This week was very interesting and stressful! We weren’t fully staffed, for starters, but at least we had Monday off (Jewish holiday). Honestly, I think that’s what added to the fatigue.
So, we had two sick chefs, and one who spent Tuesday helping out at another location. I’m going to call them E, M, and Y, respectively. M didn’t seem too bad; could’ve been allergies for all I know, but she had a light cough. She took Wednesday and Thursday off to see her doctor.
E seemed out of it on Tuesday; not sick but he complained about not being able to breathe through his nose. He also has allergies and asthma (and vapes, womp womp). He left early, during the lunch rush, after basically leaving me to fend for myself from the onslaught of unruly teenagers. It put us behind schedule and we didn’t get to leave until an hour past our usual time.
He didn’t show up the next day, but Y was back, and we left on time. That was also the day one of the kids decided to prank his peers with a fake erection. My coworker, N, tried flagging the kid down and warning him, to which he revealed he was purposely stuffing the front of his pants. Very inappropriate, but kinda funny.
I also had a teacher request bananas to teach the kids how to apply stitches (she had oranges too). Now that sounded fun, like the camping trip she apparently took them on the night before.
And that’s where the fun ends. E came back on Thursday, very obviously sick (he wore a mask, like M), just nonstop coughing and occasionally had to step away to recover. We were all wondering why he wouldn't take the day off. No one wants to see or hear their chef violently coughing every ten seconds.
But that’s capitalism for ya.
Today (Friday) was almost a disaster, as the dish machine’s doors popped loose and sprayed water everywhere. The head chef, A, managed to find and screw the pieces back together, but that lasted five minutes while I dealt with the pile up of dishes.
But other than that, the day was fine. I found time to write most of this post, after all!
Gonna spend the weekend catching up on writing for my web serials and run some more edits on my novel.