Retrogradation

I was wrong about Pippin; yesterday evening, I actually had to take some initiative and use some intense and quick thinking skills at the face of a challenge, and the reward was satisfying.

I noticed that the ice cream bar had been out of chocolate chip ice cream for a while, and patrons were getting quite antsy. My duty for the night was only to wipe down tables, but the ice cream busser wasn’t anywhere around. I decided, screw cleaning tables for now—it’s time to take some initiative. I rushed to the kitchen and into the freezer to search for the replacement ice cream.

There were layers of buckets of ice cream stacked on top of more layers, and after looking through the ones on the top layer, I figured, shit, the chocolate chip ice cream must be somewhere on the bottom. I had already spent two minutes in the freezer and I was fucking cold, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to live with myself without knowing that I did everything I could to find that chocolate chip ice cream.

After another three minutes, I had looked through all the ice cream buckets I could find. My fingers were numb from lifting so many and I started to shiver violently. Five minutes was far too long for anyone to spend inside a freezer, so I had to get out quick. But god damn it, NOT without that chocolate chip ice cream. What do I do?

I did the next best thing. I remembered stumbling upon a bucket of mint chocolate chip ice cream early on in my search, so I dug through the buckets again to retrieve it. I figured this was close enough.

My hard work paid off, because I think the patrons enjoyed the mint chocolate chip more than any of the other three ice cream flavors at the bar. Within five minutes, I could look anywhere around the dining room and spot two or three people holding cones with globes of bright glowing green stacked on top. I felt satisfied.

Too bad the glee only last for another three minutes. The ice cream busser, who was a superior because he was one of the full-time working adults, passed by the ice cream bar and noticed the alien green ice cream. I watched the patrons waiting in line gape at him in horror as he hauled it away.

K, fine, whatever, I thought. As long as he actually brought back normal chocolate chip ice cream, it wouldn’t be so bad.

He came back with a new bucket of ice cream within a minute. There was no fucking way he could’ve found it. Once he set it up at the ice cream bar and left, I swung by to check it.

It was cookies ‘n’ cream ice cream. That fucking bastard; at least I was closer. He didn’t even replace the label on top of the ice cream bar. It still said “Chocolate Chip.” Just because cookies and cream was also whitish and blackish/brown, did he think it would work the same as chocolate chip ice cream? Or maybe the colors were the only way he could identify it because he couldn’t match the complicated squiggly lines (a. k. a. LETTERS) on the bucket with the ones on the ice cream bar label. (There’s a really racist comment that I can say if I continue ranting, but I’ll stop.)

I ducked down behind the ice cream bar to dig up the label for “Cookies ‘n’ Cream” and replaced it with the “Chocolate Chip” one, and I returned to my normal cleaning duties, where I brooded about how much Pippin sucked.

The night finished off even better when Head Chef, who I guess is also one of the managers, approached me to reprimand me for not doing my job, again. Last Thursday when I worked, I admit that I took two ten-minute unsanctioned breaks within one hour to chill with Alfonso, Kevin, and Erica, who were eating upstairs where I didn’t think any other workers would spot me. But apparently, one did and ratted me out to Head Chef, and he warned me that that would be the last time I socialized with my friends during work.

During yesterday’s shift, I sat down to eat with Kevin, Alfonso, and Asian John again, but this time I was actually on my legitimate fifteen-minute break. I finished at 7:10, and the three of them left to go to the ARC for a dance class, so I didn’t even have anyone else to socialize with for the last forty minutes. But, apparently, some time during those forty minutes, Head Chef could swear that I was fucking around.

Closing was a little different that night at Pippin because we had the help of a bunch of Middle Earth staff members, who were hosting a Casino Night event at Pippin for all the residents. They were folding up and putting away all the tables, something we normally wouldn’t do for closing, and the tables had to be wiped down before they were put away. I knew I was one of the people wiping down the tables, but unbeknownst to me, I guess all the responsibility for the tables fell solely on me. And apparently, Head Chef saw some dirty unwiped tables already folded up.

I did see to it that all the tables under my watch were wiped down before they were put away, but it was fucking impossible for me to personally check and approve every table, for two reasons: First, on normal closing nights where patrons, feeling like leaving whenever they wanted to, left in succession, I only had to deal with one or two tables at a time. But yesterday night, the Middle Earth staff members were rushing multiple tables of people to finish quickly and to leave at once, leaving me with up to like ten tables to clean at the same time. There were too many tables and too many Middle Earth staff members who cared only about putting them away, and the other cleaners and I were few in number. And second, the fucking ice cream busser wasn’t doing his damn job again and people at the ice cream bar were getting impatient, so I found myself making two trips back into the freezer to retrieve ice cream replacements. Those were the only times I wasn’t present in the dining hall from 7:10 to 8 PM.

I tried to reason with Head Chef, but his stubborn ass boiled the argument down to nothing more than squabbling by repeating over and over again, “No, you didn’t, you weren’t doing your job.” He refused to show me evidence of the dirty tables or to acknowledge anything I said. After the fourth or fifth time repeating that, he absent-mindedly wandered somewhere else, leaving me there mid-sentence. Brooding silently in frustration, I stood there and watched his fat ass leave the kitchen

I am not getting fired.

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“I rock.”
Written September 7th, 2007

I was running about thirty minutes late to work yesterday, although it wasn’t because I had terrible work ethic. It’s actually expected and accepted that I could possibly show up any time between 6 and 6:40 because Ben knows that my SJCC class gets out at 5:45, sometimes later, and that traffic going down 280-south/87-south during that time is a huge bitch. So there’s no really problem except for the fact that I start to beat myself when my tardiness starts pushing twenty minutes.

I veered into the shopping plaza’s parking lot and parked a few stores down as my car clock hit 6:30. I still had to change into my business casual work clothing in the little space of my car’s backseat, and that took another additional five minutes that I didn’t really want to waste. Once I got my nice shoes on, I ran over to SCORE! and threw the door open, panting and looking hardly professional at all.

About 7 kids were there, and Ben was working with them. Juju, one of my favorites who’s probably like a forth grader, looked up from her computer at me and randomly laughed, “Brian, you rock.” ITG2 machines have informed me that I “rock” about 2303 times (stats.xml) for the last two years, but hearing “You Rock” from Juju was a hell lot better, almost touching. I felt better for the rest of the day.