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| At home, a clean, well-lighted place |
I have been maneuvering through daily life one-handed for
the past three weeks after washing a wine glass in too big a hurry. This brings to mind
similar accommodations after my mishaps long ago in restaurant
kitchens. There were cuts and punctures (by which I discovered your living
bones are actually pale green), burns or scalds (as on the eve of my wedding)
and electrical fires (just two, but one was truly spectacular, with orange
flames rising behind a chest-high bank of drawer-like ovens and bursts of sparks
reflecting off steel-paneled walls).
Commercial kitchens are all straight-lined, right-angled steel and tile and the managers of those in schools and hospitals take the health inspections seriously. Early in my days as a part time galley slave I discovered that some retail restaurants can be vastly more casual about them. The two cafeterias I worked at while still in school were hygienic opposites. My mother was the kitchen manager of the one, and held herself, me and the entire staff to an “eat off the floor” standard of cleanliness. I doubt that eating from any surface at the other location was a truly prudent choice.
Commercial kitchens are all straight-lined, right-angled steel and tile and the managers of those in schools and hospitals take the health inspections seriously. Early in my days as a part time galley slave I discovered that some retail restaurants can be vastly more casual about them. The two cafeterias I worked at while still in school were hygienic opposites. My mother was the kitchen manager of the one, and held herself, me and the entire staff to an “eat off the floor” standard of cleanliness. I doubt that eating from any surface at the other location was a truly prudent choice.
I was unsettled by the state of that kitchen from the moment
I walked through it to reach the closet-like office in the back. There was standing water in the
pock-marked concrete floor. Water bugs scurried ahead of me to dark corners where, I found out later, they hung out with the rats--all of whom had been given names.
Every counter I saw was sticky, every cook’s apron was stained and smeared.
The interview with the heavy-set, balding manager was brief (“You’re tuberculosis
tested? You’ve had a tetanus booster recently?”) and paperwork for a transfer
completed. Whatever misgivings I
had, economic expediency meant that come August when my sophomore semester at
the U of A began and we were newly installed in married student housing, I needed to
transfer to this more conveniently located branch. Doing so meant I could
maintain my latest promotion (from line-server to 3rd cook!) together with its
nickel raise past minimum wage, I could get there on a Suntran bus, and perhaps
I would not be the only new employee. From the look of the place, no doubt a whole new crew
was being hired.
Although I’d taken the bus home from the dorm every Friday afternoon during my freshman year, I was anxious about riding the bus four miles one way after a one mile walk from married student housing to the bus stop three nights a week. As it happened, the commutes to what I later named the E. Coli Kitchen were uneventful. The adventures were all onsite.
Patrons were fewer, generally older, and obviously poorer than the clientele I’d known. The older staff greeted their regulars with a fierce, defensive recognition of their common struggle to make do and get by. In a mix of compassion and carelessness, they combined questionable leftovers into menu items unsanctioned by the out-of-state corporate officials and offered these at lower prices. I could not reconcile this rough friendliness in the front of the house with their unconcern for anyone’s immune system in the back. I hoped that no one lingered over their meals. The safest course was to eat while the food was still well above the 140 degrees that inhibits pathogens.
The cooks’ intent was patently kind and I cannot say these plats du jour were inherently unwholesome, but their preparation was alarming. The cooks stopped short of actually smoking while handling the food, but any soup seasoned with fire-purified ash would have been safer than the one made with vegetables taken from the tub stored in the walk-in refrigerator under seeping boxes of raw chicken. As third cook it was my duty to keep that cold box clean, and that first night I wondered how long just ago my predecessor had been fired—or had quit.
My matter-of-fact re-organizing and scrubbing of the walk-in seemed to please the head cook. Trouble was, I was only there from Friday to Sunday. When I walked in for my second weekend shift, she jerked her chin over her shoulder toward the walk-in from where she sat on a milk crate in the back doorway, saying, “Hey, Miss College, grab a rag and get to. It’s been waiting for you all week.” Now I wondered how and with what the health inspector was being paid off. It couldn’t have been free meals.
Every Friday night for six weeks, I closed my eyes to the pervasive dirt, grease, and spills in the kitchen. The soured, always matted floor drains were harder to ignore. The walk-in, as foul as it was, became both my duty and refuge. Hiding out in there meant I could avoid inadvertent comparisons to my mother’s kitchen that might land me in even more unpleasant cleanup. It helped, too, that the particular dank odors of the cold box were subdued in the still, cold air, that 40 degrees is not all that cold, and that the freakish metabolism of a nineteen-year-old allowed me to stay there for a long time.
On my last night, I spent most of my shift in the walk-in as usual. I threw out the latest round of unidentifiable fermenting objects. I sorted the remaining pans and used a big black Sharpie to label them with their contents and the date after first sealing them in fresh, tight plastic wrap. I wiped down each rack after first peeling away the thin but perversely elastic layers of congealed sauce that stretched from rod to rod of the open shelving. I scrubbed the crusted floor so that it could actually be seen to be tiled, although the grout remained black. At length, I scooted the scrub-bucket of bleach and detergent through the doorway toward the pot station and pushed my hip against the heavy door to close it. The door latched to with a satisfying click as I leaned back on it. While resting there I saw a giggling, shrieking line-girl run past me, followed three steps behind by a maniacal pot-boy swinging a drowned rat (Fred?) by the tail.
I walked slowly to the office, where I set down my apron on the manager’s desk. He raised an eyebrow, saying, “Couldn’t take it anymore, hunh?” I mumbled something pleasantly innocuous, but I recognized a strange new emotion as I made my way through the parking lot to the bus stop. I could not remember feeling contempt for another living person before.
Although I’d taken the bus home from the dorm every Friday afternoon during my freshman year, I was anxious about riding the bus four miles one way after a one mile walk from married student housing to the bus stop three nights a week. As it happened, the commutes to what I later named the E. Coli Kitchen were uneventful. The adventures were all onsite.
Patrons were fewer, generally older, and obviously poorer than the clientele I’d known. The older staff greeted their regulars with a fierce, defensive recognition of their common struggle to make do and get by. In a mix of compassion and carelessness, they combined questionable leftovers into menu items unsanctioned by the out-of-state corporate officials and offered these at lower prices. I could not reconcile this rough friendliness in the front of the house with their unconcern for anyone’s immune system in the back. I hoped that no one lingered over their meals. The safest course was to eat while the food was still well above the 140 degrees that inhibits pathogens.
The cooks’ intent was patently kind and I cannot say these plats du jour were inherently unwholesome, but their preparation was alarming. The cooks stopped short of actually smoking while handling the food, but any soup seasoned with fire-purified ash would have been safer than the one made with vegetables taken from the tub stored in the walk-in refrigerator under seeping boxes of raw chicken. As third cook it was my duty to keep that cold box clean, and that first night I wondered how long just ago my predecessor had been fired—or had quit.
My matter-of-fact re-organizing and scrubbing of the walk-in seemed to please the head cook. Trouble was, I was only there from Friday to Sunday. When I walked in for my second weekend shift, she jerked her chin over her shoulder toward the walk-in from where she sat on a milk crate in the back doorway, saying, “Hey, Miss College, grab a rag and get to. It’s been waiting for you all week.” Now I wondered how and with what the health inspector was being paid off. It couldn’t have been free meals.
Every Friday night for six weeks, I closed my eyes to the pervasive dirt, grease, and spills in the kitchen. The soured, always matted floor drains were harder to ignore. The walk-in, as foul as it was, became both my duty and refuge. Hiding out in there meant I could avoid inadvertent comparisons to my mother’s kitchen that might land me in even more unpleasant cleanup. It helped, too, that the particular dank odors of the cold box were subdued in the still, cold air, that 40 degrees is not all that cold, and that the freakish metabolism of a nineteen-year-old allowed me to stay there for a long time.
On my last night, I spent most of my shift in the walk-in as usual. I threw out the latest round of unidentifiable fermenting objects. I sorted the remaining pans and used a big black Sharpie to label them with their contents and the date after first sealing them in fresh, tight plastic wrap. I wiped down each rack after first peeling away the thin but perversely elastic layers of congealed sauce that stretched from rod to rod of the open shelving. I scrubbed the crusted floor so that it could actually be seen to be tiled, although the grout remained black. At length, I scooted the scrub-bucket of bleach and detergent through the doorway toward the pot station and pushed my hip against the heavy door to close it. The door latched to with a satisfying click as I leaned back on it. While resting there I saw a giggling, shrieking line-girl run past me, followed three steps behind by a maniacal pot-boy swinging a drowned rat (Fred?) by the tail.
I walked slowly to the office, where I set down my apron on the manager’s desk. He raised an eyebrow, saying, “Couldn’t take it anymore, hunh?” I mumbled something pleasantly innocuous, but I recognized a strange new emotion as I made my way through the parking lot to the bus stop. I could not remember feeling contempt for another living person before.
Oh the lovely jobs we get in our youth! This place sounded like a prize, you should have given your mother a tour.
ReplyDeleteMy only experience of working in kitchens was KP in the service. I remember eyeing 10 bazzilion potatoes. They had a machine that peeled them and we only had to clean the spots the machine missed and cut out the eyes. Sounds simple but the amount of potatoes was just staggering. Air Force kitchens as you might imagine were spotless. I think I learned contempt for potatoes.