Coversations with Gwen

I was on my way home from work last night and talking on the phone with Gwen, who was having trouble sleeping.

" I can't go to bed! Belmont is in my spot."
"Just slide him to the edge of the bed."
"I don't think that will work."
"Really, just grab his legs and pull him down the edge of the bed. I bet he won't even raise his head."

"Ok, I'll give it a try. I'm going to set the phone down. (in the distance) Ok Belmont! Who wants to go for a ride?
It didn't really work. I had to push him."


Belmont, for all his dumbness, is really good about two things. One, if I am taking him upstairs and someone else gets on the elevator, he will stay right by me and sit down without me having to tell him. And two, when I'm wearing my work clothes, he knows its time to go into his crate. I just touch the back of his neck and he sadly pads off to his little jail. He'll even open the door if its partially closed, turn around, sit down and look at me with his, well, puppy dog eyes. Too bad he can't learn any more tricks.

Tales From The Kitchen

-So I'm making prime ribs for the weekend, and I've been assigned a helper. Let's call him Mr. X. As the final step in the process, the prime ribs are rolled in a lexan (basically a big piece of tupperware) full of all purpose seasoning. With about a dozen primes left to go, we run out of seasoning. No big deal says I, I'll make up a new batch. Which I will also need for the rest of my kitchen duties that night. So I take ten minutes or so whipping up a new batch of AP in a clean lexan. When I'm done I set it down on the counter, hold my hand up towards Mr X in the "stop" position and say "Wait, don't use this". I then go off to get another clean lexan so we can pour a small amount of the new AP into it. What is the first thing Mr X does once I turn my back? Dip his hands, bloody gloves and all into the AP and start mixing it up further. Thereby contaminating an entire batch, when we needed about five percent of it for the remaining primes. So I had to toss it out, forcing me to waste evn more time making a new batch. All I could do was smile sadly...

-A young lady named Jammie was working the ovens station the other night (I was on fryers) Suddenly the kitchen supervisor comes back and says, dessert station needs a crisp, they've been out for awhile. Ok, says Jammie I'll bring one out. But she then gets lectured on how she should have brought one out right away. Her seemingly reasonable defence, that she had no way of possibly, you know, knowing they needed one fell on deaf ears. Not two minutes after she takes it out, the front of house manager calls back over the walkie that desserts needs a crisp. Jammie replies that she already brought it out prompting this reply "Ok. In the future bring it out before they run out." By now Jammies eyes looks like they might pop out of her head over this, but then no fewer then three more people came in and said something along the lines of "Do you know they need a crisp on desserts? They've been out for awhile."
Finally I turned to her and said "Oh and by the way Jammie, we're putting cover letters on our TPS reports now."
Fortunately she thought that was pretty funny. It's not the kind of thing that can be easily explained.

-The other night I happened to be out on the buffet line. I saw a guest walk away from the carvery after getting a slice of roast beef. "Are those the buns for the roast?" he asked pointing to something. "No" said the carver, maintaining a much straighter face than I would have been able to "the buns are over on the salad bar."
What was the guest pointing at? A bowl of mini cream puffs on the dessert station.