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.

Long belated post...

P.B. says...

Here I am, staring at the computer in vain, doing my best to make up a proper post from my limited vocabulary. Right, vocabulary isn't the problem. It's because I'm uncreative. I could sit in front of a computer for 40 minutes, and still not even have a simple paragraph typed down. Okay, it probably takes so long because I'm playing computer games at the same time I'm trying to cook up a post; but it would still take me a good 20 to 30 minutes to write something.

Anyway, I'm not here to rant away about how stupid I am. I'm here because I wrote something like '...you can be expecting something from me after I come back(from the trip)', and what do you know? Three weeks passed without me posting anything! No excuses or reasons why I didn't post, I'll just get on with it.

So here are the best pictures we've got. We hardly took any photos on this trip and the ones that we have are quite junky. Blame that on Mom or our stubborn will that won the camera over!

At Tazawako.

Granny teaching us how to make a fire.

It's nothing compared to Sam's photography, but this is one of Mom's best.


This trip, we stayed home all day, watching movies, and taking naps and watching some more movies; the best way to spend a vacation. We did go out camping at Tazawako, though, and me, nonny, and Yuya had a swim in the lake. All in all, this trip was a relaxing one, and a one we all enjoyed to the full. Oh, and before I go, let me just list the movies we watched.

*Titanic.
We watched the shorter version. I still don't understand why 'Wose threw the necklace into the sea.

*Transporters.
We were thinking about watching Moulin Rouge, but we wouldn't watch another Drama, so we decided on this.

*The Notebook.
Everyone cried on this one(I and Yuya excluded).

moved in

Eiko says...

'Awesome' is the word for this past week, everybody! It's almost been a week since moving into my new apartment, and everything about the new place fits the description of awesome. I take that back. Almost everything fits the description of awesome. I said almost because we don't have air cons, and sweating it out in this heat isn't so cool. If we weren't as excited as we were about moving into our new place, we wouldn't have been able to move all our stuff in the car and out of the car, and then into the apartment, then up the stairs and into the closets in this effing heat without losing our marbles! We were literally sweating machines! Ironically, we ordered pizza for our very first dinner at our new place. The pizza was great, but it didn't really help the sweating factor. I remember being insanely full, hot, sticky, and dead tired the first night here. I took a shower, and sweated myself to sleep.

Since my first day of work is the 8th, there's plenty of time to check out the neighborhood and settle in, both of which I've been doing plenty of. We have a 業務スーパー nearby, as well as a few good second hand shops, family restaurants, a big 100 yen shop and a yamada denki, all within biking distance, and a Mini Stop right down the road. I'm loving the neighborhood.

The theme colors for my room are black and red, but if it weren't for the BF taking me to Ikea, and if it weren't for the super awesome oil painting he got for me in Thailand, I wouldn't be anywhere close to getting my room started on the righteous path of red and black. It's getting there though. It needs a lot of help, but it's getting there. I'll post the pictures in the next post.

I'm calling it a night.

me and aich at gusto

Eiko says...

Here are a few pics from the outing Aich and I had at Gusto--my work place now.

got a job

Eiko says...

On our way out from having some quality girl time together at a nearby Gusto, Aich and I noticed a billboard in the entrance way announcing the need for more workers. I thought of writing the shops number on my hand so that I could give them a ring later on in the evening, ( because believe it or not, I still was job-less) Aich reminded me of the modern convenience in my back pocket--the keitai! I hit my forehead with my palm in a 'Duh! stupid me' kinda way, and proceeded to take a picture of the whole billboard, with all the bits of information on it, and made a mental note to call them up as soon as I finished my night shift in Cafe Marche.

That evening, I called the shop, and had a civil conversation with the Tenchou. I was expecting a man to be on the other side of the line, mainly because I distinctly remember the Tenchou being male last time Boris and I applied for Gusto. Complications were in our way at the time so we ended up not working there, but I remember clearly how nice the man was, and how cool it must be working for him. I guess he quit or was moved elsewhere. Whatever the case, the new Tenchou was definitely not a man,...or a woman for that matter. I would say something in the middle of a monster and a monkey.

Anyhow, I got a interview scheduled for 9 AM the next day. This was the first indication that the Tenchou was not mentally healthy. I'm not in the best of moods in the morning, and in order to be there at 9 AM, I had to get up at 7 AM to get ready and looking presentable. That's a rather early start, and the sizzling hot, sweaty walk to Gusto didn't help my moods to lighten up very much. I got there and was told to fill out a resume at one of the tables, which I did, and after filling it out in the most attractive way I thought my resume could possibly appear, I rung the bell and waited...

Moments later, in the seat directly in front of me sits this woman, with no shape to her body whatsoever. Her face was gaunt, black, and wire rimmed glasses balanced on her nose in a peculiar way. A sharp bob that didn't compliment her face shape made her look stupid, and her not wearing make up made her look like a man. She had bony fingers that reminded me of an anorexic patient, and her mouth appeared to have 2 ton weights attached to either side. People like this woman and George W. B. keep the theory of Evolution alive! You see them and it's understandable as to why some believe that we have monkeys for ancestors! She also looked and acted perpetually constipated, which worried me since we all know how awful that can be. She also sat as if she had a stick up her ass, and so I thought I'd do her a favor and politely asked if I could lend her a hand in pulling it out. This kind offer on my part was not received so kindly. I just got the blank, no-emotions, constipated stare, and I gave up on helping her... until I realized that the woman sitting in front of me was the Tenchou of Gusto,the lady I talked to on the phone...who could very possibly end up being my future boss, if all went well with the interview. I was like, 'Damn it! Not cool!'

She quickly took a glance at my resume, lingered a bit on my TOEIC score, asked a few questions as to why I wasn't getting an English related job if my English was as good as it seemed, asked me a few questions about my past job experiences, and then pushed my resume aside and just stared at me. I was like....woah. Then she started threatening.

"Little girl, you may think you know what the word, 'strict' means, but you will never know the true meaning of that word until you've worked here, under me. Boys cry, and most of the girls quit within the first few months. You may think that work here is easy, but you're wrong. You may think that it could possibly be fun, but you're wrong. You may think that it's a glorious job that you'll enjoy doing, but you're wrong. The work here is not easy, it's not fun, it's not glorious, and it's likely that you won't enjoy it. We are quite hard on people, and proud of it. So if you do get the phone call of acceptance here, I want you to come to work knowing what you're getting yourself into."

I was like..."Uh, dudess, if you made me cry, that would make me a mega loser. I have better things and people to cry over, and you are the last person on the face of the earth that I feel like wasting tears on. Go figure! But know that I've worked in hard situations. I've got experience in cooking and waitressing, and I've been given the responsibility of taking full charge over one of my old work places,--cooking, working the register, serving the customer and the cleaning--all by myself! I'm good with customers, I'm a fast learner, and I don't whine. And although totally irrelevant, I'm fluent in English and have my TOEIC score to prove it. So, yeah, go figure again!"

I didn't care if I was bluffing 80% of everything I said! She annoyed me! Who on earth talks like that to a perfect stranger? Making boys cry isn't something to boast about! I wouldn't have any of it. I was determined to prove to this lady that I would not be one of her victims.

The interview was short and went smoothly. I was still sickened by everything about her. I even found a part of me hoping that I wouldn't get the job! She was a 100%, no non-sense phyco.

Yesterday, while recovering from a fever and a migraine, I get a call. I got the effing job! That phyco lady hired me. I have nothing more to say. My search for employment is over and I'm happy about that. Then a mental picture of her pops in my mind, and I feel like puking.

God, spare me from hell!!

like this

Eiko says...

Rule #1 Never be sappy or emotional or depressing on Two out of Twelve.

Enough said. Over.

Chocolate! Go!

kick ass voice & stripping old man

Eiko says...

Ladies and gents, my apologies for the absence. Once again, I have many excuses, but they're all lousy, so I'm not going to waste your time, or my precious finger energy by listing them up.

Knowing how word spreads faster than light here in JP TFI, I'm sure most of you have heard about how Dawn and Yasu and I are getting an apartment together. It's likely that I mentioned that at least twice somewhere on this blog. But whatever! The exact date is the 1st of September and fast approaching!! I need to start packing and purging....AGAIN! You know, I've been doing a lot of moving around recently--from T.O.M Home to Icthus Home to Lodge Home, and now I'm off to a brand new beginning with Dawn and Yasu and Kippins, and that's all within 10 months! But more than needing to pack and purge, ( which should be fairly easy since all the clothes and the stuff and the clutter haven't left the fit-cases since coming here ) I need to get my ass a damn good job! Okay, forget the 'good' part. I just need a damn job that doesn't pay poop. Pray that I find one.

The above was the updates. Below is everything else.

I've recently caught a pretty bad 夏風邪, and consequently, I sound like a man. No joke. A very sick man. Give me a ring, and you'll know what I'm talking about. You probably won't even recognize my voice.

I'll answer the call and you'll be like,

"Woah, FREAK! Give Eiko's cell back to Eiko!"

And I'll be like,

"Dude, (or girl friend or whatever) this is Eiko..."

And whether you believe me or not is something else.

I'm actually on my way to recovery, but in the hight of my summer cold, my head hurt, my throat stung, my nose was runny, my stomach was upset, and to top it all off, I was on my bloody monthly. I was also slightly emotional over a certain personal something, and all of that combined made a very miserable me. The worst part about the cold was my throat. I think what really gave my voice that extra husky, raspy touch was going to karaoke, and not just drinking the drinks and eating the snacks, but singing for 5 hours straight! If I didn't have a throat cold, singing for 5 hours wouldn't have given such fantastic results. Unfortunately, there was the throat cold issue. I had loads of fun regardless, but we must not forget the consequences.

Cafe Marche--The Unexpected Strip Show

We have an older customer who I'd agree to count as a regular. He drops by often enough, although mostly during the Friday and Saturday nights when we have the live music going on. He's 80-ish-years-old, and he reminds us of his age each time he drops by. Did I mention that I've never seen this man enter our cafe sober? He only drops by after he's drunk himself tipsy somewhere else. Anyhow, one Friday evening, he swings by Cafe Marche, tipsy as always, and orders a beer, and than another beer, and then whisky, and then wine and on and on and one he orders. I'd say it was less then 15 minutes until he started singing and clapping his hands AND dancing all over the cafe, trying to get the other customers to join him, and making little to no sense when he orders or tries to make conversation! His moment of glory (and embarrassment if he'd remember anything at all the next day) was when he starting stripping! I'm not kidding. He stripped! Thank the good Lord he kept the stripping to the upper half of his body. I gave Stephan a quick worried glance, but Steph was laughing his head off. I was like 'cool!' and quickly joined him. I mean, this skinny, genki yet crazy, old ojiiichan started taking his clothes off, stood in front of the stage where J.D. and the other band members were performing, and spread his arms wide, and began jigging, saluting people, and making a huge fool out of himself! The other customers had quite the show, and were laughing as well. I kind of felt sorry for the ladies he was trying to persuade to dance with him. Once the ojiichan realized he wouldn't get any luck from the customer ladies, he came over to me and began insisting that I dance with him. I had to give him the, no-can-do-I'm-working-talk. He was too high to be offended. Alcohol is indeed a magical beverage.