Thursday, June 01, 2006

Stories from the List: Number 1

1. Wash dishes at a restaurant or old folks home

My very first job was a dietary aide in a nursing home. This involved delivering the carts of food to the nurses at mealtimes and then washing all of the trays and dishes afterwards.

This job sucked for a variety of reasons. The really cranky cooks. Smelling like disgusting food. The crazy patients who would chase you and talk to you unintelligbly. I was eventually fired after a year and a half. The reason? I wore jeans one Sunday, ironically the cook who tattled on me was also wearing jeans that same day, and a nurse asked me for a piece of bread to give to a resident and I didn't give it to her on a plate.

The summer after I graduated high school I worked at Strafford Farms. The free lunch was cool and all the soda you could drink was a nice bonus too. This job wasn't too bad, except that it didn't pay well and again, the cooks were very cranky.

I remember one day after I had been there about a week one of the cooks came over to the dishwashing area carrying two pans. He was swearing and yelling at me and waving the pans. Apparently, I had ruined the teflon coating by scrubbing the pans with a brillo pad. All I said to him was, "Dude. It wasn't in the training program."

1 comment:

Pete said...

moral of the story:
always give people food on a plate.

that's not the real moral, but i don't know any good ones.

my dad doesn't let my mom wash any of his non-stick pans, because he's paranoid she'll ruin the coating.