Frustrating endeavours

Aloha! :)

After moving some of my things to my new apartment (I will continue today) and having lunch etc, I went off to my pizza back shift.

Whilst I was waiting until I could clock in, a few of the cast members started talking to me. I'd have to say there are a lot of nice people who work at Caribbean. I do get frustrated when some of them don't understand me (mainly Spanish speakers, and their broken English is hard for me to understand too), but I just have to persevere.

Yesterday was an example of a conversation that was misinterpreted. A lady said to go to break, but I thought she meant pre-break (a meeting), so when I came back after she was like "have you been on break? 6-7?." The '6-7' part is where I finally figured out what she meant!

Anyway. Last night was a whirlwind.

We started off really slowly and I'd get bored often because there was nothing to do.
..but then around 9.30pm it got SUPER busy. I was the only one at the back and I was running around like a headless chicken! I had pizzas coming out of my EARS! It was okay, I managed to stay on top of it, even if I was stressing out and I wished I had help.

I didn't drop any pizzas, woo! However, I did have to spoil a pizza because there were so many pizzas on the conveyor belt that the utensils at the end started squashing one side of the pizza, and by the time I noticed the pizza was too munched to repair. So I had to quickly make another. :/

There were 3 conveyor belts and I was using them all and I just had so much going on that I had to be so careful not to burn any or crush any!

Things like breadsticks got in the way too because other things would be in the oven already and the breadsticks start from in the middle...

Then I was trying to remember the black bean burger patties, but with everything else on...and having ot take temperatures of food and re-stock the pizza shop, get replacement stock of things, fold and label boxes... yeah I didn't get around to it. So the pizza shop people gave me all these annoyed looks when a customer wanted one. ...but if they were in my position maybe they would understand.

At least I have made friends with one of the pizza delivery people. On the first day of pizza back I thought he was grumpy and not so nice, but yesterday he complimented me on my breadsticks (how I had done a nice job at browning them) and then talked to me a little. I think the ice broke and after that he was really nice to me. He even helped me to take out pizzas etc. ...and he said at the end some really nice things. :) Also he said he'd help me in future if I'm by myself and need help. :D

The chefs are all really nice too. They say hello to you, and sometimes joke around with you. It makes it a far more pleasant environment to work. :)

The end of my shift was the most stressful. I wanted to get the 12.01am bus (because otherwise you have to wait until the 12.31am). So I started cleaning up, but then all of a sudden I got all these delivery orders! I was like....nooooo. :/ By the time I had finished all those it was about 12.45. So I had 15mins to clean. I was like, I can make that happen, surely?

Maybe not.

I was trying to do the spoilage sheet but then I encountered the evils of pounds and ounces again. I know that 1 pound is 16 ounces (I never knew I would ever learn that one), but then I had something that was 30ounces and they wanted it in pounds (every utensil is in ounces). I thought it was nearly 2 pounds, but I didn't want to approximate in-case I got it really wrong.
I was thinking, why can't everything by in the same unit so that all the people from overseas aren't killing their brains after 8 hours of work trying to figure it out?!

I was therefore on this quest to get someone to tell me how much it was. I asked all these people and got all these blank stares. That is when I realised I wasn't going to make the bus. It was this annoying isolated feeling. One guy seemed to think he knew what he was doing, but I knew that there was no way 30ounces equalled 42 pounds. That's just ridiculous. Eventually I went to the managers (who understand me, and conversions...hurrah!) and they told me it was 1.9pounds.

After that I was like, ok one battle over. Only to stumble into another one.
I was trying furiously to clean everything, and then I turn around to find that the rubbish bin has gone.
What the?

So I go to try and find another one. I find one and ask the guy if I could have it. He was emitting the answer no, and I thought darn it, just give me a rubbish bin, what is your problem? He kind of just stood there, so I was like "I'll bring it back!" and took it anyway. XD

I was cleaning, and then the guy comes back and tries to take it again.
What in the world?
I ask him to please leave it because I hadn't quite finished (all the while getting frustrated because all this was taking time, and I really wanted to go home. My feet hurt, I felt gross and I just waned my bed). Luckily one of the managers came in at that time. She was like "she hasn't finished yet" and then the guy finally left the bin alone!

Of course about 5mins later he came back again. This time I was like..."whatever, just take it."
So I had to carry the rest of the rubbish to another bin after.

I swear it was the most frustrating little game ever!

Then one other kitchen guy came and dumped a whole bunch of stuff on the place I was trying to work. He didn't tell me why, so I got a little annoyed. I went back and asked him about it, and he was like "just leave" "all good"
Huh?
I wasn't sure I actually wanted to just leave it there with inspection. So I moved it to another table just incase. But I hated this alone feeling. Especially since several times throughout the night when I asked for help, no one did. That, or I had to ask them several times.
This was especially annoying when we were running out of kids pizzas, and a girl from front was stressing out at me, when I had asked this other guy to get more (he said he would), but he hadn't! It was like I got blamed for everything!


Also, not many people were around, so everything smashed together to create all this built up anger in me! I wanted to attack something, but knew that I couldn't.
MAN. I hope it isn't the same tonight. Not fun. I want to go home on the 12.01 because I have to wake up really early for the social security number interview!


Anyway,
I'll talk to ya'll later!

xx