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Great story. When I was in college I worked in the dormitory kitchen. The dorm was a high rise building and one time the sewer blocked up. Everything that was flushed in all the toilets in the dorm came up through the open drains in the kitchen floor. The floor was flooded with flushed water and floating turds. Luckily it was in the mid afternoon between meal times and a lot of the students were in class.
It was all kitchen hands on deck (the boss and all the workers) as we opened the loading bay doors and everyone grabbed a mop or a 30" wide floor squeegee and started pushing all the dirty water and toilet contents out the loading bay doors. We did this for about 25 minutes until the blockage was fixed and flushed water stopped coming up the open drains in the kitchen floor. While we were pushing the flood out the loading bay doors, the contaminated water had been splashed everywhere in the kitchen. We spent the next few hours trying to clean all the surfaces in the kitchen, the floors, the walls, the counters, the closed food canisters, etc. We never told anyone. We feared if it got out there would be a riot.
Quote:
Originally Posted by aliasfinn
I was around 16 or so and the only reason I took the job was because it was the only one I could get so I could get off school half day.
I was supposed to be just a dishwasher but they had me cleaning windows, peeling onions, garlic and grinding tomatoes, cleaning restrooms and a lot of other stuff. I had to wear the paper hat and white apron, the hat had been wet so many times it would no longer fasten and hung down the side of my head. The apron was always covered with tomato juice and spaghetti sauce from helping the cook, it looked like I just butchered somebody.
Because of my appearance I was seldom permitted to enter the dining room when people were in there eating. Only when someone barfed or spilled something they would send me in with a bucket and rag mop, that kind of work was beneath the busboys and waiters. I would push that shedding mop around the floor and under tables while customers would lift their feet when I asked " excuse me " and that mop would leave it's strings all around the table legs, looked like dead worms.
One day one of the waiters was back in the kitchen and took some ice cubes from the icebox, rolled them into a napkin and started beating them on the floor and stomping on them. The cook asked what he was doing and he said, " that SOB out there has to have crushed ice."
Another time the cook was stirring a pot of sauce and the ashes from his cigarette was falling in the pot. The owner came back and saw him and told him to put his cigarette out or smoke out back. He put the cigarette out by dipping it in the pot he was boiling noodles in.
We weren't allowed to go for lunch, we had to stay in the kitchen and eat whatever the cook was making, usually lasagna which I can't stand, so I usually didn't eat at all. Some of those days just got too much for me from not eating and I noticed a cardboard barrel in the freezer filled with those long loaves of French bread so I would tear off little pieces from them when I walked by and scarf them down before anyone saw me.
One day the cook went in there and noticed all the loaves. He told the owner that rats or something has been gnawing on the bread. They couldn't figure out how rats were getting in the freezer. The next day an exterminator was in the kitchen placing traps around and he asked me if I ever saw any rats back there. When he asked me that I had just caught a glimpse of my reflection in the window and I came close to saying, " Just one."
I remember the owner telling us dishwashers to save any items such as those little squares of butter and other stuff that came back on the trays untouched and put them in the icebox. I though I was cheap.
I got my brother a job there working with me and when I went out back to empty a trash can a waiter who was smoking a cigarette said, " You and your brother look like convicts."
I worked there almost a year, my brother just 2 days.
I run a restaurant and we never use any chemical agents for things like this. Our health inspector expressly forbids this sort of thing. Each night our nozzles are removed and placed in a container full of carbonated water. The next morning, they are washed with regular soap and water and then run though the sanitizer. It would be absolutely impossible for something like this to happen at my restaurant.
When I worked in the office when we would decided on a place to go for lunch I would pull up the county health inspections of the restaurant read some of the violations. I remember a common violation I read was mold in the soda nozzles. I never got soda at restaurants always water.
When I worked in the office when we would decided on a place to go for lunch I would pull up the county health inspections of the restaurant read some of the violations. I remember a common violation I read was mold in the soda nozzles. I never got soda at restaurants always water.
The water comes out of the same soda machine nozzles.
I would probably get a B-, because one of the dogs licks the floor sometimes and the cat bats things under the stove so you never know what's under there lol!
There are cat treats under my refrigerator and stove. Epic failure.
They can't be around 24/7 and you can't idiot proof everything.
I once caught an employee cleaning with a generic spray bottle instead of any one of the approved cleaning solutions we had, when I asked him what it was he told me he had mixed together several cleaners to make a 'super cleaner'. Considering some of those cleaners would take the paint off the shelves I guess I'm lucky the dummy didn't blow the whole store up.
You can actually die from toxic fumes from mixing some cleaning agents together.
I was around 16 or so and the only reason I took the job was because it was the only one I could get so I could get off school half day.
I was supposed to be just a dishwasher but they had me cleaning windows, peeling onions, garlic and grinding tomatoes, cleaning restrooms and a lot of other stuff. I had to wear the paper hat and white apron, the hat had been wet so many times it would no longer fasten and hung down the side of my head. The apron was always covered with tomato juice and spaghetti sauce from helping the cook, it looked like I just butchered somebody.
Because of my appearance I was seldom permitted to enter the dining room when people were in there eating. Only when someone barfed or spilled something they would send me in with a bucket and rag mop, that kind of work was beneath the busboys and waiters. I would push that shedding mop around the floor and under tables while customers would lift their feet when I asked " excuse me " and that mop would leave it's strings all around the table legs, looked like dead worms.
One day one of the waiters was back in the kitchen and took some ice cubes from the icebox, rolled them into a napkin and started beating them on the floor and stomping on them. The cook asked what he was doing and he said, " that SOB out there has to have crushed ice."
Another time the cook was stirring a pot of sauce and the ashes from his cigarette was falling in the pot. The owner came back and saw him and told him to put his cigarette out or smoke out back. He put the cigarette out by dipping it in the pot he was boiling noodles in.
We weren't allowed to go for lunch, we had to stay in the kitchen and eat whatever the cook was making, usually lasagna which I can't stand, so I usually didn't eat at all. Some of those days just got too much for me from not eating and I noticed a cardboard barrel in the freezer filled with those long loaves of French bread so I would tear off little pieces from them when I walked by and scarf them down before anyone saw me.
One day the cook went in there and noticed all the loaves. He told the owner that rats or something has been gnawing on the bread. They couldn't figure out how rats were getting in the freezer. The next day an exterminator was in the kitchen placing traps around and he asked me if I ever saw any rats back there. When he asked me that I had just caught a glimpse of my reflection in the window and I came close to saying, " Just one."
I remember the owner telling us dishwashers to save any items such as those little squares of butter and other stuff that came back on the trays untouched and put them in the icebox. I though I was cheap.
I got my brother a job there working with me and when I went out back to empty a trash can a waiter who was smoking a cigarette said, " You and your brother look like convicts."
I worked there almost a year, my brother just 2 days.
aliasfinn, I was a waitress during college summers, I would have definitely hung with you. I had a couple deviant friends and they were the most fun. I would have LOVED to work at that place.
Our business model that has strict rules on chemicals. Now has ( five years and counting). ' organic' clean products. Be it sanitizing kitchen trays to linen washing.
Might as well soak everything in lemon juice, vinegar , or salt water. Mind you the public wants all food service to be sterile and in compliance .
I think this gent deserved to be compensated. I think THAT particular location is 100% culpable.
You bet I'm all for soaking certain products in a chlorine base solution. Followed by rinse and hot steam. Not sure how a solution though is kept uncapped or not labeled.
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