« Tired Whore. I am | Main | Double-Standard Whore I hate »

The Brink Of Insanity

Author's Note: This is going to be a long one, get a snack.

The food business is either in your blood or it's not.

It's physically and mentally exhausting, it's thankless, it's long days and late hours and you really have to be on the brink of insanity to enjoy it. But I do. I love every single minute of it.

So this all started Thursday night when we spent our time receiving our deliveries and running to places like the restaurant wholesale warehouse and Costco (yeah, Costco) for the items we needed off the shelves.

The first clue to how my weekend was going to go should have been when we were leaving the restaurant wholesale store and my flatbed cart hit a bump in the sidewalk which flipped a gallon of mayonnaise onto the sidewalk with a big "schpluck". (That is the best way I can describe the sound of a gallon of mayonnaise exploding on the sidewalk.) You can imagine my joy.

Actually, my real first clue should have been the asshole clerk who's always an asshole who was following us around the store whining about us watching our time and pointing to his watch. This place closes at 7:00 p.m. and they are fierce about getting out of there on time. (This guy is a real prick and we have complained about him before. And we're not the only ones who have complained but the owner of the place has made it very clear that they are in the wholesale business, not the customer service business so "just deal with him.". This is why we only shop there for emergencies.)

So anyway, as we are being stalked by Sir Whines-A-Lot it was 6:45 and we were headed in the direction of the check-out station
anyway. Finally, I snapped. I turned around and through clenched teeth said, "Here's the deal. You can either get off my back and let us get out of here or you can keep whining and I will leave this fully loaded flatbed cart right in the middle of this aisle and force you to put it all back. Choose wisely."

And he did.

But he continued to be an ass and I remembered that as the mayonnaise "schplucked" to the ground and I left it there for him to clean up. I know, I know. Not nice. But it was 97 degrees outside and after dealing with him, I just did not give a rat's ass.

Which reminds me - we are experiencing a heatwave and the average daily temperature is tapping out at close to 100 degrees F. Or as we say in these parts, "Hotter than the hubbs of Hell." Now, "F" normally stands for Fahrenheit but this weekend, it stood for "Fucking" - as in, "It's 100 fucking degrees and I cannot fucking believe we are serving 300 people in the fucking out-of-doors in this heat." Which made for a long weekend for The Potty Mouthed Food Whore and anyone who had to put up with me. (Or The Partner, she was no picnic, either.)

So it's off to Costco where things were running fairly smoothly until we were pointed at for buying 3 bunches of exotic flowers to decorate with. The Partner - the sweeter one of the two of us - actually said out loud, "The next dumbass who even looks in my direction is going to get beat senseless!" The Cute Costco Employee within ear shot said, "Oh, man. I love it when you guys are in here - you get to say the things we want to."

Ahhhh, such pleasant Whores we are.

So it's time for the big show and things were just not in our favor.

The extreme heat made foodkeeping a real challenge. Nothing says bummer like sending 300 people to the hospital with food poisoning, so we had to get our strategy in line and only get the food out at the very last minute possible. Which is fine as long as everything runs on schedule.

Which it didn't.

We were given explicit instructions as to the timing of the reception and while there are always allowances for human error, we rely on that schedule to serve food at the height of when it should be served.

(Man this is getting long, I hope you're not all face down on your keyboards.)

So food was to be ready at the specific buffet stations by 8:15 p.m. But a family friend took his time at the microphone to live out his fantasies of being Billy Crystal hosting the Oscars. The disadvantage we had was that there was no director shouting, "Cut to commercial!" So some things had to be brought back inside...and then brought back out again 20 minutes later after the last, "Did you hear the one about how the groom almost forgot his underwear..."

Dinner finally started at 9:00.

Things are flowing and our kitchen is buzzing and a lady with a baby appears. This reception was at a private residence so we were using the kitchen in the main house and apparently someone told this girl that the caterers also provided daycare in between loading platters and keeping the chafing dishes full.

So in she comes with darling baby boy and bottle in tow. "I have to help with the toast later and I want to eat first. I am watching baby for my sister so I am just going to lay him down in this room and I would love it if you could keep a watch on him. I won't be long, thanks!"

And just like that she was gone.

The Partner and I and our staff all just stood there, dumbfounded. What broke the shock-induced silence was the sound of The Darling Baby Boy crying.

So - The Partner grabbed The Darling Baby Boy and the rest of us went back to work loading and sweating and stopping at intervals to coo and make funny faces at baby.

Another strike against us was The Unwanted Sister-In-Law (for future reference, we will refer to her as The UWSIL). She's a raving bitch (who makes me look like Mary Poppins) and by all clues, no one in the family can stand her. She was apparently not given a job so she created her own title of Queen In Charge of Bugging The Hell Out Of The Caterers.

Every 5 minutes she was approaching one of our staff to ask a question that had nothing to do with anything other than to give off the image that since she was cavorting with the caterers that she must be somewhat in charge. This lasted for about the first hour of the event until I caught her rifling in our van.

(I am almost done, I promise)

I was taking a trip out to a buffet station when I saw the back door of our van open. So I made a detour over and found her going tipping over boxes.

"Excuse me, what are you doing in here?"

"Ok, well, you need to step out of my van, now. Go find your seat and sit there until you are asked to move. You are not in charge of this function and so help me God if you stop any member of my staff one more time for another one of your needless questions, you will be dealing with me."

She tried to retort but I lifted my eyebrow and said, "Despite what you may think, I take no pleasure out of being a bitch. So let's just save everyone a possible confrontation, ok?"

She left the van.

At least we know she's not dumb.

Anyway, after extreme heat, Billy Crystal at the mike, The UWSIL and The Darling Baby Boy, we finally packed out at 11:45 p.m. The Bride & Groom were darling and they were thrilled with us and with our work. So it was a success. But it was a long hot day and all we wanted to do was get to our shop, unload the van and go home.

And we had one more obstacle to face.

Apparently when we loaded the van, the door did not get latched properly. So as we're driving down the highway, the door flew open and a roaster oven lid that did not get packed in a tote flew out of the van and slid down the road behind us.

I pulled off the road, leaned my head down on the steering wheel while The Partner stared out the windshield. We said nothing - it was totally silent.

I got out of the van, shut the door, got back in the van, turned around, drove back to where the lid landed, pulled off the road, waited for traffic to wane, drove up to the lid, (thankfully it landed on the side of the road) The Partner leaned out her door to swipe it up, and we kept driving - still saying nothing.

When we pulled off our exit I pulled over in an empty parking lot where we looked at each other and started laughing hysterically.

I said, "Only people on the brink of insanity would do this shit for a living. You know that, right?"

"Oh I know", she said. "But we love it."

We really do.

--------

Posted by Foodwhore at June 20, 2004 11:39 AM