I pinched my median nerve during a shift scooping shakes. Yes, that’s the condition known as carpal tunnel syndrome, but mine went away after a while. I also strained my brachioradialis because of the awkward angle of the ice cream cooler. It opens on the top so I need to put my torso into it, literally, dipping myself into a cooler. My feet come off the floor and everything. The upside is that my forearms are becoming Popeye-esque in proportion. The downside is that this is mainly in my right arm, so people get the wrong idea.
On fryers, I fumbled a basket of popcorn chicken. I managed to catch it in time, but I ended up with a lot of the chicken in my apron pocket. With that, I officially became burned out on fryers and started taking on anything but fryers when given the chance. The fryer is off in the side of the kitchen and isolated from the sandwich station, the expediting window and most importantly, the radio. The one benefit is that I can sing as loud as I want without being self conscious because the roar of the range hood.
I worked the wraps station in the front. Skinny girls who stay up late make working wraps hard. The later into the night you have to make wraps, the harder it is to clean and close the station.
The easiest job by far is register. I’m getting pretty fast at it, too. Meaning that the rest of the staff has to work that much faster. I sort of feel bad. It’s kind of like burning ants with a magnifying glass whenever I send another sub sandwich down the line for them to make. It’s not all fun and soft drink distribution, though. I also have to wipe tables and take out garbage. It’s not so bad considering. If we didn’t serve so much ranch dip, the job would smell especially horrible, but luckily we serve a lot of popcorn chicken.
There’s also the issue of dealing with the caffeine junkies. Last week, the truck didn’t come so we were all out of Vitamin Water, and juice. But all we were out of that mattered were Rockstars and Nos.
The junkies. Were. PISSED.
At 12:56AM, a guy walked up to the register, demanded a Rockstar, and showed me an ID with the shakiest hand I’ve ever seen. Upon seeing our empty display case, he began jittering even more. He ended up buying a soft drink and chugging Vault like it was Jesus himself. We may have lost a great deal of profit that night.
I wanna move up in rank. I’m a tan-shirt right now. I can move up to grey-shirt, then black-shirt, also known as student supervisor. But my student supervisors think I’m crazy for wanting to. And my fellow freshmen think I’m crazy for wanting to continue working there at all. But I really like that job even if it’s my first. This “leadership” I hear about is fascinating. The first thing I’ll do if I ever attain the leadership is to suggest that we begin to serve fruit smoothies. The second thing I’ll do is paint on the wall a giant, black & white mural of myself looking skyward, patriotic and courageous.