A little rant

I've worked in many places throughout my life. I've worked with every sort of person imaginable. Geniuses, idiots, perverts, the whiners, the unwashed, fat, skinny and lazy. Or so I thought. The crew I worked with this passed weekend takes the damn cake for laziest most complacent bunch...EVER. My friend Jerry calls me occasionally to come down to help him with big events. I went to work on Thursday thinking I would be setting up for his busy weekend. It started out that way and ended in me slinging made to order pasta at the flower and garden show for four days.

Now not much makes me happier or is more fun to me than cooking and interacting with a crowd. When you combine the two, I tend to come out of my shell. Those of you that know me understand. Cooking up made to order pastas with three different sauces but numerous combinations thereof and a wide assortment of toppings with 4 different pasta choices isn't really difficult. It's fun. It's even more fun when you have 5-10-30 people in front of you telling you their orders and watching the show.

Now that the table is set, let me tell you about my "co workers". Things didn't start out well on Thursday. I had been at the OC for an hour or so and had just finished searing off a few hundred steaks when the phone rings in the kitchen. My other friend Rick answers and starts laughing. He turns to me and says, "Hey Midge, wanna go upstairs and bail out the pasta station? You'll laugh your ass off when you see who's crashing." Up I go. The mess and chaos I walked into made me cringe. First, the station was an absolute disaster. Unorganized, messy and completely not set up. They had been crashing since they opened at noon. It was now 1:30 and I had 20-25 pissed off people waiting for pasta. Ed, the cook was trying, but failing. As I stated, the station wasn't set up properly and I've watched my grass grow faster than Ed could cook. I walked up, he said "Thank you Jesus" and watched in awe as I banged out order after order after order...you get the idea, and got the place set up and clean. Now the ladies (used very loosely) I was labored with were a ragtag, motley bunch. For those that don't know, I ran two restaurant at the Great New York State Fair this passed summer. I know what a carny is. These people give a whole new meaning to the word. Some people should never have jobs that require them to interact with ANYBODY, let alone the public. They wrapped EVERYTHING in foil. Few if any had all their teeth. Few spoke more than ebonics. All had and answered cell phones while dealing with customers. Most ate in front of customers, and unknown to me, a couple pulled the last of the chicken I was using and wrapped it up for themselves. I was serving a bunch of people and they were telling people we were out chicken, when here come foil wrapped ghetto gift baskets containing chicken and the questions of can you make me my lunch. Really? Really you piece of crap? You want me to cook your lunch with chicken that you've told all these PAYING customers we were out of? I saw the chicken and so did the dozen of so people standing in front of me. I was angry. I was embarrased. What do I do? The customers were justifiably angry. The hungry "coworkers", never even flinched. It didn't bother them. I did the only thing I could. I added that chicken to as many pastas for the paying customers as I could. You can probably imagine how well that went over. I heard "Is you crazy?" "What is you doin'?" "That mine!" The more pissed they got, the happier I was. Another instance that fired me up was when this rather short robust woman with flaming red hair waddles over to one of the carnies and demanda that she go downstairs to make coffee. Tina, the carny was all set to go, when I intervene. You see, Tina was the ONLY one authorized to run the cash register and there were 15 or so people in line. I asked Sue, the little red bowling ball of a woman why she wasted so much energy walking across the exhibition hall to tell someone else to go make coffee when she was more than capable. She informed me she was Tinas supervisor and she needed to find things to keep her busy. Must be the 15 people waiting to pay wasn't enough. I politely asked Sue to please go make the coffee and that for the duration of the event, I was Tinas supervisor. Now their boss walked up and decided to give me some attitude about him being my boss and he threatened to send me home. I told him to do what he felt was necessary. I told him I would not go home I would go downstairs and work. I made it a point to ask if we could go someplace to talk instead of in front of everyone. He decided we were fine. I proceeded to point out all of his stations shortcomings and his peoples ineptitude. You would think that when you pull someones ass out of the fire they would be even a little grateful. Maybe that's how some people show gratitude, by being confrontational.
Some of the other hits from the weekend include:
-sitting down when taking a customers order or money
-Eye rolling, "Oh Lord"s and incredibly heavy sighs if someone was a bit indecisive -Leaving their station at any point to go browse the show and shop, on the clock of course
-EVERYONE disappearing at the same time
-knocking on the mens room door informing me I have an order
-Throwing the union contract into any and every situation or conversation where you think someone else is benefiting and you aren't
-Publicly buying food stamps from someone and then talking about it
-Yelling from one across the exhibition hall the the concession stand
-A customer and "salad girl" get into a headed argument and the "salad girl" starting to come around the table, threatening the customer while taking out her earrings (one of my personal favorites)
-constantly complaining that you feet, back or legs hurt to customers
-getting snippy with customers or talking loudly about a customers NOT leaving a tip

You get the idea. The list would go on but I'd rather not think about it. It embarrasses me. I don't want the customers to affiliate me with them. As for the tip thing, I should've gotten them. ALL of them. I stood essentially in the same spot for 10-12 hours making pasta. Or omletes. Saturday and Sunday morning I made omlettes to order. Where was my union break? Where was someone qualified to break me? Don't know. If I walked away from the station, the carnies panicked. God forbid I have to pee.

Anyway, that was my weekend. How was yours? For those of you that asked, I will be doing another installment of my Youtube cooking show this Saturday. Check it out.