is about the end of the line for what a worker can do. When you do that in a commercial establishment and the garbage cans still haven't been cleaned after a year, then, your obligation for discussion has passed.

[shaberon]

Strange sense of timing.


I heard some strange commitment today about the "end of garbage work".

Too late, I have already filed a federal complaint. This is while I am starting to look for another door to go into.

Then these weird people--and by weird, I mean ultra freaks, and I have never been considered normal--got flushed out of the woodwork. One of them claims to be a Chef! Isn't that strange? I don't know their names, but, one says they have the "top" job available in a kitchen. Well, what that means, is, in order to do your job, you actually have to do everything I say. Again, I am just nobody, remember, nothing I have said for a year was ever acted on, because nothing works right. If you want it to work right, you have no choice other than to accept me as supreme dictator.

So, I found it unusual as I started bouncing ideas off these two, all they could say was "of course". No problem for anyone with any minor amount of experience to see that everything around me is completely wrong.

This is a race between the ability to repair four years worth of damage, and me finding something that qualifies as "civilized", anywhere around here.

I thought it was hilarious as we received a "complaint" about the sloppiness, and, well, guess what, my complaint is bigger than yours. That is, of course, because I have no qualms about destroying a business if that is what needs to be done, and right now we are on the cusp of that happening. Best suggestion? If you have a business, don't hire anyone. You will get garbage, and then if you happen to get a sensible person, we will pull your license as a public service.

Weird, eleventh hour attempt, but, if you could revert it to at least the initial conditions where it was good enough as a job, I stop leaving or filing motions. As of now, you are in the position of being forced to implement something that is recognized by other people as "Safe". I'm not letting go of that because it is for everyone, not just me. For my part, I am always happy to tell you I will kill you, and look at you like you are stupid until I do it.

Don't ask unless you want the truth.

And, again, I can fully explain to you the legal constraints of how this works: if I can reach you, you are too close. If you have been warned, then, the consequences are your problem since I am in self-defense.

Same as on the street with someone you don't know is going to mug you or what. Or, you can do it to me. You can't threaten me. But you can tell me to keep a distance of a meter or so. That is Sovereignty. Because I don't swarm co-workers, this has never happened. I am sure some of them are terrified of me, but, this does not apply to emotional problems or verbal interaction. For the most part no one cares and that is your problem. Right now we are talking about injuries and the like.

Remember, in this example, I already have three examples which were basically confrontations, plus, on top of that, I am in a standing conflict with everyone. So the emotional and verbal hostility is always fully present, just looking for something to do.

That would be my description of the American work force. It's pretending that conflict is not really there.

You job is to find a way not to kill those around you based on deep-seated, internecine rivalries, but then you do it retroactively when they assault you.

Because this is not really a community, we are not running on much more than a temporary stave-off of utter savagery.

Rotting out a practically new floor as an excuse to OSHA violate me is not cute, funny, or amusing, I might call it negligent or incompetent, and what really bugs me is the utter facelessness of it all. No one will take the heat or responsibility or bother to even say anything. This puts me in a position where all I have to do is tell the truth, and I can do it in front of a large number of people that know you, and you will be introduced to what is called in the ranks "humiliation".

In turn, I cannot be humiliated, like I cannot be sued. Nothing there. It's like fighting air.

I am not going to purposely pull my arsenal against these slack, ignorant carcasses, but just watch what clock ticks faster between other prospects, and, the vast process involved in making a business what it already was, minus the maltreatment.

[shaberon]

Next on today's episode of "I wish I was making this up".


This is one of the only times I care that posts are dated because it is easy to look back and see that the "furniture show" started around the beginning of April. Two months of this.

I learned something, which, may be the last thing I ever learn, and I want to pass it along. I spent around fifteen years in management and never dealt with a single incident report, because, normally, there are no incidents. So I didn't really know what it was. I have heard of a few, but never been directly around one. And so just by hearsay, it is no surprise that when someone cuts their finger to the bone and goes to the hospital, that would be an incident.

The report is much more than that however. It doesn't have to be "serious". I should have been incident reporting everything that has happened to me over the past year. When someone collides with me and I am injured, or I get machine soap which attacks a person like lye, then, even though I was able to continue working, those were incidents. The knives with the locked down blades that I touched, but didn't get cut by, were incidents.

In fact, it covers "near misses, close calls, and safety observations".

In that case I need one every day.

The relevance here, is that, I am not sure if I posted it, but at some point, the co-workers who helped me move the furniture, disappeared, and we hired new people at the point where I had surrendered to the apparent intent that nothing is going to change.

Remember, this started over the remark that "the floor might cave in", which, to me, sounds like a safety issue.

The fix was to commit another safety violation on top of it, to "reduce traffic", meaning that the people who use the hand sink for a dump sink, have to use it sideways, which they could have done without putting the thing in the way.

So when the new people came in, I told them "This is not ok" several times. I asked them more than once if they had any suggestions how to improve the situation. Nothing was said.

After they have been there a month, instead of saying anything, they committed more violations by bussing glasses to the garbage can, and jamming bus pans halfway into my station.

Chain of events: (1) no health code rots out the floor, causing a safety issue in their words not mine, which (2) is temporarily suppressed by the furniture which might have been ok if it really was for just a few days, leading to (3) instead of finding a solution for the dangerous bussing, making it far worse.

Verbal and written messages have so far been useless, and so I really should have been "incident reporting" all this. I will try to catch up to that in the near future.

The inappropriate furniture is important, because, we can't figure out where to store a few mustard bottles.

The ignorance and helplessness is simply amazing. Totally what I call a caste system. Fine dining served by a few people who don't know what they are doing and are about to kill each other. Probably a lot of businesses are like that. So be careful. Oh, and verbal harassment also counts as an "incident". I am not suggesting anyone whine over nothing, but, I strongly suggest everyone remain aware of basic safety conditions wherever they work, and make reports if you see something off.

[shaberon]

Fine dining brought to you by the caste system.


I don't want to harp on the same strings all the time, but, this was stunning.

First of all I have to talk to the labor board because they are not sure if this is in their jurisdiction. Well, yes, it is a Gordian knot of several layers of Health Department issues, mixed with OSHA. The main reason I didn't already use Health Department was to try to work around the rotten floor, because, I think it might lead to immediate shutdown, and, then who knows about re-opening. I am not trying to sideline other employees for something they are not involved with. So, I thought, if forced to fix the furniture first, then we can follow up with the human behavior. But, it has to go in the hands of someone with authority, and if they pass it to the person who goes around with a UV lamp looking for signs of contamination, and, the basement happens to be a moldy slab of salad dressing, they won't like it.

I am fairly positive that no one from our side checked anything out.

So, after filing a complaint and essentially stopped talking--which I strongly advise you to stop talking when you are in a position of possible legal consequences--I have just been standing around watching what new employees do when they come into a broken kitchen.

First of all, the Health Code doesn't happen. I have never seen it happen. After all, this is a caste system that is stuck somewhere in the Civil Rights era, the pictures on the wall prove that. So there is no training.

Secondly, after asking for suggestions about improved bussing and nothing was said but the decision was made to stick bus pans over the manual sink, that is a safety violation. I mean, it probably says that in the Health Code, but obviously it pertains more to physical safety than bacterial growth. You don't do it.

The next decision was to throw a folded-over floor mat into the zone where I walk. Guess what that did? It tripped me. Ha ha. Well, I, personally, can negotiate most things without hurting myself, so, I survived, but, as I just found out, this was an "incident". And, I figured I might want to start using those reports. So I tried to get one.

Guess what I was told.

We do not provide/accept/use those.

I could write something down, but, it would be an ordinary piece of paper that could go in the trash. That already happened with the Health Code. I wrote it down, nothing happened, until the floor rotted and the solution was to jam in these safety violations for only at least two months now. And I have no recourse to safety under normal means.

I think you might be able to say Eff it if you are a Sole Proprietor. Chances are that a Corporation or LLC is obliged to do this. I take that as a very compromising statement, that no, you cannot do what I thought every company in the world was supposed to do. I had a pack of incident reports in a drawer somewhere and was trained to use them for an incident, which, for me, never came up in about fifteen years.

Although the way in which it came up was not "serious", the categorical denial of accepting them sounds like a legal violation to me.

I am not picking it to pieces, yet, but I may accidentally stumble into actual proof that you should never deny there is such a thing as an incident report.

Level one of "blame the untrained employees" was a managerial denial of responsibility, and, I think, not reporting anything about safety would be another level.

Maybe that is what the last place meant when they said "if you get hurt, we fire you".

[shaberon]

...the basement happens to be a moldy slab of salad dressing, they won't like it.

I am fairly positive that no one from our side checked anything out.


Turns out I was wrong. How wrong? Completely.

Sometimes I am wrong. In fact, today I went past someone while I was doing something wrong, and said, I regularly do something wrong, and I will admit it if you can catch me. But you can't, because you just don't know. I mean who in the world confesses their sins in the very moment while they are committing them, asks for public admonishment, and nothing happens. Geez.

So, because we do know that the top side of the floor--which is not about to break, but, works very well as a sponge, is represented on the other side by "it's bad".

That means I will find out what happens when you go into the Health Department and say "Looks like you will have to bubble wrap the Theater Building and send in people with hazmat suits".

That constitutes willful negligence, of course, which can be challenging to a business license. Can they keep it? Who knows! Hopefully this will scandalize everything. Next I am going to dragnet the whole Plantation and eliminate the caste system. If I can, I will absolutely destroy everything that is "highly rated" if there is even a whiff of it disregarding workers' safety rights. I think this is probably a league of capitalists taking advantage of peoples' ignorance, I doubt a four-year-old business is doing anything new except copying what they heard from the older ones...we shall see.

This is where the East Coast elite hangs out when they don't want to be cold, which is fine, except for the total disregard of health and safety that is just pushed back around the corner so you don't see it and pretend it is not happening.

I mean our food handling is absolutely 100% zipped up, perfect, nothing wrong with it, but that is a farce if you manage to achieve the...I just don't have words for it...how can you rot out a brand new floor, fill the basement with mold, and whistle Dixie as if it were just not there again tomorrow??

I don't know, I will just go on protecting strangers as if they were my own children, against the injustices of capitalism, and...if you did a crime, you do the time...not my fault.

[DNA]

Here is a question.

Why don't we ever use brass for cooking.
It doesn't rust.
It lasts forever.

I personally use cast iron.
Cast iron hasa few downsides.
You have to keep it seasoned.
I use beef fat personally, it's amazing beef tallow.
Cast iron will rust.
Cleaning is kind of tricky.
I love the heft.
At first you think the weight will suck but no, it adds to the stability of the cooking process.
Also cast iron doesn't scorch food like stainless steel will.
Cast iron distributes heat well.
Nothing better than cast iron for frying chicken on the stove.
Let you in on a little Cajun secret, to get the best fried chicken results use beef tallow.
That's what the popular chicken franchise Popeyes fried chicken uses in their friers.

[DNA]

Food is an industry that has night and day differences depending on where you are.

Restaurant work was the first thing I "stuck to" as a teenager, because of the culture and smoothness of it--those were good experiences because everyone was trained appropriately. I was warned at the time, "you don't want to go away from us into the wilderness", because chances are those jobs won't pay as much and the situation will be significantly worse.This may or may not be on topic. :) But the thread title (if the title's a good description!) suggested this reply from me.

Some Londoners may have heard this story, which I recall from maybe 10-15 years ago. (If so, do please substantiate it with anecdotes and references.)

There is or was a restaurant in London's West End (I believe in Soho) that became infamous for its truly terrible service. It was so awful that it became a source of entertainment for young businesspeople who went there after work to enjoy and make jokes about the unplanned chaos.

Then, the restaurant owners caught on to the fact that their dreadful service was actually boosting business. So they started to ham it up deliberately with the serving staff doing their conscious best to offend and upset the customers. It all became like a kind of slapstick live comedy show.

Does anyone remember this? :)

Back in the late nineties I used to work at this semiconductor manufacturing plant in Phoenix Arizona.

It was a warehouse slash chip manufacturing logistics space.

Back in these days computer processors and memory chips were pretty expensive.

Everyone who worked here had to submit to a bottleneck entry point that had a metal detector and two security guards monitoring building access.
We are talking single file lines so when breaks or end of shift time hits there would be a miserable line here.
But the absolute best part of it was this old black security guard named Stewert.

He had to wand you or give you the affirmative if you set off the alarm. And most folks did.
Stewart would accuse everyone of being a thief, he would come up with pet names that were put downs for people.
No one escaped his wrath if they set off the metal detectors.
He would make comments about their intelligence. He would tell them what would happen to them if they went to prison.

I mean things you could just never get away with in this time of political correctness.
And truth be told this process was ten times more painful when he wasn't there to do it.

Something about his banter and comical accusations that kept away the silent reality of your employer truly not trusting you and forcing this situation on you.

The silence from the guards not named Stewert focusing on finding things on you was a hundred times more painful to submit to than Stewert who would wand you, and infer that only an idiot or a thief would set off his metal detector, what you got a possessor in your pocket or you just happy to see me.

You know I'm starting to think you got a thing for me, Is this what you're into? Making me wand you?
Is it gonna be worth making license plates for ten years just so you can make me bend my old ass over and wand you down everyday?

You beep my machine tomorrow and I'm gonna put my size 11 in your ass, you hear me?
He would sing people out the door with abuse all the way to the parking lot.
And we loved it.
Everybody in the whole company loved Stewert.

That is until NAFTA and the USA lost all of its domestic chip manufacturing to Mexico.

Stew even hosted a Saturday brunch at a local breakfast restaurant because it wasn't enough that people got abused mon-fri, some folks felt the need to get abused on Saturday as well.

I worked at this place for six years and I had a few decent conversations with Stewert.
I remember asking Stewert how he was able to do what he did which was basically insult people and get away with it.

He told me that he had spent most of his life working at a prison in New York state.
He said he had a hard time when he started,,, until he came up with a personna he put on everyday for work.
This act served as a buffer between he and the prisoners.
He said he didn't really mean to but he had carried it over to this place.
It was like second nature.
He was a cool guy. I miss him.

[shaberon]

Here is a question.

Why don't we ever use brass for cooking.
It doesn't rust.
It lasts forever.


It doesn't rust but I believe it throws verdegris from the copper--entirely toxic. That is the greenish looking stuff, which, I think, is the equivalent of rust on copper, oxidation. You would be better off eating the rust.

Today's lesson is that the slaves at the Plantation are still slaves. Here, I am trying to give off some tactics--the best form of mind control remains the lack of information. Give them enough rope, and they hang themselves. Yesterday I confessed my guilt to someone--I am doing something wrong if you can catch me--while I was doing the wrong thing right in front of their face. No clue.

Today I started a discussion with the guy--20 y. o.--who had given me the new gift of a tripping incident a few days ago. I did not and have not yet accused him of that particular thing. I just tried to talk about basic safety, including the fact that our company was already totally negligent and abusing our rights to "cover its tracks" or something, which, normally, you might think might rile someone up. In turn, I got:

1) Denial--"you have nothing to worry about from me". This is despite the fact that a few nights ago, I missed getting a metal shield up my nose by about an inch, but thanks, I survived.

2) Corruption--these companies just bribe and pay their way out of anything, and that is how the world works.

3) Complicity--continued to commit one of the safety violations I was objecting to, and told me, that if I expect any basic safety protocols, I should not work in a kitchen. Any speaking out is actually a form of betrayal. You have to do anything someone vaguely hints at, even if it is obviously unsafe by any common standards.


On my behalf, I specialize in public humiliation, but I cannot actually do it because I cannot summon any people with any attention span. They mawk about like animals and return to their phones. And are the most asinine, dangerous things I have ever seen in my whole life, and I have been sending bosses to jail since before most of them were born.

That's never actually been my intent, since I basically just tell the truth as I have witnessed it, which is usually sufficient for ownership to press charges. But in this case the ownership is on the moon. Was not interested in multiple health and safety issues I tried to raise a year ago. Recently when I was picking something up for the "normal" bussing of the place said that "I don't want you to get hurt". That is just a bit creepy, like confessing that "normal" bussing in your place is pretty risky, but, it was far less the stuff that I was concerned about, than the people.

So, I spent tonight witnessing the same safety violation that I verbally disputed, over and over again, and of course the company has revoked my rights about this, same as the trip, or, the untold number of things that previously should have been reported, but, I tried to sort out verbally. Or in most cases, gave up, since that employee was already gone for some other reason, conversation over.


At what point I say in front of everyone, that, the tripping incident taking place during the investigation intended to resolve the bussing problem, revealed a serious Labor violation which may kill the business license, oh well, who knows. That is why you don't blurt it out in anger. Targeted strike. Use as many witnesses as possible and just tell the truth.

Then, of course, we may trot over to the newspaper and local media to reveal to them how it goes in fine dining. Remember I am serving the East Coast elite. Some days I park beside a Maserati which has hub emblems similar to the Ukrainian "trident". My vehicle is filthy, smashed up, with no back windshield, so I try to get beside the most expensive looking car on the lot.

It may not be necessary if we do, in fact, have a situation that will take bubble wrap and Hazmat suits.

Let it self-scandalize.

First I have to tell the county that they better not be bribed off of this. If I have to, I will go to Justice to sue Health, and so on, who cares. Easy to do. To me it appears to be "willful negligence", but, since of course there is no actual maintenance request log, there's no paper trail of a request being ignored, which, I think, most people know, anywhere you are, that any kind of deficient maintenance log is a serious liability. To be technical, legally, you could serve until seven or eight and then "sorry folks my hot water's out..." which of course would then encourage you to get the damn thing fixed. "Word of mouth" obviously goes nowhere, and, even worse, the guy who's supposed to be in charge of this stuff should find and fix it automatically. But no one knows what he does because he comes in at four in the morning and usually leaves before more than about two others show up.

Again, just according to straight Health Code, that is shut-downable since January, but of course the company can pretend that it is news.

The second one, which, would probably be considered a public health emergency in any sane area, has simply been ongoing for, I believe, the entire time the establishment has been open. Not a surprise, but, of course we can pretend that it is, even though we already know.

Again, new guy--I tried to do what I could just to forcefully straighten out the improper bussing situation which was not your fault, and, you returned what I think may have been the most drastic employee-related incident I have ever experienced, and then I discover a criminal violation of Labor law while we are being investigated by Labor. Ironic. Pity this. Just the way the mop flops. It was all over a batch of incompetence.

[shaberon]

Today's episode is called "It Gets Deeper".


This is not just for foodservice, it applies to practically all occupations, because OSHA applies to everyone, and then you simply add the various codes for particular occupations.

I put in a special notice to quit that is called an Involuntary Resignation. This causes an unusual release known as a Constructive Discharge, which means that the only way to "construct" the conditions of ordinary safety, is to remove the employee from the employment, because the company is negligent on meeting its "adequate and safe" obligations.

The burden of proof is on the employee, which makes it almost impossible to prove, since a company is usually in a position to rebut your claims of harassment or incidents, and you will enter litigation until you eventually lose in court, so don't think you can just "do" this. It is very rare that anyone would be able to prove such a claim, because, even if something happened, a company does not usually have to do very much in order to be seen as "responding" to it. Usually a handful of those reports is enough to throw your claim out the window.

But in the event of a crime, it is automatic. Not taking those reports is a crime. That is why this is a serious matter, and automatic unemployment for me.

I went in with a sealed envelope stuffed with about five pages and said "you do not need to open this unless you want to contest my claim. If you open it, then you will get something which is utterly indefensible".

So I believe I will exit under my own terms, it seemed like my request for no contest was submitted to. I don't think they will try.

The reason they might be taking it seriously is because when I filed for the lack of reports, this triggered the jurisdiction on my previous claim, and I received a copy of the order from the Department of Labor which demands a plan to resolve those physical issues. When that hit, you could sense an immediate shift in psychology, like there is something mysterious and spooky in the background, like a vacuum cleaner sucking up all of the emotional force.

That's called "timing", you know that the management is aware they are under authority, and then you drop the resignation to someone who is like putty.

You might wonder why is it a notice instead of effective immediately. That is so I can monitor and control the situation. I made it for one week so it has the appearances of "leaving quickly". I added caveats that if anything bad happens, then I resign in the middle of a shift. So that is defensible in the sense that it does sound like safety concerns.

If salvageable, I am basically going to make the unsafe kid do my work for me, while I draw unemployment, and then when he goes to school in August, I would have the option of returning to the same job--repaired to OSHA standards and staffed by people who are going to listen to me. I don't need a title, just the truth.

Moreover, since I have to look for a job, it is far more likely that you find something that you just "don't like" and that has no legal standing at all. All you can do is voluntarily quit, which is usually not a good idea unless you are starting another job, and so it doesn't really matter if unemployment gets me stuck somewhere lame--as long as it is adequate and safe, there is nothing to be said about whether you like it or not. If I don't like it, I already have an agreement that I would return to something I left involuntarily, because if it really was adequate and safe, I wouldn't like it all that much, but it is decent enough to not really worry about it. The "atmosphere" is not fantastic, in my opinion, except that aspect could easily be much worse, so it is not all that bad. Average at least.

If I find somewhere that has a really good atmosphere, then, I am not forced to return to this job. My employment will have been severed with a non-binding verbal agreement, anything else would be a new process.

I didn't quit immediately, because I have more work to do, which is not the work they employed me for. The other caveat is that due to the physical constraints, your work is probably going to be slower. Don't bug me about that. I have no legal ability to improve your efficiency, only an "adequate and safe" way to do it at all. Your problem, not mine.

I need another week which will be more a case of what to say to whom and when.

That is because I am not in a retaliation, however it is something like a mercy killing of whatever is not right, and I haven't been able to get to everything yet. I have more to do in terms of safety awareness which is why I did not immediately quit.

[ExomatrixTV]

The PFAS Cover-Up ... 2 Dutch-English Special 2023 Reports (https://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?121443-The-PFAS-Cover-Up-...-2-Dutch-English-Special-2023-Reports)

[shaberon]

Seems unfortunate that before we get nano-particled, we have already cooked our way to the point where the average person is 16% teflon.


So far, I have not seen a commercial kitchen use that weird stuff. Remember, your house is an experimental site to mix polyester carpet fibers, rare earths, unbreathable gases, bursts of electro-magnetism, and other questionable habits.

Commercial is better because we are pretty much plain steel and bleach. That's what I call "a vaccine".

I did not get to speak about all of my safety tips, just a few, and dropped that job. I have done almost nothing for a week, because one of the main problems with cramming me into a corner, was that it absolutely demolished my legs and back, in a way that I have not normally felt that horrible, ever. After a week or so, the knots loosened out, so I suppose I am ready to look for something else.

The economic prospects around here are next to nothing.

With the military as next-door-neighbor, we found their dietary habits include eating the next neighbor's dog.

Sheesh. I know there are at least two acorns in that vast tract of land. No shortage of deer either. Where do they go when they are not walking around? Maybe they really do sleep at the North Pole.

[shaberon]

I found out something obnoxious the hard way.

So the unemployment claim I made was a little rare and unusual, but aside from that, let's say you have a valid claim for whatever reason.

I can earn the reward, but I can't actually apply for the dang stuff.

DES has tacked on a federal identity verification, which only works with a smartphone.

I tried going into the local office to verify myself, and they won't do anything. I cannot personally stand there with an ID and verify that it is me. You have ceased to exist, except electronically.

I fiddled with that procedure and got halfway into it, selecting "I don't have a smartphone", and after I uploaded pictures of my ID, it then tells you that you have to have a 15-minute video chat.

???

This is non-productive. It means we have to have a data center with employees, which costs millions, whereas losses due to identity almost certainly do not approach that. The vast majority of fraud consists of information that is inside the claim, not the person claiming it--things that take in-depth investigation.

The only way I can do it, would be again to borrow someone's phone, which may not even work because we are so far out that the phones usually don't get their carrier service. So I don't know, and the verification system is nowhere near explanatory enough to let you know what to expect. All you can do is click on the next step and see what happens.

Secondarily, unlike some countries, DES does absolutely nothing to help you with job placement. The closest is that, say, for example, you had an HVAC license that went obsolete in 1952, they would help you in to remedial lessons to make you employable at this time.

I have no idea why it might take more than about a minute for someone--or some facial recognition software--to decide if you look like the person on your ID, or, why a corresponding photo of yourself is inadequate.

Whoever came up with this, I would rather smash their hands with a hammer, so there is no danger of them ever working again.


It may be more of the "feel safe" stuff like I just went through on all the discussions with the employer (useless). You know what, you should actually feel that life is really dangerous. Making it through a typical work day in one piece is itself an accomplishment. Most of the danger is in driving there, but everything is dangerous. That is what you should feel, so that your actual responses are tangible ways to prevent injury, not psychological manipulation of your feelings while pretending that ordinary risks are not present. Sounds "politically correct".

Incidentally, I had to invoke the Labor Dept. again and help them figure out that the original complaint I filed--in May--has also been buried without being addressed, because I guess it got swamped in talk and other details.

You cannot work at a fast pace in some kind of confined space with a bunch of people constantly interfering, this should be obvious. Especially when these people have no clue about how to work, which makes them dangerous, which turned into the straw that broke the camel's back so I quit.

Now I get to jump through hoops because of the "potential" of identity theft, because on the private side I don't want a smart phone. Sheesh. What a wad. Oppressive and next to useless, for the pittance they might decide to offer you. No wonder that during my life I have been introduced to the new terms "tent city" and "homeless family", and even though I'm not the one doing anything wrong, I have come close to that point more than once now.

[shaberon]

I moved back to retail.


This of course was after waiting for all signs of Covid madness to vanish. So, on a personal level, I guess I am one of the fortunate few to be able to say that it never affected me, is like a rumor.

I prowled around and picked a place because I could sense that the patronage was more reasonable and level-headed than I usually see. This turned out to be a good guess. And so after all this masking, our stupid wars, and the regular drudgery of every day life, this part is like a sigh of relief:


Thank you general public!


This is among the first times I have ever experienced that no human egos are raising themselves above me. Everyone has been super easy to deal with, and this makes a big difference, especially to someone who does not know what it is like to function without having to press through multiple conflicts. This part is good and reassures me that, even in America, there are those with whom it is alright to share a planet.

On the other side I found a few weird things.

I have never seen "locked access to a dumpster". What this means is that there is one time a day that you can take out the trash, a bit like guiding a herd of cattle. It happens to be in the middle of the afternoon. What this means is that we collect garbage overnight in open cans that just sit there. I cannot imagine what would consist of a better bacteria breeding pit. I have never seen anything where throwing out the trash at night was not standard. This is not impressive.

Parts of the health code are arbitrary, you know, humanity made it millions of years without sanitizer being applied to surfaces. And this has practically nothing to do with the outbreaks of any disease. Meat and cheese sitting around in warm air do. That is what we have, minus the few minutes that the garbage cans are emptied. So this seems a bit backwards. Actually, the routines are all backwards, compared to what I have already experienced, in places that are more than twice as busy.

The worst one is out of our hands, I was told that the laundry was taken once every two weeks.

I found that out immediately when standing there saying what is this rotten stench.

Garbage may not actually decompose in a few hours, but, folks, soiled rags are the same thing, and again I have never seen anything where you don't at least pull the bag at the end of the night and put it somewhere else. Not let it stand around in your food prep area. No one picks up laundry every day, but you use a hamper in some access point that is not right where you are working.

That stuff is sketchy, but, if, physically, there is nothing I can do about it, then I, personally, cannot make any difference. It's not like six or eight minor health code violations that I can simply see because I know how it works. Those are like special collections by design. Kind of surprising. But this is an add-on department, an imitation started maybe about ten years ago as a venture towards "competition", not something established by experience of "this is what we do". And so it is a little awkward, not quite in the big leagues yet, and just does its own thing. What is that primarily?

Purdue. Purdue. Purdue.

The kind of stuff I do is incidental or off to the side, and there are so many ways to Purdue that I have not been able to wrap my brain around it yet. But that is where we still are as a society.

Most of all that is strictly average, but, psychologically, I am not at all used to being treated halfway decently, many thanks to the neighborhood for acting like normal people!

[shaberon]

Getting back to this. What occurred today is I removed multiple unopened cases of guacamole. Product that never saw a shelf. I was told it was around six hundred units.

The thing I have kept in mind was a couple months ago. I was told to make two orders. I made one and then was sent on break.

I was told to make two packs of something, and then on each one I was told to overproduce by a dozen units. So I've thrown in twenty-four more pieces than the order calls for and then it turns out it was not due for four days. So that was almost completely useless.

Then someone else made the next order which was at least eight whole birds and the customer refused it.

The amount of poorly-planned waste in the industry is indeed staggering.

Poor quality of communication often has something to do with it, and some of the physical errors are a little embarrassing. The business model itself is make-believe. It's like wandering a fantasy castle made of edible goods, most of which are not being eaten. A bit like Willy Wonka except far less entertaining.

[shaberon]

Strange day (https://www.wral.com/story/recall-of-boars-head-deli-meats-announced-during-investigation-of-listeria-outbreak/21542679/). This is not what I was told:



Boar’s Head Provisions Co. recalled liverwurst because it may be tainted with the listeria bacteria, the U.S. Agriculture Department said. The agency said a sample of Boar’s Head liverwurst from a Maryland store tested positive for listeria.

Boar’s Head Provisions is also recalling deli-sliced meats made the same day on the same line as the contaminated liverwurst at a Virginia plant, the USDA said. The sample was from an unopened package, collected by health officials as part of an investigation into the listeria outbreak.

The recall is affecting North Carolina-based grocery chain Harris Teeter. The chain has closed their in-store Fresh Foods Markets temporarily and voluntarily out of an abundance of caution for the recall.

The Boar's Head recall of over 200,000 pounds shipped nationwide applies to meats sliced at a deli counter, not prepackaged meats. It includes a number of multi-pound packages stamped with an Aug. 10 sell-by date, including bologna, garlic bologna, beef bologna, beef salami, Italian Cappy-style ham and Extra Hot Italian Cappy-style ham. Also included is Steakhouse Roasted Bacon Heat and Eat, with a sell-by date of Aug. 15.


Vegetables, herbs sold at Walmart, Aldi, Kroger recalled due to Listeria concerns...

I was actually told about Plague (https://www.contagionlive.com/view/a-case-of-the-plague-confirmed-in-the-us), which, as far as I can tell, is one case in Colorado.

Listeria may set in within a few days, and then may take one or more weeks to boost its symptoms, which will likely begin as a nauseous reaction but then it can lead to fever, and hospitalization may be required. Two people have died. The outbreak has been observed in New Jersey and Illinois. How that leads to looking inside unopened packages in Maryland is beyond me. Typical fatality rate is about 1/8, 260 out of a baseline 1,600 cases per year.

What I actually did in response to this made no sense at the time. My immediate belief was that there must be a recall--obviously so.

What you should know is that bacteria that live in sealed plastic packages are usually far more dangerous than stuff rolling loose in the environment. They're mostly anaerobes. That's what nitrates are for, so, e. g. pastrami is unlikely to be affected this way. People used to think these nitrate salts are bad for you, and what happens is they are a natural fact in, for example, celery juice. This is 10x concentrated compared to salt form, so, this was used in order to slap "nitrate free" on the label.

Now it says something like "except for that naturally occurring in celery juice".

If we weren't using this, Listeria would be everywhere, along with worse things I don't want to think of the names of.

Now the pre-packaged stuff costs around 50% more than fresh, which means hardly anyone ever buys it, and those products have been sitting on the shelf for months. So it is mostly "pre-outbreak". Otherwise the packaging itself would be essentially meaningless to anaerobes.

These germs have been riding around the country for at least two weeks. Are we saying that 200,000 pounds made in the same day is definitely the container? I doubt it turns out to be that simple.

[shaberon]

Round two was even more mind numbing.

They issued another recall and didn't tell me what.

Let's see...people died in two different states, so, they opened a package in a third state, "blamed someone" i. e. presumably a worker for skipping a safety step, and recalled everything from that time and place. That obviously must not have been the full explanation.

Apparently what happens, in addition to pulling whatever the product was off the shelf, they offer a refund on "similar" products even if those have not been found to test positive or were not from the same specific source. And so last night, someone dumped a pile of these returns into our service area.

Folks, you can't do that. I absolutely *can't* have that stuff under normal circumstances, let alone during an outbreak. Now there is no way I can say I didn't collect a pile of streptococcus, botulism, Hep C, and things I don't want to name because I have already waived my rights for survival. You can't send anything from the outside back into where food is handled.

The keyholder manager person had no idea that the packaged germs are *far* worse than typical food poisoning or other spoilage effects, or most open disease transmission. That's a simple fact, if it is already in the food, it is far worse than something "mishandled" or left open or whatever. You can eat most blue and white molds and be fine.

So we sling a bunch of food that is theoretically infected with something fatal, and, you think they incinerate that or something? Nope. Garbage. By "they", I mean me personally. That means it is 90+ degrees already, and while I am baking in the sun in the parking lot, I am flipping I don't know how many hundred pounds of stuff into the dumpster. One of the trash bags just rips. It's too heavy to even pick up the stuff. And then we pay the trash man extra for this.

So I gush out all this sweat, and, I can sense myself dehydrate in a matter of minutes, because I'm not usually prepared for strenuous activity to that extent. I manage to grab a bottle of water as I'm going back in, and then, I get so busy that I couldn't open it for an hour.

Felt a little dry.

It is a little weird that "someone" decides they should return unrelated items, and yet, standing around in what you think might become a heated debate or something, not a single word is said. Nobody, nothing like "Hey, have you heard...", or, "Why are you open?", it just keeps rolling along as usual.

Abnormally so. I'm used to it. You show up and grind frantically until it's over. I didn't know there was any question about it.

Some people have techniques to dodge it.

Having been at the same place about a year, in the early part, one morning I start training this guy. Then our hours were slashed. I kind of objected, saying, am I training my replacement? That doesn't make sense, why would you cut my hours to train someone new?

It worked itself out for a while, and, this is the person who's unusually slow, and I would say a bit distracted and prone to do things other than work, such as talk. It doesn't matter how busy I am, I can see out of the corner of my eye if someone is standing around talking, or trying to occupy themselves with some trivial or irrelevant task. I watched this go on long enough that already, months ago, I blew my stack at the same previously-mentioned keyholding manager to terminate this person. They, of course, "will talk" about it.

So, a few months down the road, it turns out this hours-cutting thing is a predictable way for this company to end the fiscal year, like two months of it. All my hard work is fit to cast me into the sub-poverty level, then I'm told that re-instatement "will be performance-based", and then I'm told the slow person got a 43 on a secret shopper.

So, now, of course I would like to replace the person with myself, as I said. Instead, we hired an additional person.

Sounds like it's time to look around. That is reliably unreliable.

Those people would not make it through a shift at a normal establishment.

It's the wilderness. It's like being removed from civilization. I 100% know everything around me because I already know, and, it is not that difficult. And by 100%, it means I see something wrong with basically everything, constantly. Amazing. It's like watching people drive down the wrong side of the road. But then you can't communicate, you can't really say anything...you can but it doesn't go anywhere, because it will actually be dismissed.

I mean, literally. The things I have been told recently just by trying to pry into those noggins in a gentle, almost childish way, have gotten me exactly what I don't want to hear every time.

I have anything from a union to the regulatory agencies to back me up; I understand labor law. I could have told them the difference when I was a teenager, but, I have never actually experienced it until getting stuck in this area. This is the third place in a row where something was obviously wrong from day one.

[shaberon]

I got to the bottom of this. Not me, and, not really, but, I am going to try to re-gather from going around in dazed circles, underwhelmed by the dysfunctional American workforce.


Now, again, in case most people are not familiar with "the system", what happens is that big companies hire a third-party auditor to issue recommendations about what they need to maintain a good health rating. Even Walmart does this. It's typical. Never heard of it being an issue. Ours is an issue.

I looked at the latest report.

It told us that "potentially critical" was bowls/spoons/etc. being left turned up; anything is supposed to be inverted. I thought everyone knows that. They get this bad mark, and, I turn to my right, and, within arm's reach are stacks of bowls face up, with some food particles in there. That's never supposed to happen. Is it a public health risk? Not at the "critical" level. But someone isn't getting the message.

The report said it was "minor" about garbage rolling all over the place.

Well, a real "critical" issue is anything like piles of garbage, rotten food, insect infestation, attraction of wild animals, things that anyone can look and see, well, that is an ideal bacterial breeding ground.

These audits are a phenomenal source of stress, causing rapid mental deterioration into a cacophony. Those people cannot understand the first thing I said. I don't care about "auditors" (inspectors, owners, or anyone else like that) because I know what I am doing and I am confident it will be fine, and, if need be, something can be adjusted. If something is not right, the truth is, those people are going to be absolutely useless to fix it. They can't do anything. In order for them to exist, we have to find a way for them to talk, and file reports. Every actual worker requires about six of these non-productive backup assistants.

I don't currently know anyone who's qualified as a "worker", I know people who are employed.

From what I have heard, it is the same with respect to this summer's outbreak.

The production facility was running with sixty-six uncorrected violations.

It was contaminated with Listeria.

There's the value of audits, and so forth, it doesn't really matter since foodborne illness is going to come from the manufacturer in a sealed package, which can kill you. Nothing will be done about this, unless someone gets caught.

I have never heard of a food poisoning, etc., coming from anywhere I have been.

I then saw a piece of mail explaining how the company was investing $684,000 into re-building its image by sampling. I already know the people I work with can't accomplish that. The samples were made, and, in a couple of days, trashed.

There is an exorbitant amount of waste built into the food industry, because we are so avid about the expiration dating system that people have difficulty operating. For example, in the wake of this outbreak, I found someone started marking fresh products with price tags, which means it says all of those products are already expired, because that kind of price tag is valid for that moment only.

I'll say this again. I can sell you something that says it expired June 25, 2021, that is not an issue. The date is only indicating "peak freshness". It means something like the dye that is in the salmon is going to slip and fade slightly. It is not compelling and cannot possibly have anything to do with safety.

A merchant is liable for actual issues. The reason is irrelevant. If it came in a bag from a manufacturer, the blame can be passed. Otherwise you are stuck with full responsibility for anything that happens. If I come in to work on Listeria, I can be prosecuted just for that. No type of dates are going to waive any liability if the public is harmed.

[AutumnW]

This is a piece of equipment:


https://www.webstaurantstore.com/images/products/large/66159/1062971.jpg





If I have the brand right, this has nothing less than rosewood handles. Rosewood! Sounds important, doesn't it? I think it may be. You save so much by switching to those comfortable plastic handles. But we have this large cheese knife, I think, for cutting dough. It may also be used for cheese, but I cannot confirm this.

Today I just want to make a note that I received this, in hand, at the bottom of the sink at the beginning of a shift. In other words, somebody stuffed it in there and walked away. But not before adding a couple of half sheet pans. Now if you scroll back up to that picture of the sink, it should be obvious that the compartment is a bit narrow. Here is what happens when you drop half sheet pans in it: they get stuck.

Combine these items and you get a giant razor that is locked into place.

Never mind that the whole thing should have been empty if no one was working there. To change shifts, you drain and clean, and then no one can exactly "put a knife in the sink".

I can't count how many times that has been screamed at the back of my head when I was never about to do it. At this employer, this is no longer a first, it makes the second knife I have grabbed by the blade which was not just "in there", but immobilized by everything on top of it. Touchy reflexes kept me from getting hurt on those.

So far these are also "no longer firsts":


Multiple fires. Don't think I've ever had this come up.

Multiple entire glass racks dropped. Never heard of this.



And I "found" something outside, in the dark. It is a pallet which has been placed adjacent to the laundry hamper. The only laundry I handle is about sixty pounds of soiled rags. That is because instead of anyone taking some out during the day, they just pile up until it becomes apparent that I will be working with people who cannot put rags in a bag. With grime like that, it should be obvious that it needs to be trotted away relatively soon, not walked on for hours. If I wanted to guess at the least sanitary item possible, it would be a damp rag with mixed proteins such as meat and cheese smeared on it. Bear in mind that almost all we have to sell is meat and cheese. This is probably the lowest rated type of cleaning on the scale of things.

The other kind of mixing you want to avoid is that such as the drain fly moving from mold to uncleaned oily crumbs to water with layers of vegetables and fat, and so on. Same thing that makes roaches a problem. The roach itself is not infectious, but insect bodies repeatedly contact any bacterial and fungal sources that are around, and introduce them where they are not.

I found the pallet while disposing of the great bundle of rags by tripping on it, and again touchy reflexes got me through without incident.

On the other hand I am paid better than some trained hospital techs and I don't want to work in a hospital.

I don't even go anywhere around here, so it is hard to imagine working at all.

I wonder if I can find anyone who will agree with me. Maybe that is the thing to do. The applicant interviews the place, to see if you would work there. I suppose I've never "changed" jobs by choice. Well, that's not true. Once. I think. That seems right. But if I do anything, it will be more commute. The new person has an hour and a half commute and was not there. That is not unheard of around here, in terms of your personal car and the highway, an hour is not uncommon, and in some cases more. Is that really conducive to the right way to live?


I am not sure if you call it the "end of civilization" when neither where you live or work holds up to some basic discussions at approximately a five-year-old level. Anything else is at my own risk.


That is what "they" do with rosewood-handled knives on a commercial basis, is use them for other than the intended purpose, and handle them negligently.

I was wondering who cut the cheese.

[shaberon]

I was wondering who cut the cheese.


Those bozos? I was trying to block it out of my memory. I gave it a chance with the expansion to see if it would bring in anything more along the lines of what I wanted to do, and it turned out not. I stacked up some plywood or something and that was it.

When you do it industrially, you do it by wire. Except when you need this:

https://triangle-tools.de/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/9018202_v03_web.jpg



It comes in sixty pound wheels. So that is really a lot of fun. Unfortunately today we need to introduce another kind of equipment:

https://cutleryandmore.com/cdn/shop/products/WusthofClassic12-inchHollowEdgeFlexibleSalmonSlicingKnife_3000x.jpg?v=1654271638




The reason being is this. There will be no more liverwurst. Not on an industrial scale. You better resort to hand-crafted batches or Schaller and Weber maybe. This reels the mind.

It represents mankind's highest achievement known as crony-ism.


So, we get this investigation into an outbreak. Listeria is in the statistics every year, but, this time it was tied to something. Specifically, liverwurst.

I'm not sure why you would blame or ban the product.

It turns out the facility in question had an FDA agent assigned to it permanently.

That means the person who had this role did what is famously known as Absolutely Nothing.

Remember, this guy has authority to summon a Marshall who will carry a fully-automatic machine gun. This is what they will do if, for example, you say that organic cherries are beneficial. Wrong! You must submit it as a New Drug before you can do that.

So, it was rather vague what the "uncorrected violations" were. It turns out that inside the place had obviously visible piles of mold, insects, and decomp.

Remember, this represents a successful business + governmental oversight.

So, of course, it means whoever was inside the facility, was equally lax.

I gave it the benefit of the doubt that it might have been random low-level environmental Listeria that was not really anyone's fault, but the answer I am given says otherwise. The people who are in charge are the ones I describe as can't do anything. I believe this may be an example. Out here in the wilderness I have found my own examples, which is all usually quite vapid. Typically it translates as me being the person to do something about it. With the outbreak, this has been well-performed by The Establishment. But there were only a few fatalities and it's done.

My feedback would be exactly this, that you probably should not have pushed liverwurst through the industrial system.

The reason is because in the wilderness, no one will pause to clean it.

In other words, if I were to predict a vector for anything septic to travel, that would be at the top of the line. It will leave a paste that will pick up dandruff from 1974 and then it will turn into a shell, a tacky coating, and you can never get rid of it, and then you will get fruit flies. If anything it just needs to be knife cut and rinsed away promptly. It's simple. Spreading it all over a bunch of equipment just sounds like a bad idea.

I don't drink, so I'm just going to have an imaginary toast to something that is not there.

[shaberon]

I knew it. The day after I posted that about liverwurst, the associates made a similar mess with corned beef.

That is, they spread it on some equipment, left the beef out, and left.

I just cleaned it up and ignored it.

The next day, they did the same thing. But I was busy. Couldn't clean up after them, the beef sat out all night, so I had to throw it away.

That's the "small" version of what our supplier has done. The actual supply is half missing, maybe more. The company has to pay for its killings, which to me sound like they constitute manslaughter, or at the least, criminal negligence. Then the hospital bills for the survivors. Then our company is apparently suing for lost revenue over the inventory we had to dispose of. I'm not sure how that helps restore the market.

I'm not sure how to restore the market. My sense is more along the lines that a company like that should be shut down.

I won't ever be able to make a recommendation about it. All I would be able to do is direct your dissatisfaction to those who won't clean. I tried to take this as a random act of nature, but it's not, it's complete malfeasance on the part of those you look up to. I spend most of my time disposing of things that are actually good, and they won't spend any time handling something that is obviously foul.

On our part, I have completed a dismal round of questioning that relieves some of my assumptions. So far, everyone has voluntarily told me they hate people.

Do I hear "give me some money please" on the part of those who are committing this lunacy? Of course! Everyone wants money, they don't want to do the right thing, or treat others with graciousness.

This is a "state-ist collective", not a "nation".

I would still be surprised if I find anyone who is able to communicate with me. Everything seems hopelessly broken on about a four-year-old level. How you stand around ignoring a food supplier transmitting fatal diseases by gross negligence, or, an epochial hurricane, is jaw dropping. It's like having a blancmange for a tennis partner. I mean, literally, the thing about the floor is exactly what I said when I started, and despite a repair being made and people being told about it from someone else, and they still won't do it right. Maybe I should rewind the story of what I just went through about the same thing at the last place I worked, up until the point where I ran out of legal standing because the state lost my initial filing.

If it wasn't for this, Americans would have to go back to the farms.

[shaberon]

This was a doozy.

Mind you, this is another case of "panicky southerners", at a time when our mountaineers are still dealing with real hardship.

I go out and it's snowing, tiny little particles that look like fake snow out of a can, except they are two feet apart.

When I reached the end of the driveway, it was raining.

So I go into work and I see one of the stations is closed, dark, nobody there.

I just start as usual, and a little bit later on, I'm told, by some special arrangement, we're closing early. Apparently it's a sign of danger. So, we tear everything down, and I'm left with thirty-nine over-produced birds. There's no way to re-purpose that much chicken. I suppose one moment, it was anticipated a crowd was coming, and then the ball was dropped. We put up a sign due to "inclimate" weather.

So, I leave the egregious amount of waste behind, go home early, and find out there was a wreck. It was indeed one of the guests from the store -- one that lives here. He managed to wipe out about a quarter mile from the house, in the area I just passed through without concern. The vehicle was a loss, that's the *fifth* one here in a relatively brief span of time. The other four we keep as a collection, at least that one got hauled off.

Additionally, this is while we discovered some two months ago that out salad bar is freezing items. It's just for looks. The stuff is ice. We put food in it, waste it, rinse and repeat. Of course, I could easily find the instructions for the machine because I understand how stuff works, but no one was interested. So I let it go.

Then today I get a few more "tips" tossed my way that were ultra annoying, because it is the same things everyone else apparently fails at forever. I know how to do this work, and they won't listen to me, and yet I find myself on the receiving end of these remarks. Why don't you talk to a brick wall. It's like this everywhere. Ignorant and weak. Not my fault. Part of this is the same "floor cleaning disability" that has dampened, so far, all three of my jobs in this area.

So we lose a few people, due to reasons I'd rather not explain, so I'm told I can work more hours. Great. You're trying to kill me at the same time as running this state of failure. I just deal with it because I need more hours. And so I go and check, and, it's less.

You do absolutely nothing right, complain about it to everyone, and just try to kill off the person who knows better.

My parents and teachers never explained this to me. So, I have my own things to say about the cycle of poverty. Americans will throw you under the bus, and expect to be cheered for it.

This place is broken from the floor up.

[palehorse]

Wife bought a Chinese PTFE cookware (Chinese Teflon copy to be exact), first cook a bubble came up and a strong smell of chemicals, I warned her to not buy that, I use iron pans for everything, got a complete set, they are heavy duty cooking and food taste better too. So now we see the steel in the pan without the coating, I removed the coat like I was removing a sticker from the pan, the usual very poorly made Chinese crap, the store selling it got hundreds hanging in there, I wonder if other consumers got pissed off or they ate the PTFE stuff with the food! Here I go with the Teflon conspiracy lol

Above I saw that long knife for cutting cheese, damn who uses that thing when you have wires to do it neatly and only requires 1 person not 2 haha seems like Portuguese at work!


[edit]
found 1 video using a wire device to cut hard cheese. I saw people cutting without the device, you actually only need a strong wire (steel is good) and a piece of wood to give some leverage, otherwise you can cut yourself handling the wire.

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