Day 1: Minimizing food waste

First day seemed to go pretty well. Got a second tour of the kitchen, more specifically my new workspace. Then watched some more training videos... This time it was the kind that shows you how to do your job. A lot of the sandwiches are extremely similar... Then they gave me a laminated sandwich-building reference card while I worked. I used it. Frequently.

There are procedures for everything. Which is a big change from my last job (small-company design job), where with a lot of things the protocol was to just go-with-the-flow. That was nice in a lot of situations, but sometimes I'd get frustrated because of the lack of organization in the company. But in this situation, once one is familiar with everything, it seems like they've pretty much perfected the streamlining of sandwich-building. I guess it *has* been several decades in the making, though...

Everyone was pretty nice to me. The girl stationed next to me (at the grill, and later at the register (on the other side of me)), was very helpful. She gave me a practice bun and wrap so I could get the hang of wrapping things, told me what goes on each sandwich, where to look when someone has a take-out order, etcetera. I would have floundered much more without her.

In the training video, and according to the highest manager (so really, just in theory...), food must be thrown away once it's past its holding time. That's a safety measure, so no one gets unhealthy food. It's also to ensure the quality of the food, since no one wants chilly fries. Well, in practice I quickly learned that rule gets slightly stretched. We don't want to waste too much food due to the recession and all that noise. So there were a few times when the "holding time" timers were reset. Huh. That's one way to make sure all the food gets used, I suppose. Just lengthen the holding times. But someone frequently checks the inner temperatures of the food, so at least it's likely that no one is getting sick from this practice.

Oh, my uniform. When I asked for size 'medium' at my orientation, I didn't realize the shirts were unisex. They hang down to my upper thighs. Huge. And bright. I could make a tent if I sewed the two shirts together. Awesome. At least I have to tuck them in, so it's not *as* noticeable. But when I walk to work, I sweat like crazy because there's no breathe-ability, and no cloth in my armpit area, due to the sleeves hanging down so low. Ugh.

I haven't decided yet how standing next to the grill all day makes me feel about meat. Honestly, at this point, a burger still sounds pretty tasty. We'll see if that changes.