Excessive

Hey guess what everyone? Today was another poorly thought out day full of bullshit! Yay! It seems all I ever write about is work, or more specifically, I just complain about work in detail, and perhaps this is a result of me spending most of my time there now (instead of school or the couch), and I realize it's not interesting to anyone, but really, it's all I've got to write about, and it's interesting (in theory) to capture these events and feelings in the logs of history for future reference.

Yes, it was another day starting at 5:40am, getting up to eat a bagel and cream cheese with a coffee, I leave the house by 6:10am or so, to catch the Southcrest for 6:18am. I get downtown around 6:25, and the 13 Wellington is always waiting at the Richmond and Queens bus stop, bus-driver-less. The bus driver, always the same guy, leaves the bus and wanders off, and there are usually three or four people, along with myself, waiting to get in the bus, and he usually leaves for ten minutes or so, eventually comes back, walking like a giant douche bag, and lets everyone in, and then continues to wait there until around 6:35am or so, and eventually leaves. When we get to the university hospital stop, he waits again for another five minutes or so, just sitting there, one stop before where I get off, until 6:50am, then he starts again and I get off the bus. That's my trip to work, I listen to music on the way, sometimes close my eyes and doze slightly to sleep... always the same, very routine.

So I started work at 7am today, and it was just myself and Jill, just two of us, and there were 90 people in the cafe for breakfast, 90. Ninety. What this means, is that Jill is stuck in the cafe the entire morning, in fact, she was stuck in the cafe until almost 11am, and even at 11, some ignorant server took an eggs benedict order even though our breakfast ends at 10am... it set us back even farther because instead of helping set up for lunch, Jill had to make more breakfast crap. Anyway, so yeah, I was alone in the kitchen to get everything ready. Everything being... cafe soups and sauces, CVG soups, chilli, meatballs, a mexican lunch, which is two salads, hot entrees, dessert... a picnic lunch for eighteen, which is sandwiches, cookies, salads, fruit... a hot business lunch for 16, which is hot entrees, fruit, dessert, three salads... and set up the pasta bar, which is four salads and twelve ingredients for the pasta itself, which we had very little prepped for due to the night before, so I had to pretty much refill each and every one of them, and also refill the pasta. About halfway through the morning it really felt like I was going to have a heart attack, I really felt like I was going to have an anxiety attack or something, and not in some weird way, but I was stressed out and running around and my blood pressure was up and I just felt like I had too much weight on my chest.

It was bullshit, all of those things that I listed up there is way too much work for one person. On top of all that, with all that work all on me to do, I was worried about getting it done on time, so I chose not to go to the morning meeting that Jeff usually goes to, but since he wasn't in, but I had so much to do, I chose to not go, and Jeff gave us a hard time about it, ignoring the amount of work put on two fucking people, and how much we were sacrificing to get the shit done on time. No fucking respect or appreciation, no recognition of the quality and speed of the work we get done, under the circumstances and pressure.

Lunch eventually came, and we eventually got all of the lunch stuff done and out of the way, although we didn't do any pasta bar backups, didn't set up the cafe line, and the kitchen was a terrible mess, with crap everywhere imaginable. On top of all the stuff we had to do, there was a plated dinner in the evening that had to be done, but there were also a bunch of platters beforehand that had to be done, so there was still like.. a full shifts work ahead of me, and that's not fair. I shouldn't be the breakfast person, the lunch person and the dinner person. I cleaned up, and that took awhile, and then I tried to get the platters out of the way, a cheese, a fruit, a crudite and an anti-pasto platter. I had to get all of that done before I could even start on the plated dinner, at by this point, when I was just starting these things, it was already 12:30 or close to 1pm, giving me two hours left in my shift. Of course, I had to slice cheese on the slicer cause no one else does, and blerh, it was time consuming. Kyle and Tom were scheduled to come in and help with this dinner, but they've never been trained properly like a person would be at a normal job, so being left alone to get an entire plated wedding or 74 ready is just unrealistic.

Jeff tried to play it off like it was fine, he just asked that I get all the platters done, and do the veg bundles for the plated, and by the time I got the platters done for the reception, he could see that there was no way I could get the veg done in time for me to leave on time, as it was already like 2:45pm at that point (and I was off at 3pm). He got the veg all ready for me, and I told him I would stay and do it, considering there was no way this wedding was going to be ready if I had just left when I was off. Kyle and Tom came in, and I tried my best to divide up work but I'm not a manager, I'm not a supervisor, I'm not anything. It shouldn't be my responsibility to assess the skill level and strengths of co-workers and assign them appropriate jobs. In fact, at a real job, it would come to 3pm, I would clean up my area and leave, and those who were coming in for the next shift would simply pick up where I left off, but no, not anymore.

I got the veg done quickly, and I could tell just by what had been done, what jobs were going on and just the state of things that there was some danger of things not getting done in time, so I stayed even later and trayed/plated all the desserts, cheesecakes. This lead to about 4pm I think, I honestly don't remember. I took a cab home, I wanted to get the fuck home, I'm sick of being at work late everyday, and I'm sick of feeling like I'm responsibile for everything that happens in that place. I'm not trying to be egotistical, but I honestly feel like if Jill or myself don't do something, it won't get done. If we stopped making butternut, or tomato sauce, or bechamel, or whatever it is, the place would fall apart. We do so much, but it always seems like others always have something to say.

Once home, I got another Brooklyn style pepperoni pizza from Dominos, because it was so yummy last time and I was so hungry and tired and sore from work, the idea of a good, hot pizza was sooooo tempting. I watched Star Trek: TNG while devouring half of the pizza in a matter of minutes. Afterward, I tried to play Phantom Brave, and I entered a random dungeon, with ten floors, to help level my characters, but I got to the last floor, after probably 30 minutes or so, and my dungeon monk died, and most of my characters were used up, and it was game over, all that time wasted, it was so discouraging, that I just turned off the game.

I played a level of Brothers in Arms, and played a few checkpoints in Far Cry but was getting super annoyed with the enemy AI and checkpoint system, and I think was too irritable and tired to put up with it, cause I was just getting frustrated. I turned it off, watched the end of an episode of The Shield, and then played Uncharted for about an hour or so. As usual, Uncharted was a lot of fun, at times the combat can be annoying, but overall it's satisfying, and the puzzles were cool. I'm about halfway through the game I think, or at least the save screen says my file is at 49% completion, which is cool, I don't need a game to be super long, the story is moving along and it's interesting and really fun to look at and experience, and the acting is some of the best in any game. I'm looking forward to playing Uncharted 2, but I think I'm going to play Ratchet and Clank when I'm done Uncharted, and then switch back to Uncharted 2, and then Ratchet and Clank: A Crack in Time, kind of alternate between them.

After Uncharted, I decided it was time to get ready for bed, because even though I work a bit later tomorrow, I still need to sleep. So at 11pm, I took a sleeping pill, turned on Jimmy Fallon and decided to write. That would be when I started this... Jimmy is over, and then I watched The Daily Show and now the Colbert Report is on.

Tomorrow I work at 10am, until 7pm, just long enough for it to suck balls. I didn't look at the event sheets for tomorrow before I left, because I was so eager to get home, but I know roughly what's happening... I think there is a lunch, but I don't know what kind, and I know there are two dinners... so I hope that most of the day is slow so I can just have some time to prep, and get things done, and have things organized... feel organized. The day after, Sunday, I'm in at 7am, which kinda sucks, cause I work late, won't get home till 9pm or later, and then I have to go to sleep right away and go back to work. Blergh.. I guess I should be used to it by now, but I'm not, but I still hate it.

Next week I've got Monday and Wednesday off, not two days in a row... but I'm not sure which I like better. All I know is that I can't fucking wait for a day off, to sit down and relax, and not feel stressed out.

I think I'll go to bed soon... yesssss... soon.

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