Okay, so not having internet at home makes posting regularly, or even posting irregularly, difficult. But here it is- today I'll talk about the dish room.
How shall I put it? The dish room is the source of humor and grief for most DC workers. You cannot have a DC without a dish room. When ceramics and silverware are used to serve over a thousand peopl, you better hope that there's some place to clean and sterilize them. There have been odd instances when the dish machine (the thing that cleans and sterilizes) broke, in various DCs. That would temporarily qualify the place as a DC without a dishroom, sort of. But those various instances have not been pleasant. I think I remember someone telling me about how some of the dishes had to be carted over to the other DC to clean up afterwards.
During my time there nothing so eventful have happened. We had this instance where the dish return (a series of racks with conveyer belt, for those of you who don't know what I'm talking about) broke and people had to come in and fix it. I think that was either my first or second day as the "dish captain" (a title assigned to the one person whose shift in the dishroom started the earliest, and the person is in charge of (sort of) over seeing things and making sure everyone got their breaks). Then there was the other time when the room flooded (by no means a rare occurance, actually, since the room seemed to be decidedly hydrophillic), and I had to unload very hot dishes next to guys who were trying to fix the plumbing. That was interesting. The dishes were hot.
Which brings up the other unforgettable point of very hot dishes. I heard that we used to have thick, sort of heat proof gloves, but no one ever found out what happened to them and new ones never arrived. (I've heard it brought up in job training, and I've heard it brought up in front of management, yet no new ones have materialized even up till the day I left.) As far as I know people are still wearing the regular sheet-o-plastic gloves - one on top of the other, for several layers. Except you still loose the feelings in your fingers in the end, after the pain goes away. This is why the dish captain usually switches the people around so no one got stuck unloading burning hot dishes (oh, for clarification, the heat's from the machine: sterilization to kill germs, I think) from the dish machine. Except there were a few people who were very good at it and who got used to it (and consequently probably lost all nerve endings in their finger tips) who preferred to work there. In which case you mostly leave them alone because they ARE good at it. Speed is essential when the dirty dishes are coming in by the hundreds (no joke here).
But the dish room is humor too. The radio is always on. You may not always be able to hear it over the clatter but it's always on. I never knew any of the stations but that's to be expected and had nothing to do with the fact that I was in Davis. Mike is, I think, one of the few people who can actually not only make out what songs are playing, but sing along with most of them. Dish room is playing build-a-city with mug-crates and plates and cracking jokes that were loud by default because - well, dish room. Dish room is Mike blowing up an empty plastic bag (the sort that lines large milk cartons, as in the really large ones that you get in cafeterias) and sealing it, and then sending it through the dish machine again and again to see when it'll pop. It got to the point where every few seconds everyone'd crane their necks to see whether or not the square balloon of plastic will emerge from the other end, steaming, glistening, and triumphant but alas, the plastic was no match for the machine and it eventually popped, forcing us to seek other means of amusement.
My that was a long sentence.
Dish room is cleaning up after people and seeing after the details sometimes, going into each station (kitchenettes, don't hold me up on the spelling if you can guess what word I'm trying to spell) to see if there's any dirty dish that needs to be picked up, or if they needed any clean dishes or silverware. Dish room is looking for brooms and detergents and someone who actually knew what all those buttons all over the walls and sides of machines were for, and which one was to turn something off. Dish room is being repeatedly sprayed (I've started calling it "being baptized by the dishroom") while the people are spraying the machine down after the day's done (and darkness has fallen, off of the wings of night, har). It's rather hard to remain pristine after working there, and showering afterwards is more or less a necessity.
In other words, working in the dishroom is hot, wet, and hard. The only people I've ever heard who wanted to work in the dishroom were mostly shift leaders, so they can avoid talking to people. In other words, working in the dish room is jokes and radio. In other words, one of my fellow worker had put it: you have not really worked in the DC until you've covered either the pot room or the dish room.
20060728
20060724
Recap: Hell is empty
And they brought along some of the weather up here too, it seems. 104 in Davis is okay, 104 in San Jose is a tad too warm for the norm. 104 is a very bad time to start working on your garden in the sense that you get dehydrated even before your plants.
Moving has finally commenced to the closing stages now, except for the slight problem caused by, as mentioned above, the weather. The new place does not have any air conditioning yet, which can be very unpleasant. I'm considering camping out permanently on the floor, which is far more comfortable than the bed (which is still warm at midnight, I waited just to be sure).
Summer school's half way gone already, another midterm next Monday. Davis planning continues with unflagging zeal at least on the part of my parents. My only indication of preference have been for things that are durable and light enough for me to move by myself, consequently my parents have been looking at odd hybrid furnitures, since I seem (especially lately) to like spending most of my time on the ground.
That's it for this post.
Yep, floater.
Moving has finally commenced to the closing stages now, except for the slight problem caused by, as mentioned above, the weather. The new place does not have any air conditioning yet, which can be very unpleasant. I'm considering camping out permanently on the floor, which is far more comfortable than the bed (which is still warm at midnight, I waited just to be sure).
Summer school's half way gone already, another midterm next Monday. Davis planning continues with unflagging zeal at least on the part of my parents. My only indication of preference have been for things that are durable and light enough for me to move by myself, consequently my parents have been looking at odd hybrid furnitures, since I seem (especially lately) to like spending most of my time on the ground.
That's it for this post.
Yep, floater.
20060717
Recap: Of all the ways
Puzzling, those automated phone systems.
Especially when you try to access someone human through them.
"There are currently ZERO customers in front of you," said the system (only imagine the mechanical voice and the way it had of emphasizing the word "zero" because it was recorded separately). "Your current wait time is TWO minutes. The following conversation may be recorded for quality ...&c. "
After suffering an entire chapter on series and sequences in 12th grade, then again my first quarter in college, I only hope that the formula that these systems use is 2 + n and not 2n.
Though yes, that would explain a lot of things.
Especially when you try to access someone human through them.
"There are currently ZERO customers in front of you," said the system (only imagine the mechanical voice and the way it had of emphasizing the word "zero" because it was recorded separately). "Your current wait time is TWO minutes. The following conversation may be recorded for quality ...&c. "
After suffering an entire chapter on series and sequences in 12th grade, then again my first quarter in college, I only hope that the formula that these systems use is 2 + n and not 2n.
Though yes, that would explain a lot of things.
20060716
Recap: Left behind
This is a brief entry. One might consider it a "for the records" sort of post. It is a memoir of sorts, based on the things I found as I'm moving into the new house. Based on impressions. It's a glimpse into another sort of life, which is always a very curious thing.
How shall I begin but at the beginning, with the introdution and the so-called background information? The previous owner is female, hispanic, and looked to be about thirty from the one time I met her, nearly a month ago. She has two kids, one at the five-eight age range and the other barely a toddler. She was recently devorced and she was in a hurry to move out. She wanted to close the deal as fast as possible and presumably she needed the money.
All that is well. That is only the background information. Here is the other bits and bats that we can use to try to reconstruct something (as I've said, I'm curious, and this is a fascinating thing to focus the mind on). Many of the window blinds are bent, and there are odd scratches on many things and few small things left in corners of closets which she had forgotten to take with her. From this we can see that she is more likely to have a careless sort of nature, more likely extrovert than introvert. Her room is painted plain white, with rudimentary celing light and fan fixture, while the two other rooms for her children (one decorated as semi-nursery for the younger one) was elaborately decorated with patterned paint and special light fixtures that you see on toy catalogues at Christmas. (The lights, of course, were taken down right before we moved in.) Small problems with fridge and water fixtures, denoting again that either she didn't notice, or she noticed and didn't care, or didn't have time to care. Old toys in the backyard, she cares for her children very much. Tarp-ed down and wood-chip-ed over yard, no time for plants, though the grass seed, the foot-print shaped garden tiles and the half-constructed tiers at the front indicated hope, at one time or another.
The tiers had plants that have spilt over, the hoses are spider-webbed, the plastic rack have a wasp nest inside. They have seen better days. They have been neglected. The first stiring of woodchips revealed what must be hundreds of cigarette butts, a few of them fairly recent by their looks. A chronic smoker then, but one who cared enough about her children to smoke outside (there was no odor of smoke of whatsoever indoors)-- and then to hide the evidence of her indulgence. Antique-feeling mirrors and painted lightswitches. Impractical and, as far as color-combinations go, in bad taste, but spoke of personality and thought.
There was a small orange-colored hair clip in the nursery room, by the closet. The toddler's a girl then.
A yellow piece of plastic puzzle, of a shape that I recognized from this classic children's puzzle set that my mother had bought me before I could remember, that I still could not solve without a solution guide. She had tried to norish their intellect, then.
A red-pink mock-leather wallet in the hall's closet, empty and smelling of perfume. It is new enough, but the perfume matches that from her room, so it's been used one or twice. Then why is it abandoned in the lowest back corner of a dust-bunny infested closet?
The smaller bedrooms had stars and giraffe patterns painted on the light switches, respectively. The bathroom and the hall: rubber duckies and a lone cow boy. The living room have fluted lamp shades the kitchen floral-patterned window decor with ruffles. Why, then, is the plainest, most undecorated place in the house also the master bedroom?
Why is the entire backyard in a state of neglect and devoid of other living things (save for those opportunistic critters that have found their way in) except for one florishing bush of pink four o'clock, beside the rock, almost squashed behind the door?
Why does the master bedroom have what's possibly the only door in the house that doesn't have a lock? And why is the most somber place in the house (by color and feel), the living room and the master bedroom?
Most of all, why do people put themselves through this?
How shall I begin but at the beginning, with the introdution and the so-called background information? The previous owner is female, hispanic, and looked to be about thirty from the one time I met her, nearly a month ago. She has two kids, one at the five-eight age range and the other barely a toddler. She was recently devorced and she was in a hurry to move out. She wanted to close the deal as fast as possible and presumably she needed the money.
All that is well. That is only the background information. Here is the other bits and bats that we can use to try to reconstruct something (as I've said, I'm curious, and this is a fascinating thing to focus the mind on). Many of the window blinds are bent, and there are odd scratches on many things and few small things left in corners of closets which she had forgotten to take with her. From this we can see that she is more likely to have a careless sort of nature, more likely extrovert than introvert. Her room is painted plain white, with rudimentary celing light and fan fixture, while the two other rooms for her children (one decorated as semi-nursery for the younger one) was elaborately decorated with patterned paint and special light fixtures that you see on toy catalogues at Christmas. (The lights, of course, were taken down right before we moved in.) Small problems with fridge and water fixtures, denoting again that either she didn't notice, or she noticed and didn't care, or didn't have time to care. Old toys in the backyard, she cares for her children very much. Tarp-ed down and wood-chip-ed over yard, no time for plants, though the grass seed, the foot-print shaped garden tiles and the half-constructed tiers at the front indicated hope, at one time or another.
The tiers had plants that have spilt over, the hoses are spider-webbed, the plastic rack have a wasp nest inside. They have seen better days. They have been neglected. The first stiring of woodchips revealed what must be hundreds of cigarette butts, a few of them fairly recent by their looks. A chronic smoker then, but one who cared enough about her children to smoke outside (there was no odor of smoke of whatsoever indoors)-- and then to hide the evidence of her indulgence. Antique-feeling mirrors and painted lightswitches. Impractical and, as far as color-combinations go, in bad taste, but spoke of personality and thought.
There was a small orange-colored hair clip in the nursery room, by the closet. The toddler's a girl then.
A yellow piece of plastic puzzle, of a shape that I recognized from this classic children's puzzle set that my mother had bought me before I could remember, that I still could not solve without a solution guide. She had tried to norish their intellect, then.
A red-pink mock-leather wallet in the hall's closet, empty and smelling of perfume. It is new enough, but the perfume matches that from her room, so it's been used one or twice. Then why is it abandoned in the lowest back corner of a dust-bunny infested closet?
The smaller bedrooms had stars and giraffe patterns painted on the light switches, respectively. The bathroom and the hall: rubber duckies and a lone cow boy. The living room have fluted lamp shades the kitchen floral-patterned window decor with ruffles. Why, then, is the plainest, most undecorated place in the house also the master bedroom?
Why is the entire backyard in a state of neglect and devoid of other living things (save for those opportunistic critters that have found their way in) except for one florishing bush of pink four o'clock, beside the rock, almost squashed behind the door?
Why does the master bedroom have what's possibly the only door in the house that doesn't have a lock? And why is the most somber place in the house (by color and feel), the living room and the master bedroom?
Most of all, why do people put themselves through this?
20060714
Recap: Time is an illusion
No, this is not another rant about perception of time. I've had enough of THOSE already. This is just to report that, one month after being home, there have been very little change in very many things. When the deadline is taken away, the efficiency decreases. That is why sometimes I believe that mortality is a necessity. It is, after all, the ultimate deadline to the human life with few successful extensions (though the med department, I believe is doing their best) and no permanent ...absolution? And as that humanity is a composite of individual human efforts, therefore I conclude that the rapid progression of humanity is a result of limited life span of individuals.
There are, needless to say, plenty of questions and implications. I can cover a few of them, but even so it will be too long. Hence I will only list what I have accomplished sense summer begun:
- unpacked everything from the jumbo that came back from Davis
- repacked half of the stuff that I know I'll need for Davis
- repacked everything else possible for the move-in, which is still taking place
- unpacked all things possible after they have been moved, which is not nearly enough
- finished one acrylic illustration, as commissioned
- read anywhere from 5-10 books, an utterly insufficient number, considering the length of my reading list
- burned data backup disk
- performed routine computer maintenence on desktop
- cleaned, cleaned, and cleaned, for various places and various reasons
- wrote, to date, four programs in beginner's level c
- wrote, to date, 5-10 pages, 3 of which are in type, 2 of which may be marginally readable, as will see.
- 5-10 sketches, pencil or pen, needing significant modifications to be presentable, but yet were scanned without the said modifications
And that essentially concludes my list of what I have accomplished in the time of one month. I'll need to regulate myself better, provided that things stop changing long enough for my regulations to stand longer than a day.
There are, needless to say, plenty of questions and implications. I can cover a few of them, but even so it will be too long. Hence I will only list what I have accomplished sense summer begun:
- unpacked everything from the jumbo that came back from Davis
- repacked half of the stuff that I know I'll need for Davis
- repacked everything else possible for the move-in, which is still taking place
- unpacked all things possible after they have been moved, which is not nearly enough
- finished one acrylic illustration, as commissioned
- read anywhere from 5-10 books, an utterly insufficient number, considering the length of my reading list
- burned data backup disk
- performed routine computer maintenence on desktop
- cleaned, cleaned, and cleaned, for various places and various reasons
- wrote, to date, four programs in beginner's level c
- wrote, to date, 5-10 pages, 3 of which are in type, 2 of which may be marginally readable, as will see.
- 5-10 sketches, pencil or pen, needing significant modifications to be presentable, but yet were scanned without the said modifications
And that essentially concludes my list of what I have accomplished in the time of one month. I'll need to regulate myself better, provided that things stop changing long enough for my regulations to stand longer than a day.
20060707
Recap: In the face of chaos
There is something to be said about organization. There is always something to be said, unless there's something to be said about the LACK of organization which is still, more or less, the same thing.
There is something to be said about packaging. After so many boxes and so many inches of tape, I've realized that at this point, the smartest thing to do will be to start liking boxes. Why? Simple. It's either developing a tolerance and liking them, or hating them for the rest of one's natural life. Considering how often cardboard occurs in our lives, the second option would be highly impractical. It would earn you nothing except, maybe, a one way ticket to the nearest insane asylum.
Would that be paper or plastic now? Because those occur very frequently also. Though come to think of it, cardboard is a kind of paper too, isn't it? (Both inevitably made of tree-bits.) Would that be paper then? Okay, thank you. You have a nice day now.
Classes so far have gone smoothly-- and they are interesting which makes up for the fact that both of them have to take place over summer. (Have to admit though, if it wasn't summer I wouldn't even be taking those classes.) The need to drive daily have dimished my natural paranoia considerably but I'm still as far as I ever was from liking driving. It's a long, long road with no ending. And lots of stop signs.
Made steady, if not particularly significant, progress with reading in between everything else. I have five boxes of books. That is a lot. I'm still collecting.
There is something to be said about packaging. After so many boxes and so many inches of tape, I've realized that at this point, the smartest thing to do will be to start liking boxes. Why? Simple. It's either developing a tolerance and liking them, or hating them for the rest of one's natural life. Considering how often cardboard occurs in our lives, the second option would be highly impractical. It would earn you nothing except, maybe, a one way ticket to the nearest insane asylum.
Would that be paper or plastic now? Because those occur very frequently also. Though come to think of it, cardboard is a kind of paper too, isn't it? (Both inevitably made of tree-bits.) Would that be paper then? Okay, thank you. You have a nice day now.
Classes so far have gone smoothly-- and they are interesting which makes up for the fact that both of them have to take place over summer. (Have to admit though, if it wasn't summer I wouldn't even be taking those classes.) The need to drive daily have dimished my natural paranoia considerably but I'm still as far as I ever was from liking driving. It's a long, long road with no ending. And lots of stop signs.
Made steady, if not particularly significant, progress with reading in between everything else. I have five boxes of books. That is a lot. I'm still collecting.
20060703
Recap: But would that be white 0324 or 2416?
Paint comes in many varieties. There are six different shades of white that I've counted, and who knows how many there are still, lurking in the back of the color palettes, waiting to ambush the unwary? The paint comes in either flat, stain, semi-gloss, or gloss. Aside from flat, the others are water resistan. As the name implies, semi-gloss and gloss paint are shiny and, as the nice lady from OSH told me, are usually only reserved for the kitchen and the bathroom.
To say that do-it-yourself remodeling is bewildering is, in short, a heck of an understatement. And also-- plack is a funny word. Don't ask me why, but it is. Fear not, I know how to use it correctly even if it sounds like one of those words people spit out by accident.
On the bright side though, I had a bit of blue paint left at the end of the day, yesterday, and I painted my chair blue. To be honest I didn't really think that my parents would let me do it, but they did, so now I have a blue chair (pale blue, used to be a peeling coffee-brown) as a proof of my...what? Handy home-improvement skills?
Yeah right. But it was still fun to do.
To say that do-it-yourself remodeling is bewildering is, in short, a heck of an understatement. And also-- plack is a funny word. Don't ask me why, but it is. Fear not, I know how to use it correctly even if it sounds like one of those words people spit out by accident.
On the bright side though, I had a bit of blue paint left at the end of the day, yesterday, and I painted my chair blue. To be honest I didn't really think that my parents would let me do it, but they did, so now I have a blue chair (pale blue, used to be a peeling coffee-brown) as a proof of my...what? Handy home-improvement skills?
Yeah right. But it was still fun to do.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)