busy day

Okay, so today was a bad day at the salad bar. Well, mostly it was just a very busy day. I didn't really want to go to work today in the first place because I was tired. When I got there, I found a note in which the morning shift explained that they had been terribly busy and left us a list of things to do. At least half of the things on the list were jobs that the morning shift is supposed to take care of, like cutting the big buckets of fruit for the bar. The strangest thing about it was the fact that they had all been so busy that they felt the need to go home early. There were supposed to be two people there until 2:00, when Kerrie and I started our shift, but when I got there just over five minutes early there was nobody there. The salad bar was a mess, so I had the fun of cleaning that up before I could even get started on our list of jobs. Then I decided to stock the case, since it was looking rather barren. But the lable-maker ran out of labels, and we didn't have any left. So I tried to borrow some from the deli, but they didn't have the right size. Chinese didn't have the right size either, but we eventually got a roll from the kitchen. Then the real fun began. Even though the labels were the right size--I checked several times--the machine wouldn't recognize them as such. It would shoot out a series of blamk labels and then stop with on hanging halfway out and claim it was jammed. It wasn't. So I decided to get help. And where do salad bar girls invariably turn when there's trouble? The produce boys, of course. So Donovan came in and looked at it and had no idea what was wrong. Everything he tried resulted in the machine spitting out several more blank labels and putting up the same error message. So then he unplugged the darn ting to make it restart. It didn't help. Swearing at it didn't help either, but he tried that anyway. Eventually we snagged a guy from the meat department to look at it, since they use the same machine, but he had no idea how to fix it. With two produce boys and a meat department guy all standing over the machine, and me with a cart full of product to be labeled the room was etting rather crowded at this point. Donovan finally tore out the wasted part of the roll and reloaded it and--wonder of wonders--the machine inexplicably began working fine. That was one crisis dealt with, but it took nearly half an hour

Working steadily through the afternoon, we got the veggies done and kept up with the bar and started getting the fruit containers done, but there was no way we were going to finish the entire list. There is no way any two people could get that much stuff done in one shift. I mean, if we didn't have to watch the bar it might be possible, buet let's be realistic here. I still can't figure out why the morning crew had such trouble getting their stuff done. Yesterday morning we were insanely productive: we got the bar up in record time, we had most of the fruit buckets cut before going on break, and we managed to container all the fruit and get fruit pizzas done while watching the bar over the lunch rush. I don't see why a Sunday morning would be any harder. I mean, there might be a bigger lunch rush, but most of the chop work is done before the rush would start. So I'm pretty anoyed with the morning crew. By the end of the night I noticed that there were no fruit pizzas in the case at all. Tomorrow is my turn to make fruit pizzas, so I'm gonna have to work m butt off just to fill the case in the ammount of time I'm scheduled for. And I'm even supposed to be doing a special order of 7 pizzas besides filling the case. Oi. Not that any of you need to listen to me rant about my job, but I feel the need to tell someone. It's days like these that make me think I want to just quit the salad bar at the end of the summer and find another job next year. Not that I have any idea where to look for a better job, unless Rich would let me go out to Judson now that I have valuable work experience.

Let's talk about something else for a while. This morning I was late for church, but it was deffinitely not my fault. My parents went early because my mom was teaching Sunday school, but I don't have a Sunday school class, so I slept in, intending to jointhen for the 10:00 service. Eating my breakfast, I glance out the window and realize that they drove the van to church, essentially leaving me stranded. I don't know how to drive my dad's car (it's stick), and Kevin's doesn't work, and it was raining so my bike was out of the question. And it took until just before the service started for them to realize what they had done. Of course I had no way to call them, my parents don't have cell phones. But my dad eventually did return for me, so all was well. A similar thing happened at work tonight. they had dropped me off at the start of my shift and gone to see grandma in Sioux Falls, intending to be back in town in time to pick me up. Trying to call them at the end of my shift didn't work, as I could not find them anywhere. After I had punched out and was collecting my things, though, my dad appeared in the store to take me home. So it was a little more worry, but not a real problem.

Today I tried on two wedding dresses--my mom's and grandma June's. Now don't start getting any funny ideas, this is for a Father's day skit at church. Yes, you read that correctly: I am going to be involved in my church's drama ministry by acting in a skit on Father's day, wearing my grandmother's wedding dress. (mom's doesn't fit, apparently my shoulders are broader than hers) It really is an amazing dress, in spite of being so old. Well, mapbe it's because it's so old. At any rate, it's pretty cool. It has about a hundred little buttons up the back instead of a zipper and a really long train. Even the veilgoes down past my feet. It's kinda fun to wear.

Well, I think that's about it for today. I realize I've become rather sporadic with my posts lately. That's mostly because I haven't been online in several days. Partly, it's because my life has been rather boring and not post-worthy. I've been working a lot, bot only certain days are worth making into stories. And I always work on the weekend. My weeks are all off-kilter because Thursday feels like Monday and Sunday feels like Friday. Or maybe Sunday is Thursday, since I do work again tomorrow. On Tuesday my weekend will start. Then I have three days off in a row to finally start doing importand summer things like riding the bike path, playing my violin and working on my story. Of course, I've also got a haicut scheduled in the middle of that break, so we'll see just how much I actually get done of those other things. I probably won't get anything productive done until I finish reading Timeline, which is quickly becoming one of my new favorite books. No reading tonight though, I should get to bed now since I expect tomorrow to be another busy day.

-Kim