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Socchan ([personal profile] soc_puppet) wrote2021-08-29 10:55 pm

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Phew! Work today was a roller coaster, and I don't mind saying so!

To start out with, I'm going to bring up passport dinners again. I'm pretty sure I've written about them before, but just in case and/or as a refresher: On the first Wednesday/Thursday of the month, the hotel restaurant hosts a "passport dinner" with a focus on cuisine from a different region each time. For a further gimmick, if a customer gets their "passport" "stamped" for a certain number of these dinners, they'll get one free! Anyway, these dinners are largely a whole lot of extra work and a pretty big headache on top of everything else going on, and don't always (or even usually) line up nicely with quiet times in banquets, for reasons I can't entirely comprehend. Scheduled to start in September, we're to switch Passport days from Wednesday/Thursday to Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday, ostensibly with the same number of reservation spots, to better spread out the labor.

For part two, I'm going to mention that we recently lost a restaurant worker that made us cut our restaurant hours down significantly: We're now only doing lunch and dinner on weekdays (with a three hour break between the meals), and a day-ish long brunch on Saturday and Sunday (with the restaurant closing at four). This means the bakery had to ramp up biscuit production, and they're a rather labor intensive job since we switched recipes.

This week, I was originally scheduled to work Friday, then Monday through Thursday; Favorite Boss (who I learned recently gets gender euphoria from all pronouns, so heads up for the rest of the post on that) asked me if I wouldn't mind trading Monday for Sunday, so I could knock out all the dinner rolls for Passport in a single day, with no students in the bakery to compete with for space, etc. The type of bread scheduled was rye. I naturally assumed this meant it would be marble rye, and mentally prepared for just that.

When I arrived at work, one of the first things I did was check the line (where food is typically assembled and plated, if not cooked outright); to my dismay, we were low on two of our three main desserts, and completely out of the third. Worse, we had no backups ready of any of them. On top of that, my To Do List, which I had previously assumed would only be marble rye rolls, was rolls and tart crusts; the walnut tart crusts are definitely one of our more time consuming recipes.

Restocking the line took priority for me, so I restocked what bread I could and informed the server side of what desserts we had available and how much of each we had. I then rushed to the downstairs store room, which is normally locked and unoccupied on Sundays but whose door was propped open when I arrived today, to fetch two flourless chocolate cakes from our stores. Shortly after I got back upstairs and had collected the pans I would be putting the cake into (as well as for the other desserts I assumed I would be making that day), Favorite Boss showed up and took over on desserts! I mean, I still ended up cutting and traying up the flourless, but that's still a lot less work than cutting the flourless, making fresh meringue for the seasonal tarts, and making new coconut Panna Cotta, so I was entirely on board.

When I was about to start measuring out ingredients for the rye rolls, I thought to double-check with Favorite Boss what size they should be, and Favorite Boss informed me that not only was my hopeful guess of two ounces right on the money, but that I might only need to make one type of rye! Ze wanted to check with our recently promoted Executive Chef first to be sure, though, so could I start on the tart crusts instead?

Well, sure! And I was already relieved enough not to be making all the desserts that the idea of having to make marble rye after all still didn't seem so bad, whether or not it turned out to be the case.

Time passed. I commented that it was taking a while for Executive Chef to get back to us, and Favorite Boss said that if Executive Chef had been the one to contact us, he'd be blowing up the phone every ten minutes for updates, which I had to agree with. Ey also commented that she'd be downright annoyed if it turned out that Executive Chef had changed his mind and decided to just order in pre-made dinner rolls without telling us beforehand, especially when xe'd already rearranged my schedule with bread making in mind. Around 1:30, Favorite Boss went off to have a meeting with another important chef and our Food and Beverages Coordinator. Twenty minutes or so after that, all three of them came to visit me in the bakery and inform me that A) Executive Chef had been exposed to Covid (and maybe even tested positive? Or his wife had? I'm a little shaky on these details), and would be taking the next two weeks off, and B) that, as a result, the restaurant proper would be closed until Sept 8th, and Passport would be rescheduled, so I definitely didn't have to make any rye rolls!

While I'm sad for Executive Chef, I'll have to admit that having the restaurant closed for a couple of weeks will be a relief. The bakery staff have barely been keeping our heads above water with increasing restaurant and hotel event demands; on top of that, the campus café had closed for renovations some time before Covid, and the hotel had been forced to take on its food prep load, which was enough work in the bakery for at least a whole 'nother person. With classes having started up again as well, so too had the café demands, with a particular focus on "bar" type food (as in, food in the shape of bars). They'd been pushing for rice krispie treats and scotcharoos in particular for quite some time. So, since I was released from bread duty, I decided I'd make up a batch of one of those bars. We didn't have any marshmallows, which decided it for me: Scotcharoos.

Time wound on. I started the chocolate and butterscotch chips to melting right away when the tart crusts were done, because the scotcharoo topping melting always takes the longest of the whole process. I got everything else measured out, got the corn syrup and sugar melting on the stove, added the peanut butter, and mixed them with the generic crisped rice cereal—only to realize that I'd mis-measured the cereal amount! We'd only had enough peanut butter for a half recipe (which still should have been enough to get main campus off our back about bars, at least for a few days), but I'd accidentally measured enough cereal for a full batch. "Well, shit."

I ended up borrowing the peanut butter I needed from the line with a promise to pay it back later, and the whole thing extended the making time of the recipe by longer than I like to think about. Eventually, though, I had a whole recipe of scotcharoos made up... except for the topping, which was still melting.

Around five in the evening, when I was wrapping up cookies to send to the café, the bakery lights abruptly went out. "Hello?" I called. F&B Coordinator answered and apologized, not having realized anyone was still there! She turned the lights back on and asked if I was at least going home soon. "I have to finish these scotcharoos, and the dishes first. And the café stuff. After that, though, I'm outta here!" Cheered at how little I apparently had remaining to do, she wished me a good evening and left.

It took me another two hours to finish with everything. I had originally been scheduled out at 7pm, but left closer to 7:20. Normally I try to get in a dinner break, since one of the perks of the job is free meals twice a day, but with the entire rest of the food service staff having left before five, I assumed that there wouldn't be any available and didn't even bother to check. (I did make off with a cheesecake and a bread pudding abandoned by students earlier this week, though, as compensation.) Tired and hungry, I finally made my way home.

I had initially planned to stop by Burger King on the way home, so I wouldn't have to think too hard about dinner, but ended up abandoning that plan after waiting in the drive-thru for an inordinately long time and coming to the conclusion that they were most likely under-staffed and would be better off without me adding another order onto the pile. With four cars coming in behind me, I'm pretty sure I made the right choice, even if it did mean I ended up throwing together a sandwich and a half at home instead of eating pre-made greasy comfort food.

Anyway, that was my day. I'm sincerely hoping that we can use the time until the restaurant opens back up to stock up a lot of things we generally need for the bakery, and also that I can use my day off tomorrow to finally get that job application properly filled out and sent. (I'm also hoping that Favorite Boss will let me leave a few hours early sometime this week, since I was apparently the only food worker who didn't get to do that today.) I don't care how many "We really appreciate how long you've stuck this out with us!" emails I get, I need a job where I can breathe. (Literally, actually, but that's a post for another time.)
gwydion: (Default)

[personal profile] gwydion 2021-08-30 06:48 am (UTC)(link)
Wow! That is way too much!