gusto kitchen crazies

Eiko says...

I am now at Lodge Home, sitting at Sam's super awesome computer, trying to catch up on some blogging, but coming up completely blank.

For one, I'm too busy admiring Sam's computer, and secondly, there's so much that happened since my last post that I'm confused as to where to pick up from.

In a crisis like this, I junk all the rules and start from what first comes to mind.

Work Life

I'm working in the kitchen at Gusto, and words fail to describe the amount of insanity that's going on behind the scenes. There is of course, my crazy boss. I do recall saying something like how she seemed perpetually constipated and such, but if anybody had to be in charge of anything as hectic and crazy as Gusto, I'd say there's a legitimate reason to appearing perpetually constipated. It's that insane.

Starting with the food which is also a bunch of insanity. I'm sure it's common knowledge, but everything, and I mean E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G, (save the fresh salads, the negi, the white rice, the tofu, the decorative mint leaves that you see adorning your sundays and deserts, and the occasional slice of banana you get in the chocolate sunday) on the menu is frozen/packaged food. The pasta is boiled and frozen pasta, the ketchup rice for your omelet is packaged and frozen, and even the omelet itself is made out of what you call 'eguron'--whole, mixed eggs, packaged and frozen! All the sauces, including the pasta meat sauce and tomato sauce are packaged, and so are most of the meat. The maze-gohan is packaged, the udon noodles are frozen, the soups are packaged, the cakes and deserts are all frozen and packaged, the vegie dishes are also composed of frozen vegies and what not! Everything is heated with either the microwave, or the oven, or the electric stove. And get this...we use our hands, and directly touch your food...all the time. Don't worry! It's not that we do dirty things with our hands!! Every last one of us, (myself included) are clean freaks and are absolutely paranoid about keeping our hands germ-free! We even wear plastic gloves to the toilet so we won't have to expose our hands to anything that will give you a stomach ache. Totally.

Now you might think that working with all this frozen/packaged food would be easy and sweat free. Well, it's definitely not sweat free, and it's most definitely not easy. Mainly because having to make the vast variety of dishes that 5-7 groups of people randomly order at the same time with just 4 people during lunch or dinner time, is never a piece of cake. Orders are streaming in and special requests are always thrown in at the most inconvenient time. If you can't make 3 dishes at the same time while working the washer, you won't ever catch up with the orders. The insanity never stops.

My boss expects me to remember every dish I make the first time I make it, and also where all the ingredients/sauces/frozen foods are, and since that is very difficult to do when you're amongst so much confusion, I am often yelled at. I have considered yelling back, but that would most definitely make me lose my train of thought so I refrain from such action. I also kind of think my boss has a legitimate reason to be as constipated looking and cranky as she is. I mean, if I had to be in charge of all that... stuff...I would have already gone bonkers. The day I am able to move like a food producing machine like she can, and she stops yelling at me, I think we could even have a very decent conversation, and we'd probably get along just fine.

My co-workers seem to be very decent individuals, though I have yet to actually have a conversation with any of them. There's no way you can actually have time to talk amongst all the confusion during work time, so it will be awhile before I get to know them at all, much less remember their names. The only conversations that stands out to me that I had with my co-workers is when it was pouring rain outside, and one of the waitresses announced that a half naked foreigner had brought me an umbrella and was wondering when I'd get off. 'Half-naked-foreigner' could no one else but my BF. He'd be shirt-less come hell or high waters! Anyhow, later on while I was getting out of my food-smelling work clothes, another waitress, after lingering on the fact that the foreigner that brought me an umbrella wasn't wearing a shirt, asked what kind of acquaintance he was. I was like, 'oh, he's my BF.' They were like 'ahhh, naruhodo.' And I was like, 'yup'. The next day, one of my dude co-workers brought up the subject. "I heard that you had a half-naked friend come over to bring you an umbrella..." Apparently, being half naked in Japan is a biggie. They can't seem to leave the topic alone. *shrugs*

Anyhow, not much more is coming to mind. I would post a picture of me in my work clothes...but on second thought, nah. It's really nothing special. I'm wearing the dorky hair net, and on top of that the chef hat, black pants, a collar T-shirt and a green apron. Very standard, nothing special or attractive. Yup. No pictures.

Speaking of pictures, I was suppose to post pictures of our new house. But since this is Sam's computer, I don't have any of those with me. That will just have to wait for next time. I'm calling it a night.