The Finite

I know now that I have passed a major threshold in my residency at the Gr1lle: I no longer ask questions; I merely demand keys. Since I know where everything is stocked now, I only need to defeat the security lasers and autocannons that safeguard the ice cream bunker.

Of all the bright-eyed young freshmen that trained at the Grille last summer, only Alex and I remain. All the rest have moved on to the next phase of their lives. (Unemployment probably.)

So far this year, I’ve been working register a disproportional amount. I don’t know why it gets a bad rap. It’s out in the fresh air. There’s no getting squirted in the face with ice cream. And there’s no risk of emo burns. (So called because the angle that some people reach into the impinger causes the edge of the oven to touch their wrists.)

Things aren’t terribly boring like others say. Sometimes people have palindromic balances. For example, someone’s account had $197.91 left. I always make sure to point this out to them to liven up their night.

Of course, there’s the dealing with freshmen. But I’m a TA after all. I’ve had training. When describing the menu to freshmen, I divide it up into fresh, fried, cheesy/toasted and sweet.

Of course, the one item that doesn’t belong is the baked potato, but who orders those anyway?

Fryers was easy to pick up again. It’s like riding a 375° bicycle. Only now there’s no more crowding around the central Subs touchscreen like the monkeys from 2001. Now, there’s a second black monolith that the person on fryers has to themselves.

We of course have a new flagship song. The one from last year, that played over and over on the kitchen radio so much that I have become classically conditioned to start whistling it whenever I smell Canola oil was Katy Perry’s “Hot N Cold”. The song to be playing incessantly over the radio this year looks to be Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face”.

I’ve also almost fully developed a preparation technique. I use Ataru with elements of Makashi technique. I was of course influenced by Master Luke’s Soresu, and ended up mixing that with Djem So, which is where I started my training.

The Makashi influence is from Hope and Audrey although Hope deviates noticeably close to Juyo/Vaapad. I fear she treads dangerously close to the Dark Side.

Big stuff going down at the Harrison Gr1lle. We now have replaced our entire front display, which used to hold potato salads and fresh fruit. Now it holds about a hundred cans of Rockstar and two containers of yogurt. We finally got our priorities straight.

With the start of the new semester, we get new shift assignments, new coworkers, and new supervisors. I’m now shifted for every Thursday and Saturday. The coworkers are the same pretty much: ordinary college freshmen who probably would rather be somewhere else. I’m the exception. I get a little too “into it”. (When I ask for a “sitrep”, the others look at me like I’m crazy.) The new super is a little more eccentric. He put the Team America soundtrack on the stereo. We were singing it the rest of the shift. I like that the song “Everyone has AIDS!” is incredibly contagious.

We still have some issues left over from last semester. Lately, there have been ridiculously sized pizza zits forming while the pizzas are in the oven. You know what I’m talking about; when the cheese develops an air pocket and swells up. I’ve seen em up to the size of an ostrich egg, almost extending beyond the bounds of the crust.

Popping a pizza zit is so heartbreaking. It’s like killing a unicorn. To prevent such tragedy from befalling us again, we are sometimes required to use a jagged, serrated knife to mercilessly stab the unbaked pizzas to pop any air bubbles and abort any potential unicorns (if prep has not done so already).

Now, I cut my teeth on last semester’s Sunday night Hammer. So Saturday night shouldn’t be that bad, right? The heat’s off of us. The dining halls are open and any potential customers would take advantage of that. It’s a damn babysitting mission.

They made me eat those words.

How? Well, I had to make food for them to eat. They got to eat food; I ate words.

We had to triple team the wraps station to get things out on time. Hope was in the vital behind-the-front-window position. (Think of it as Captain Picard’s big comfy chair except instead of a starship all you get is a touchscreen, a knife, and a spatula.)

Ordinarily, the prep work would gradually cease as orders came in and the “engine” revved up to speed. But we hit a couple of hiccups on the way, like how I “misappropriated” some chili and the unwelcome bacon presence (UBP) that sent ripples through the order circuit by necessitating remakes. Yeah… my bad, guys.

The touchscreen flared an angry red for all the order listings that had persisted for more than 10 minutes. We spent the better and most frantic part of 2 hours fighting to get back in “the white”. The white was salvation. The white was safety. The white was the second shift. The mounted cavalry that routes the enemy. Air support that terminates a battle. Gandalf and the Rohirrim. We needed to survive until 2100 hours or risk perishing beneath a mountain of order slips, buffalo chicken and nacho cheese.

Bit by bit, we fought. Toasting, mixing and frying, we clawed out of that crimson damnation. Finally, the second shift flooded into the kitchen to help push back the onslaught. We emerged from the battle oil, cheese, and syrup-splattered, but we had survived. We’ve done the impossible. And that makes us mighty.

And then we did dishes.