Looking back...

Another week has passed, and things are still going well in AM Grill. Yesterday we did have a bit of a problem, but we pulled through it. We had two things happen yesterday on the line – Mr “I am better than all of you put together” was screwing up as usual, only this time his mistakes affected other people. He wasn’t telling the fry station what he needed. As a result, food got held up because suddenly the girl on the fry station was bombarded with orders all at once. As luck would have it, one of the fry machines picks that moment to stop working. So she’s left with a ton of orders and only one of two working fry vats. When the Chef jumped all over her about it, she replied back “Do you want them now, or do you want them done?” WRONG ANSWER! Chef got pissed, made a comment about “yeah, that’s really what you’re going to do in a restaurant!” Then suddenly we realized that the Chef was gone. And then the other Chefs for the surrounding classes were gone. Turns out our Chef walked away, he was so upset over this (as well as other things that have nothing to do with us.) Some of the other instructors went with him to calm him down, and apparently they decided to let us die in the weeds. (“in the weeds” being a term for when you get so backed up with orders that you can’t see the end of it, and everything is going wrong around you.) Well, despite the fact that our Chef left us alone, we still pulled it off. We didn’t die. We kept the orders going, and at the end of the day, we cleaned up and went out to class to wrap up. That’s when the Chef came out, said that he may not be our chef, and walked away. We were left thinking that he was leaving.

Today we went into class, not knowing what to expect. Chef came in, was in a good mood, and explained that what he meant was he might be the right kind of Chef for all of us. He was staring right at Mr Perfect when he said this… we talked about today’s station change, and that a party was coming in. That’s the last thing I remember.

From what I was told, I walked out of the room with my class and collapsed on a table. I got hit with a migraine headache so bad I was crying. One of my classmates had to take me home so I could grab my shots. She brought me back, and about the time I got back to class, the medication started to kick in. Slooooooow moooottiioooonnnnn…. Chef asked if I would be okay, I told him I needed a few minutes. He told me to come back in after breakfast and see how I felt. So I sat out in the serving area (with sunglasses on… people probably thought I was either sleeping or baked.) When I went in after breakfast, Chef pulled me into his office and asked me how I was doing. I told him I wanted to at least try. He was already planning on working the line with us (because of Mr “I can do anything, as long as you don’t want it done right”) and said if he had to jump in, he would do so. Between doubling up on the medication and wearing sunglasses until I could tolerate light again, somehow I pulled it off. Chef did have to jump in once because my brain couldn’t process it all fast enough, but overall he said I did fine. Mr “You’re all dragging me down” kept getting in my way, trying to show me up by running my station as well as his (and doing both wrong) until finally he almost burnt me with a pan and Chef told him to back off. (He later covered the Chef with hot marinara sauce because he was moving too fast. We had a pool going to see who would get burnt by a saute pan first, but the Chef wasn’t one of the ones in the pool. Not sure who wins in that event.)

I’m mostly coherent again. I won’t be completely myself until I get to sleep this off. Only reason I am even at work right now is because it’s quiet here. (And getting paid is good.) Looks like my job is in no immediate danger either – the town is building a Transportation Center, so we’re not going anywhere until that’s completed. No idea when that’ll happen though – they need to negotiate the purchase of the property they were leasing.