Fair Days

The Washington Town and Country Fair is over!

Growing up, my parents used to take us to the fair every year. We loved it. As I got older I stopped going because it got to be too expensive, you know, once my parents weren't paying for it anymore.

Now that I work for the paper, I have to cover the Fair. Everybody has to cover the fair. This year was my second year. As much as I love the fair, it's exhausting.

This year I covered the turtle race, superfarmer contest youth and adult, swine breeding competition, dodgeball tournment, fitness competition, horticulture judging youth and adult, a tea party with the queens and livestock judging youth and adult. It might not sound like a lot, but this is hours of work and hundreds of pictures.

We try to make things run more smoothly. Like for dodgeball, I took all of the team photos before the competition began. That way I didn't have to stay for the whole thing and I could find out winners later. This system works quite nicely.

This fair is a Wednesday through Sunday event. I didn't have anything on the weekend to cover. By Friday though my feet ached, my neck hurt from my camera strap and my shoulders ached from my camera bag.

A glutton for pain, I decided to take Vincent to the fair Saturday. It is free for him to get in and we missed the Franklin County Fair because we were camping. On top of that, I invited my best friend, who was also working at the fair, to attend the Lifehouse concert that evening. Saturday morning I was wondering what the hell I was thinking. But, my little guy was excited which made it worth it. Oh, and I went to a benefit breakfast and got my back adjusted so I was feeling pretty good.

We brought Memaw and had a blast.

Nice face, Karen...

I took off his flip flops because other kids were kicking them off during the ride and I didn't want him to get any ideas...

I didn't take a ton of pictures because it started to rain and I didn't want to mess up my camera. More later!

Work Tonight

I didn't have any significant problems at work tonight. I didn't even have any re-cook orders. My customers were nice. Woah. Must be the glorious weather getting to them.

Towards the end of the night I actually had fun. There weren't any customers in the store, and I got to act goofy. I was talking to a co-worker about something and eating clam chowder (my favorite Friday night food from work). She said something I totally didn't expect from her, and for the first time ever I shot something out of my nose. Clam Chowder. Ewww! It was disgusting and then my nose bled a little bit afterward. I laughed so hard that I couldn't even tell people why I was laughing. My face was red and I couldn't breathe. The other girl was laughing at me, of course. And the fact that there was clam chowder on her shoes. No more customers came (which would have put them coming in just a few minutes before we close, which happens all the time), and I got out on time!

What will Sunday have in store for me?

post script: I have more stuff, but I'm going to bed for tonight.

Work last week

There was one story about last week Friday at work that made me very angry. We were very busy, and I got two tables orders transposed (46 and 47).

Where I work, the servers don't actually take the order. The cashier takes the order then we write our names on the tickets and where they go. Both tables sat down at the same time. At first, I actually thought they were together. Anyways, I switched the tickets.

Since they got there at exactly the same time, their food both arrived at the same time. I'll take this time to mention that the drinks were similar too. Okay, so since I had 2 orders another girl decided to grab one and bring it out for me. This was a mistake. I'm convinced that if I would have brought it myself I would have figured it out. One table had 2 prime ribs, the other had 2 ribeyes. So the other girl gives the two ribeyes to the prime rib people and I say, "prime rib medium well?" and they say, no, we got prime ribs. Yep. The other table apparently didn't even know what they ordered, which drives me nuts. I figured out what happened really quickly, and I hadn't given out my steaks yet. The other people, however, were already cutting into the wrong steaks. I gave them the correct steaks and of course the first people didn't want steaks someone else had cut in to. I don't blame them. I went back and got 2 new steaks on the grill, but I could tell the tables weren't too happy about the mix up.

Remind you... I have probably 11 tables going at this time, the biggest section in the store. I asked my manager to go talk to the tables and he made some snide comment about how he was going to say his server wasn't very bright.

All that for this...
The table that got the right steaks, and didn't have to wait for new ones, complained so much that they got their money back. And not just the money for the steaks. They got their money back for the buffet too, which they totally ate. My manager doesn't do that very often (actually almost never), but he was convinced they wouldn't have it any other way. I apologized. It was an honest mistake, made during rush hour on a Friday night. To top it off, I didn't feel well, and by the end of the night I had totally lost my voice and my head was throbbing.

I wouldn't have minded the table that had to wait complaining. In fact, I would have deserved it. It made me mad that the ones who got everything they wanted at the right time complained. What jerks. Just a side note: the other table said it was okay. Everyone makes mistakes, and they tipped me.

Workie Work

I'll tell you about my weekend at work. It wasn't too eventful. I worked Thursday instead of Friday, because I had plans for Friday. Thursday was ridiculously slow, which is wierd because usually Thursdays are as good as Fridays. Not necessarily as busy, but there are fewer servers, so you do better in the long run. Not this time.

I wanted to go home, so I could get some stuff done. But I wasn't allowed to because there is a new lady and they didn't want her to be on her own, nor did they want her to "feel like she was being kicked out on her first night alone." Ok. So I had to stay.

My frenemy wasn't there, so it wasn't too bad. One thing did make me a little angry. A customer asked about some shrimp they had ordered. Honestly, I had forgotten that they ordered food, but I did hang my ticket up. When I went back there I got it, but found that it had been 25 minutes. Oops. The lady wasn't mad, but I was. There's no reason a 2.5 minute order should take that long.

I talked to my manager, who said that it was actually my fault. I did my job. I wrote my name and number on the ticket and hung it up. It is NOT my fault that the cook didn't do his job. Yes, I should have asked about it sooner, but still. Oh yeah. To make it worse, the cook was just goofing off. I was actually working.

My manager told me to apologize and say "Usually we're not this busy..." HA! They were the only ones in my section. So I went out and said, "I'm sorry. Usually we're not this busy at this time of night. Usually we don't have any customers..." and turned around and walked away. Just kidding. But I would have liked to.

Work Again!

Work...
What can I say about work?
Oh yeah! I hate it!
People ask why I don't just get another job, and the simple answer is that I'm lazy. My job is just "too easy." I can get whatever hours I want, call out without fear of repercussion, and I make a nice amount of cash even when we are slow.

And though the money is not as good as it used to be, I still feel lucky to have a job.

Now, my bitch. We got a new "head server." She is not really new, she's worked there forever and usually I like her a lot. I used to look forward to working with her, but now I dread it. If her head got any bigger, it would explode. She busts me of stuff that she herself doesn't do, and is so nitpicky. For example, on Sunday I told her I was going to leave. To be nice, I asked if I needed to do anything else.

"No, not if your floors are clean and everything," she said.
"They are," I assured her.
"If you say so," she snipped.
I should have just left...but...

After a sigh I asked her to walk me through my section and point out where it wasn't clean and she pointed to a spot on the floor of 2 crumbs. When I opened that morning, her section from the night before had more crumbs on the floor! I'm not joking.

She was going to be there another 5 hours, and she couldn't clean up a few crumbs? Thanks.

I was trying to respect her and be a good example, because I don't think everyone else does. But I can't anymore.

But I need a good reason to stay in school.

Power Outage

Sunday was quite an eventful day at work, or I suppose you could look at it as extremely uneventful if you would like. Here's what the crazy work day brought:

I got to work a little before 9am to open, as I do every Sunday morning. We opened at 10. Very shortly after we opened it started pouring rain and followed with hail. Soon, the power went out.
I've been working at the restaurant for nearly 6 years, and there has only been one time I was there where the power went off and didn't immediately come back on. Sunday was the second time. I told a coworker not to worry, the emergency lights would come on, but not surprisingly, some of them didn't.

We already had a few tables, and to bring dirty dishes back to the kitchen we had to use a flashlight. The soda machines, ice machines, grill, or heating lamps on the buffet no longer worked; the back-up battery kept the computers going. However, it wasn't long before we could not log back in to the computer.

Our manager is new, and while he is trying really hard and doing well, this is not something he was prepared for. He called another manager for help, but her family had been through a tragedy and she couldn't come right away. Meanwhile, probably 10 employees are just sitting around waiting for instructions.

After over an hour, I decided to leave. I dumped all of the tea and coffee I had just made (thinking we wouldn't reopen that day) and told everyone I was leaving. After all, I only make $3.33 an hour! Another co-worker had just had her baby the evening before, so another girl and I decided to drop in and see the new arrival.

As soon as we stepped out of the hospital I got a call saying the electricity was back on and I needed to come back to work. Dang! I was ready to go home.

I went back to work and we were still just sitting around. All of the buffet food had to be thrown away and re prepared, so we were to reopen at 2. Since I get off at 4 I didn't really see staying for just 2 hours. People were pulling into the parking lot, a lot, only to see that we weren't open. Too bad, I could have really used the cash since I only work 2 days a week. Again, I decided just to go home and call it a day. Maybe I'll do better next week...

O well. Mother Nature: you win!

I knew it wouldn't be long...

I knew it wouldn't be long before I could tell a ridiculous work story. This one is fairly mild compared to some, but it just occured, so we'll start here.

Last night, a lady asked me if the Caesar salad had vinegar in it. I told her it didn't. You may or may not be catching on, but I really wasn't thinking about it.

She looks at me and says, "Can you make, like, for positive sure?" So I went to the back and asked the buffet people if there was any reason the Caesar salad would have vinegar in it (my mistake). They said no, so I went back and reported again that it didn't have vinegar.

Lady says, "Well I don't have her Epipen shot here, so if I give this to her (referring to her maybe 2 year-old daughter) and it does we're in trouble.

I didn't know what to say, so I said "I don't think it should be a problem."

I spoke too soon because as soon as I went to the back someone came running to me to tell me that the dressing did, indeed, have vinegar in it. Crap! I ran back out and told Lady, I was sorry, but there was vinegar in the dressing.

She looks at me and says, "I know. All salad dressing does. So does ketchup, mustard, mayo. All of it; it's a preservative."

Really?! Then why did you ask me if you already knew? It's like she was testing me. I didn't know what to say, so I turned to the 2 year-old and said, "I'm glad your mommy didn't listen to me!"

My other question is, why does a 2 year-old need salad? Also, if you doubted me, why would you even consider giving it to her. There is a ton of other non-vinegar food. Ugh.
And this is part of the reason I hate my job. Pepole look for stuff to complain about all the time.

On a happier note, my family and I went to the zoo today. It was a perfect day, and for once all of the animals were awake. It really was a nice day.