it’s now been 4 days since i arrived on the dark continent: things have started to settle in, i think. i worked saturday and sunday and then got sick with strep throat (more on that in a bit). nonetheless, i feel that those 2 days of work were pretty exemplary in the long run. i’ll lay it down for you.
my official title here is Dining Attendant (DA for short). we do everything in the kitchen aside from cook the food: we clean, we sweep, we mop. etc. currently, my work hours (along with mere, morgen, and cedar) are from 11am to 9pm. breakfast is served from 5:30am to 7:30am, so if we want to eat breakfast with everyone else we have to get up pretty early. it’s nice to get up and get going and have some free time before work, but i can also sleep in if i want to and still be able to eat oatmeal, cereal, or toast (with peanut butter) which is always available (they do have soy milk sometimes). i’m hoping to get onto some sort of workout schedule where i get up around 7am, eat breakfast, and then workout for an hour or so before work. we’ll see what happens.
anyhoo, i start work at 11am. first thing, i come in and write down my schedule for that day in a little green notebook that was provided. during the day we reference that schedule to know what to do next. here was my sunday schedule:
- 11:00 - 11:30 - Dishes
- 11:30 - 12:30 - Baker Helper
- 12:30 - 1:30 - Pots
- 1:30 - 1:45 - Stretch
- 1:45 - 2:15 - Break
- 2:15 - 3:00 - C2
- 3:00 - 4:00 - Pots
- 4:00 - 4:15 - Stretch
- 4:15 - 4:30 - Allocation
- 4:30 - 5:00 - Break
- 5:00 - 6:15 - Floor
- 6:15 - 7:30 - Dishes
- 7:30 - 8:00 - C1
- 8:00 - 8:15 - Break
- 8:15 - 9:00 - C3
as you can see, they day is broken up into “tasks” no more than about an hour long. included in that is 2 half-hour breaks, 1 fifteen-minute break, and 2 stretch breaks. i LOVE this system. it’s somewhat of an event when it’s time to switch tasks and it’s always exciting to see who’s on what task next. i settle into my current task very quickly and then before i know it it’s time to switch tasks again. because of this, the day goes by pretty quickly.
there are a few items in that list that i think need a bit more explaining:
dishes and pots seem pretty self-explanatory; stretch is a big group activity where all the DAs go into a back room of the dining area and stretch for 15 minutes; allocation is where we log our hours and stuff into the computer; C1, C2, and C3 are groups of predefined tasks that are described in the back of the little green book i mentioned earlier.
the C groups are as follows:
- C1 - wipe down all kitchen surfaces and restock, etc
- C2 - trash, sweep, mop, clean bathrooms, laundry
- C3 - clean tables, restock salt & pepper, vacuum
you get the idea. i haven’t been completely trained yet, so as time goes by more and more tasks will be added to the list of possibilities.
overall, the kitchen staff is very cool. it is a HUGE operation (feeding 1000+ people 4 times a day) and everything seems to be very under control. all my bosses are very nice, understanding people, and truly do care about my well being. there is a big emphasis on safety and ergonomics. my fellow DAs are also really great and fun to work with, and the food is good too. so far there has been a vegetarian/vegan option at every meal and almost everything on the buffet is labeled so you know if there’s dairy or onions or sugar or whatever in it.
but, i got sick sunday night. during work that day i started to feel a slight agitation in my throat, and by monday morning things were not feeling good. i went over to medical and they said i had the early stages of strep throat. bummer. they gave me some meds and told me to take 48 hours off from work. yesterday i stayed in bed all day eating and sleeping and watching TV (we get the same channels as the military). i feel better overall today, but my throat still hurts when i swallow. i really hope i’m better tomorrow, because i’d much rather be at work than be sick.
