Finished

I’m finished in more ways than one.  I finished my walkway last Monday;

Its not exactly like the template because I found one of the ‘permanent’ slabs had a little shaved off the side so they wouldn’t fit together right. I had to drag the shaved one to the outside and move some around.  The whole ones are extremely heavy; I had to ‘walk’ them into place.

It looks rough now but it will get ‘grown in’. I’m going to plant Hens ‘n Chickens in those cut out spots. That area gets baked in the sun in the afternoons so they will thrive and fill in the harsh angles. Creeping Thyme is already planted near the front step so that will grow over the corner. I’m not a fan of ninety degree angles; it’s so unnatural.

I’m just posting this today because I had to work three days in a row!  Yeah, you can scoff and snort, younger people, but three days of getting up and going to work, working as fast as I can for 5 hours (yeah, five hours, OK, but I’m almost 63) with one 15 minute break, irritating music, harsh lighting and a grouchy boss is damned exhausting at this age.

My boss, who is famous for being grouchy and mean, was in an extra bad mood because so many things had gone wrong when he took the weekend off. One thing affected my job.

We used to get our cakes in a huge slab ( I’ll have to do a special post of all the slabs in my life) approximately 24″ X 18″, that’s two feet wide and possibly two or three inches high…. at best. We had to slice them in half, length wise, and fill them with icing. This is quite the skill to be mastered. There are a lot of fat tops and skinny bottoms before you get it right.

Back in the winter we switched to pre-filled triple layer cakes in smaller sizes. They are wonderful. They come in the larger size birthday cake so all we have to do it is plop it on a board and ice it. For the smaller cakes, we just cut in in half or quarters.  For special large orders….. stick two together. It saved us so much time, work and mess.

But last week the assistant manager did the ordering and ordered us the old cakes. Not only did I have to cut and fill slabs again, they had to be triple layer and cut differently to match the new sizes. All the time my boss is glaring and rolling his eyes because I’m not fast enough.

Any question I have to ask him, (oh, I do dread having to ask him something) he answers with something snarky implying how stupid you are….. not just me…. customers, too! It actually doesn’t bother me much anymore; I almost find him entertaining. There’s no way he’s going to fire me, I know too much!

Here’s a fun example: this happened yesterday. A woman came in and said she special ordered Savoury Turkey stuffing. We have bags and bags of stuffing bread cut into pieces , waiting in racks for Thanksgiving. We make tons of it with our stale bread. We slice the bread, then turn the slices on their sides and slice it into pieces, then they’re baked lightly on sheets and bagged up.

I’m looking around for the order and don’t see it. My boss is filling the commercial bread shelves when I ask him about the order. “It’s sitting right out on the counter” he says as if I’m blind and stupid. I look and only see sliced bread, I look all around again.  I sigh a sigh of dread and go back to him, “I can’t find it”   He’s so pissed off as he points to it and says, “Read the label!”  The sliced bread has a label reading “Savoury Turkey Stuffing”     Oh, silly me, I was looking for stuffing, like the three racks of stuffing waiting in our wings.

My customer is listening, wide eyed at his tone,  I start to put the six loaves in her cart just as my boss was walking by, “oh” she says, “I thought it would be cut into pieces.”

“You have to cut it up yourself” he says so rudely, I couldn’t help it, I had to laugh.

“Phew!” she says, “Is he always that way?”

“No, you should see him when he’s in a bad mood!” I said and laughed.

She shook her head and said, “I sure couldn’t work here.”

That actually buoyed me up for the rest of the day. I needed a lift…..

The day before I went to visit my aging aunt in the nursing home after work. I got home only a short time before Zumba but I decided to go even though I was tired: I need it for my mental health.

Yesterday, Thursday, I was so tired. When I got home I laid down, just to close my eyes for a bit, and slept for two hours. I woke up at 6:45 p.m., very hungry.

Today I am off. My place is a mess, my lawn needs mowing and my aunt needs new nightgowns. Good thing I have two days off…..

I’m finished.