Foodservice experiences

[shaberon]

I have to get this one down because tomorrow may be the debut.

I don't know if anyone tracks these day-to-day operations, but, about three weeks ago, there was a lettuce recall after a parasite outbreak. It primarily affected Taco Bell, and appeared to affect lettuce from central Mexico. Rather strangely, no parasites were found at the source.

So for like five minutes there's a public fear; no one will buy lettuce. We operate a salad bar and were told the sales plummeted. So we were told to get rid of half of the salad bar.

I went and checked, and the fruit, grains, and vegetables were gone. The lettuce was still sitting there.

Then I was told we're going to re-purpose half of the thing.

That took about a week, and then I'm going in there watching this half salad bar with all the lettuce being devoured out of it.

Hrm. Ok. Then I found out the new purpose: chips.

I couldn't figure that one out.

You think about it for a minute, and let me know if there is any obvious way that half a salad bar is where you will be looking for chips any time in the days to come.

These are the same ones we already have. It will be an additional display of refrigerated potato chips.

Meanwhile, for those who lost the atmosphere, let me remind you that when air hits a cold empty pan, that pan fills with condensation.

I use the generic term "sweat" regardless whether it was a cold or hot source, and, I checked, and yes these pans sweat and I hope someone is thinking of another way to do this. Otherwise, anyone can ponder for a moment, if you would like your next bag of potato chips to come from cold water.

It is possible the explanation being given is not the real one, if there is one.

My explanation is that salad bar is way too big for anything you can handle, so, half of it should just be gone.

If I am wrong, then the other person I am working with is off the hook. It's a lot of trouble, and, usually, they can't exactly clean it.

Anyway, I *think* it might be tomorrow I finally get to see the "reaction" to the lettuce parasites.

[shaberon]

Silly me -- it's pretzel sticks and ciccarones.

That should have been obvious. I mean, I didn't even know we carried the stuff.

Those maniacs are obsessed with shifting displays. That way, nobody knows what we have or where it is. But it's computerized. So you can rest at ease knowing, no matter how inconvenient it may be, all of the information has been digitally processed. Whew. Didn't want to miss that part.

They even did it to me today. The same scrubbers we've been using for years are now hidden with brooms and mops. Not with sponges or anything else you might use on the sink, but things more normally associated with floors. I guess I could wash dishes with a mop. Never tried. But why not? It's close to a scrubber, so, it must do close to the same thing.

To available memory, so far, this is coming out as the most ridiculous display I have ever seen, not just at work, not just with food, but anywhere.

[shaberon]

Girding myself for the fracas I am about to face.

I might not post this stuff, if the situation was clearly "beginner level" as in "we don't know what we're doing, help." I can't take it because it's really a repetitive cycle of incompetence. I finally managed to squeeze that word out of a co-worker. He can't possibly understand things the way that I do, but, was forced to find out, something is bad by design.

Last Sunday someone wanted to give me an order -- I asked what are you trying to get, they said for Saturday or today, and I checked and the board was wide open. So we set it up.

At the end of the night, I was looking at another receipt lying by itself on the table. You can't tell if it was headed for the trash can, or, fell out of the current paperwork. It's not held on by much, and, the trash can is right underneath it. Looks unstable.

Well, rather than throwing it away, I decided to rifle the stack of the "future" to see if it went to something.

Instead, what I got was four articles that matched nothing or did not go together. Then, I found something already paid, which was for Saturday at the same time, now. Oops.

So I went in the next day with a mind to adjust this, and I could not talk to anybody after it was said I was late. They were looking at next week's schedule. But I was too busy to do anything extra.

The next day I went in a little early, because of the confusion, and to make an adjustment. That did nothing and my hands were full.

On the next day, another order came through. And, it was taken for Saturday, at the same time, basically right now. By then I was able to explain it, and that girl at least sent a text message to the supervisor about the triply-conflicted time.

At that point, I consider it out of my hands. They can either make phone calls to change the pickups, or, the stuff will have to be made early and it will have to just sit for a while.

I'm going to say, that's if they can get that much stuff to start with. These orders are so big, it's really questionable if it can even happen. But, I can't get a straight answer, because there is no one to talk to.

I suppose everything is fine and they will just toss me a destroyed kitchen as usual to display the rank incompetence. There is, of course, a chance that some rather interesting fireworks will go flying, and I will discover something even more ridiculous.

Not what I want to be doing. But I am surrounded by this fast food mentality everywhere, there is nothing else, for miles, which is like a dead civilization. That's all I'm getting from this. It's brain is about six years old and it is 1950. Still walking and breathing, which is a bit surprising, but adding new buildings for greater numbers of this same thing are not what I call "progress."

[shaberon]

Just trying to track notches on a hamster wheel.

My report was taken by the health department by June 26.

I don't expect lightning speed; an inspector showed up a little over a month later, earlier part of August.

Absolutely nothing was done about what I said.

On the other hand, a minor point caused the "boss" to get mad, who dumped it on the "supervisor" who got mad, who dumped it on someone else, and nothing happened except you have a room full of rugrats going around not knowing what they are doing, getting mad about it.


...


As usual, you cry "oh, we can take care of it" and they offer you a "re-inspection" which means they will be back in a week or so.

If they don't address the issues, then I will have to string up the health department for incompetence.

I mean, the fury is over a few water droplets, and what I am talking about is decaying meat mixed with other stuff. Consider the priorities and expertise at play here. Unsanitary by design.

You can't operate a rug, a carboard box, a garbage can, let alone any of the equipment for preparation and handling. But you think you have something important to say??

I will just go around being unimportant, although I think I may be up to about three cohorts who may not understand the details of what I am saying, but, are basically on that side or get the gist of it.

By the time I infect the work force and spread it around to the public, you're surrounded. We'll get the customers to make our complaints for us, since we effectively don't exist, except as objects.

[petra]

I can picture that one extremely well. The room full of rugrats part is my favorite, and I also really like “you can’t operate a rug..”.

“I will just go around being unimportant” was like getting a punch in the guts but it was a funny punch.

[shaberon]

Being unimportant, I made two alliances rather quickly in the rare case anyone will listen to me.

Usually that's because something goes wrong, or something horrible happens, leaving me with a consumptive need for other peoples' misfortune.

The first one was an irritating complaint directed at someone who deserved nothing. I said something to him and it took like five seconds to look it up on his phone and "yes, that's right", so now I have an irritated person loading up on my programming defensively. That's what I call "help".

Today I noticed an ongoing incident called from when the trash compactor was full. Yesterday. As far as I know, the pressure gauge has not worked in over a year. So I don't know who's watching it. But it's not infinite. I remember that part.

And so not all the garbage got to go in it yesterday, and the guy was told "figure it out".

He tried to re-throw it in there today and something horrible happened.

I know I've answered a quiz at least six times about how this is a safety-first company, and, I'll just tell you, trying to throw well over a hundred pounds of wet garbage up into a thing while you are slipping on a wet, oily plastic crate that is not very big, beside a metal stake embedded in the pavement, is not defined as "safety".

I told him four times to file OSHA on it and he said he would.

That's how you "figure it out".

In the midst of all that, one of these routine people routinely complained to me, and said when he complains to people here, they stare off into space. So I stared into space. Part of that was about trying to call for twelve minutes. Whatever. Can't help you there. If no one answered for twelve minutes, what am I supposed to do about that? Turn on the faucet? If you need to, you can keep telling me stuff I don't care about for as long as you want to waste your energy, and, well enough, nothing personal was said to me. So, I don't have a chastisement to hand out. It's one of those things where, yes, everything you're saying is obviously true. Nothing changes and no one cares, but it's true.

I then pointed out the two people working across from us were living advertisements of incompetence. Finally that was understood. So far apparently everyone here thinks it is normal. I don't understand ignorance.

[shaberon]

I found this to be mindblowing.

People don't know how to use a door.

I think I mentioned it before. We threw away the $11,000 door sign because I guess we decided to pay it. That's the estimate of yearly electricity consumption if the door is left open an extra hour per day.

I mean, at peak efficiency, the refrigeration unit doesn't run that much, but, if it is anywhere near an hour, then, you are looking at $1k monthly for a single refrigeration unit. Since there are so many, that means one store uses about $1k per day every day.

Anyway, no, they don't close it, this makes three years that I personally close it only every single time I go by.

A few days ago, they left it open at night.

I go in the next day and find it set off an alarm and some guy had to come out at 2.30 in the morning to close the door.

And, I suppose a few things were said about it, because the day after that it was open again.

I go in today and one of the store managers is filling plastic tea bottles, and as I'm going opast I say "oh, here we go again" and he looked at the open door and just shrugged.

I beat the truth out of one of my cohorts who told me, "No, no one's ever said anything to me about the door."\

No, of course not. We tell you nothing to begin with, flail around tripping over our own two feet, and, I can't fix it, not because I personally can't, but because it's not your policy.

There isn't one.

That would be the underlying definition of not being part of civilization.

It's retarded, in the literal meaning of developmentally disabled.

I've figured it out. It's the government's job to crush small businesses, and turn a blind eye to a large corporation to do (or not) whatever it wants. Therefor, the whole region is frozen at about the level of maybe an eight-year-old around 1954. Technology may have changed, but the human is utterly stagnant.