PHOTOMOGRAPHS!

I used to be playful at work and take photographs!













AWWW LOOK! I'd forgotten about the tomato plant we grew outside, right beside the rat trap. Back when we had pest control come by every month ... those were the days.



Aww, and my boss got me a cake for my b-day. Even though I'd told him I Hated cake, esp. white cake. But it's the thought!



I came in on Thanksgiving to cook Brisket for the Friday special! I actually cared!



The dish machine on its first day ! And look, I still have some energy.



The boss's trash can.



Look ma, we're cooking outside! When I first started working there we did some cooking out in the back by the dumpster.



I'm starting to run out of energy about this time.



For a short time there is art-student gay dude who makes my life at the diner fun and bearable! HE makes ham sculptures!



My boss bought turkeys to give to the homeless but he never cooked them nor did he take them to the shelters so he said I could have one. And it was goooooood.



I cut my hand on a particularly stressful day. Boss did pay for sutures & tetnus shot, yay!



On Thursdays I have to cut all these grapes in half, one by one.



On Thursdays I also have to shred all this chicken (after it cools down a bit)


And I cut up a LOT of fruit.

Day after Oh-sha

I felt trepidation about going to work this morning, more than usual; but things were pretty normal. My favorite server was there and it broke my heart to lie to her when she asked me if I had called OSHA. I had to though, to protect myself, because she would not be able to keep that info to herself. At any rate, the day was alright, although I had a tough time of it due to being so sick the night before. And the cook... the cook was... I'm pretty sure he was hung over. Or high. Or hung over from a really good high. I know him. And I know he did something last night. He's supposed to be in A.A. and he was doing really well. But he is one of those people ...
So he was OK but not up to his usual self. Why do I think he was high? He came into the back, spooned up some UNCOOKED macaroni and cheese (the noodles were cooked, but the cheese was not melted and there was raw egg ummixed sitting in a pool in the middle of the pan) into a bowl and ate it. I watched this in slow-mo and said "Hey, dude, that's not cooked." He continued to eat it. I told him it had raw eggs in it and that did not stop him. So we are back to having a main cook that is high at work. I thought we were past that. Oh well.
The other cook came in and took up the slack because the lead cook was...not quite right, obviously. Second cook was in a pretty good mood: Probably because his mom, who owns a restaurant, had asked him to come work for her and now he's getting into that groove, and will probably abandon the diner soon, and you can tell it makes him happy to think of leaving. Lead cook was talking about how badly he wants out of the diner too. Favorite waitress was talking about how so and so had offered her a job and she ought to go take her up on it.
One of the customers told me they heard from a friend of a friend that the manager/lead waitress is selling drugs from her apartment. She's been in prison, that one, don't know what for, but I wouldn't be selling drugs out of my home if I had been to prison, I don't think. The fact that she is able to buy all kinds of nice stuff for her apartment (she was telling me she has a very nice TV and Wii and such ... and I wondered how she could pay for it all. Now I think I might know). But that could just be a rumor. I dunno.
My boss didn't show up until the last of the day. I'd texted him twice asking him questions about stuff I needed to know but he never answered. I found out later he said "He'd had a rough day yesterday and had gone to the lake to fish." When he came in he did not speak to me but spoke through the manager. (His lackey). Then he informed us all that the diner would be shut down for four days next week, "Because everyone needs a break."
Well, then someone else came in and said it was because they were fixing the air conditioner. I'll believe THAT when I feel it. So we speculate that he has to get the wiring fixed due to the OSHA citations, that and/or fix the A/C. But such little notice is pissing everyone off including me, because people could have planned to take a vacation if he had given notice. If it is the OSHA stuff, I feel responsible, but I was ready for that to some degree. I didn't think of people losing out on the money from being closed down for repairs. But I don't think that is the reason because OSHA just told him to get a junction box correctly capped off and a cover put on the fuse box. I don't think that would take four days so maybe he is really fixing the A/c which would be a freakin' miracle. I don't know why he chose to do that without giving us all any kind of notice. But I get four days to go job-shopping. And rest, and hang out with sister and friend. And rest.And do yardwork.

OHSA (oh shit)

I wrote OSHA a couple of weeks ago. I didn't expect them to reply much less show up unannounced but boy howdy when she walked in with a clipboard I was secretly rejoicing right up until she told me there was nothing they could do about the heat. Or the fly bites because I'm the only one that will talk to her about the flies. The other employee that had complaints about the fly bites .. .would not talk about them to OSHA.
When the inspector walked in my boss was sitting at a table with some USFOODS salesmen. The moment she showed her ID badge, my boss had two employees go in the back and staple the OSHA/Employee Rights posters up on the wall. That sucked. I wanted OSHA to see that he was hiding that information from us. Funny thing is the moment the posters went up on the wall, everyone was standing around staring at them and reading them as if they had never seen them before. (Well, they hadn't).
Well OSHA lady said she needed to talk to a couple of employees. The eighteen year old went first. Then I pretended to not want to talk to her because I have a class at five. My boss told me I had to talk to her then he changed his mind and said "WHy don't you go on, if you have class?" I think the light bulb went on in his head but I said "No, no, I have time."
I identified myself to the woman as the one who wrote OSHA and she gave me her card and told me if I was fired or my hours cut, due to the inspection, to call her and they would open up an investigation. I'm protected under the whistleblower's act.
I got to class about four fifty and the teacher didn't show up until five thirty: by which time I was feeling VERY ILL. I realized at that time that I had eaten some salad at work today. And I should not have eaten that because it made me very sick, which I am right now. My temperature is 97.2 , I have chills, and diarrhea; same as the last time I ate at Taco Bell in Anchorage *SIGH*.
Well, I'm not looking forward to going in tomorrow, my boss ... is going to have some choice words to say about all of this. He's going to assume it was me and give me holy hell, probably make my life shittier than it is. I don't care. He got cited for bad wiring in the building, I think that is about all they could cite him for. Well at least the posters are up on the wall now, and if he takes them down I'm calling my OSHA friend, who said they got here as soon as they could, what with the Gulf Oil Spill.
My knees are weak from today and from being sick and I'm really worried about how I will be treated by people at work but you know, someone has got to protect the lives and well being of others and if I didn't do it, someone was going to end up being hurt at some point.
When I drove off my boss was outside the back door standing by his fishing boat talking on the cell phone. I guess I ruined his fishing trip for the night. Damn, I suck.
I had to leave class early, due to needing to not be there. First of all I was FREEZING and secondly I needed some real private time in the bathroom... remind me not to eat at work. Unless it's oatmeal.

Same as it ever was

Got in this morning and there was a huge mess. I'm used to that on Monday mornings. Food all over the floor, no prep done, didn't have what I need for the special. As predicted I text my boss and he doesn't answer for hours. Finally he does and tells me to make Cole Slaw. We have no celery seed! So he brings that in time to make it for lunch: some very old celery seed from his house. But at least I have some.
Reaching into the fridge for lettuce to make the salad for lunch, I see that someone, namely my boss, has stuffed about eight Boston butts into the Veggie / dairy fridge. And they were wrapped, and badly wrapped I might add, in foil. So, there is pork butt fat drippings on everything in the fridge. That's where I keep my lettuce, my carrots, my boiled eggs for chef's salads. Meat does NOT go in there, ever. And so he had stuffed all those butts in there and I had to get them out and clean the fridge and everything the butts had dripped on. I was livid of course.
I walk into the dining area and see that my boss has put TWO floor A/C units out there, WITHOUT having VENTED them to the outside. They are not vented at ALL. And the hot air is blowing onto one customer from the back of the unit while another is enjoying cool air. I am shaking my head at the logic or lack of logic when one of the servers comes to the back dragging one of the LG floor A/C units. She says "Are you good with these kinds of things?" (she wants help draining the water out of the bottom of it). I'm in the middle of cleaning the veggie fridge and trying to prep for the entire day and clean up the dish / prep area because it was left in an unholy terror mess from the weekend, and she wants me to stop and help her drain an A/C unit. I tell her to leave it alone, I don't have time to do it right now. She picks it up and proceeds to pour out the water into my prep sink, getting the entire prep floor wet, I'm shaking my head. I won't offer her any help because she won't tip me out. It's a stand I've taken and won't bend on. You can't offer me two bucks at the end of the day, I'm not helping you anymore.
Anyhow I mop it up, and go on to the next thing, which is cleaning the mop sink. It's heinous and the flies are congregating in there. I don't know what is so hard about rinsing out the mop and hanging it up. But apparently it's too taxing. I kill flies, then I receive my oatmeal from the cook. I go to get brown sugar out of the store room and find: the boxes the LG units came in, clogging up the store room. It's getting so you can't get to anything in there. Boxes of things my boss has bought and intends to return to the store when he's used them a few days; I say INTENDS because he never does return anything. He buys stuff, it breaks, or gets broken by a clod, of which we have many, and then the thing gets stuffed in the store room and never leaves. So eventually he has one of his lackeys put whatever it is UP INTO THE ATTIC. I've been up there, and it looks like someone has just thrown stuff up there, literally, just opened the hatch and tossed shit up there. Plates, utensils, broken crock pots, you name it, its up there. If he bought it and meant to return it and never did, it's up there or in the store room. He bought one of those wacky wavy inflatable green men and set it up every night when he first was open at night. That fan and green man is still in the store room taking up room. He probably would have thrown it up in the attic if it were not for the fact that that huge fan comes in handy when the grill hoods stopped working last summer. Oh, that was fun. The entire place got all smokey and people couldn't breathe and eyes were tearing up and everyone was coughing. That happened many times before he paid to have the fan fixed.
My boss asked me for help with his phone today. I guess he figures since I know computers, I know phones, which is not the case. But I asked what the trouble was. He had fallen in the lake while fishing, with his cell phone in his pocket. Well, the photos on his cell phone wouldn't transfer to his new phone. He couldnt' resist showing me the photos. They are all of him with some fish he caught. He goes Bass fishing. That's what his new thing is. It was golf, now it is fishing. He wants me to comment on how beautiful the fish is but all I can think of is how much repair on the A/C unit could have been bought for the money he spent on the truck, the boat and the fishing gear.
My boss leaves to go fishing, leaving me as he always does to close. When I am finally done mopping I remember that one of the servers is outside pressure-washing the back area where the fly-ridden dumpster is . This server runs a pressure-washing business on the side. Well when I am done I go out and tell him I am leaving. He says he needs me to leave him my key. I have never left my key with anyone, and I don't like doing so because if I dont' have a key and it's time to leave tomorrow, my boss is going to have to wait for me, which he HATES, or he might not even be there, in which case I will have to wait for him to get there to lock up. IT's a hassle! I told the server guy I didn't want to leave the key. He came in a moment later saying he had called the boss and the boss told him to tell me to leave the key with him. I think that is fishy, I doubt he did call the boss, but at this point I am beyond caring. Server dude had just told me he didn't feel like arguing because he was one step away from 'getting fucked up' (he's in AA too). I tell him to call his sponsor and to make sure I get the key tomorrow. I am beyond caring, because this guy is being a total dick, and the boss could not care less and is out fishing. So I leave my key, with great trepidation.
People always want my stuff at work. I hide my stuff, and so my stuff is always clean and useable. I have had the same oven mitts for a year now, and they are (were) in pristine condition. (Oven mitts need to be clean and free of holes and grease to work properly! And if you think that is obvious, you are right, but these people are OBLIVIOUS and Do NOT care!) So last weekend I had left my oven mitts out. OH NOES! They got used, and used hard, and in one weekend they went from useful to ... nasty. And guess who it was that did it? My boss.
He doesn't understand that the reason everyone wants to use my stuff is because I keep it in working order. Everyone was borrowing my knife, my oven mitts, etc. Until I started hiding stuff. My boss hates that I hide my stuff because he wants to use it but he's the worst offender. And he doesn't see that monkey see, monkey do, and if another employee sees him abusing my stuff and giggling about it (I know he does! ) well of course they are going to do it too. And so from now on I have to bring my stuff home with me or at the very least, put it in my trunk. The problem is, at the end of the day I'm so tired, I forget.
Couldn't find my sharpies today. I had hidden three sharpies and made the mistake of showing one of the cooks where they were. All 3 gone today, except the one I had taped string to and tied to the spice rack. I keep waiting for someone to cut the string and take off with it.
They all make fun of me for going to great lengths to hide stuff and attach stuff to things, but then when all the other ones are lost or broken, and mine come out of hiding, they appreciate that I hid them. At first I thought it was the employees just being typical and thinking "oh who cares if I steal these sharpies, the boss has plenty of money" or "who cares if I ruin these oven mitts, the boss can buy new ones"... but then I realized it was the boss himself setting the precedent. And how can you fight that?
Such pure chaos in there. Sometimes, like today, I walk around in circles ... because I was trying to do something, and can't find something, and want to write it on the shopping list, but can't find a pen, and when I do find a pen I can't find the list, and when I do find the list, It's a mess, and so I rewrite it to be legible... and then I go to do the thing I was going to do, and find that someone has used all the ... say, sour cream, to make a dip for their chips. And so I have to text the boss, who may or may not answer.
He used to ask me to go to the store, back when I first started, and I did a few times, but when I got back from the store, I'd find the boss sitting in the office, the servers sitting in a booth, and my dishes all piled up, all bus tubs full... and overflowing. I said I would not go anymore because my work piles up while I'm gone. So now he goes, the boss ... and that in itself is a hassle. He comes back from Sams's with a giant truck load of stuff, and we have to get it off the truck and into the diner, through those plastic fly curtains, that try to choke me every single time. And most of the time there is no where to set anything down, so we pile it where we can.
Quite often he will drop a can of green beans or drop something else, and it will roll around on the ground and he will pick it up and bring it in and set it on my prep table with dirt on the botton and sides.
And those fly curtains, the ones that choke me (plastic strips hanging from the door frame)... when exiting the diner through that door with a greasy pan to pour excess grease into the grease bin outside, the grease gets on the fly curtains. And other things get on there. People grab the plastic curtains with grimey hands, or push through them with a overfilled trash can, and they get all manner of crud on them. And who is going to clean those things off??? They are gross. I see no one else stepping forward. I'm putting it off as long as I can.
My boss used to have a Cadillac. He used to carry hamburger in the back on the leather seats. You'd go out to the car to get the meat and there would be hamburger blood all over the car seats. And the next day you'd see his kids sitting on those seats knowing full well he never cleaned them off. I'd cringe. But now he has the truck, so at least that's good. He'll park in front of the dumpster to unload the truck, and we'll unload it while he sits at his computer. he forgets he is parked in front of the dumpster, and so the property owner (Asian guy) comes over and tells me to get my boss, and tell my boss to move his truck, because the garbage man might come to empty the dumpster. And I tell him that my boss doesn't listen to me. And so the Asian guy goes in and finds my boss and yells at him and they lock horns and go round and round. And all my boss has to do is move his bloody truck to stop that from happening but he won't. Usually he forgets that the tonneau cover is open and leaves it that way, and it will start raining and the stuff in there gets wet and there's food in there that's spilled from some catering job or some package of food that burst. I swept some elbow macaroni out of his truck bed the other day. A package full. It wasn't easy, it had gotten wet and was stuck to the truck bed liner pretty good.

Do I have to go in tomorrow?

Oh, it's my least favorite time of the week. Sunday night, and I don't want to go to bed because I know that when I wake up, I have to get ready to go to work. Although I don't think of it as a job anymore. I think of it as some kind of special Hell set aside for me to get through to see how tough I really am. This is my third summer there and I have to say, I didn't think it could get worse but it did. For a while, my boss was being cool, about six or seven months ago, I looked forward to going to work. Everyone was in a good mood, and it wasn't too cold or hot or anything. Occasionally my boss would stand around helping and talking to me and it wasn't horrible by a long stretch. He even bought me an iPod about a year ago. He'd gotten one and I had been playing with it and he brought me one one day from Sam's club and I was so happy.
Back then (it seems like eons ago) he gave me a raise every few months, and he'd give me a bonus here and there, you know, twenty bucks, or even ten, no matter, I was happy he was thinking of me. He made noises about getting insurance for us, fixing the air conditioning, buying us some floor mats.
Something changed dramatically and now when he comes in, he sits at his computer, reading e-mails and surfing the internet, buying stuff.HE's always buying something. He's got about fifteen E-bay auctions going at any given time, he's got fishing gear catalogs laying around. He flew out to California not too long ago to buy a Dodge Ram Hemmings Diesel Supercab Harley Davidson edition. I hear it was only fifteen thou. I hear it is only six thousand to fix the A/C unit at work.
He bought a bass boat not too long ago, and about a ton of fishing gear to go with it. He moans about how he was up late fishing until Midnight. And then he got severely sunburned last week from fishing without sunblock. Oh did I mention he also has a Harley Davidson? And all the gear to go with that as well.
Anyhow, the man rarely shows up at the diner until way later in the day unless he has to bring something from Sams' club. He won't leave us notes as to what he expects us to do each day, and unless it's a set special (we have set specials Tu, Thur and Fri but not Mon and Wed) then we have to guess what we're having. We text message him around seven a.m. and if we are lucky we hear from him about ten or so. (lunch is supposed to be ready by eleven!) Quite often, he doesn't bring the food needed to make the special until it's getting uncomfortably close to eleven. Quite often the regular customers will be asking what the special is (it's amazing how many people plan their day around what our diner is having!) and we can't tell them and they seem to really be let down by that.
I get to work at six forty five or so to start at seven. For about a year I got to work early and didn't clock in but started working anyway and clocked in on time. I stopped doing that about the time my boss became a pure dickhead. I gave him a lot of time, that's for sure. When the bonuses and the raises stopped, I stopped being uber employee. Now it's all I can do to get through the day. I walk in and the reality of it hits me and I lose my smile. I've hated the job since I started, since I realized right off the bat it was a dump, but... I had a vision of making it something. We won 'Best Breakfast in Northern Alabama' on an internet contest in the area. I never told my boss that I and another employee sat up all night voting over and over. I wanted us to get in the paper so my boss would be happy. I was still trying to impress him then. Get in the paper we did! And we were really swamped for a long time. Well into the next year, we had people waiting for a table. And I worked six days a week and paid off a lot of bills , but I began to get tired.
Eventually I got slower and slower and had to work five days a week. He opened up for nights, and the night crew never did a thing that resembled work. I would come in to find no prep done, they'd used up all my prep and left me to do prep again first thing in the morning. And the floor would not even be swept, and the fridges not wiped down. There was always meat blood in the fridge, broken eggs in there, raw chicken juice dripping onto the raw hamburger, because not one of the night time employees knew one thing about food safety, least of all the manager, who was a friend of the boss's who needed some extra money. His idea of being helpful was to rearrange all my spices so that I couldn't reach 'em, and to plant herbs out front, that no one ever watered or used.
So I was very happy when he shut down the night time shift. Now, Monday through Friday, if I prep stuff it stays prepped. And I get to keep my floor clean for five days. But when I come in on Monday, all hell is broken loose over the weekend. I dont understand how a growed-up man like the weekend dishwasher can't handle the volume a forty seven year old woman does all week. But he can't.
So I come in and clean it all up, get it back to rights, label all the stuff that is supposed to be labeled, get it back into ship shape because we are ready for the Health Department to come anytime. It's been three months since our last inspection. Usually when they come, I do a whirlwind tour and get everything set to rights quickly. I put paper towels in the kitchen dispenser (boss says not to use them, though, they are expensive!) (dont' ask me what he expects us to dry our hands on. I guess our pants) ... although since then the dispenser has been taken off the wall to put in the men's room. So I just have a roll sitting on top of the ice machine.
I throw away the (always) expired buttermilk he has in the fridge that he put there a long time ago for making Chess pie. He put Chess pie on the menu (his mother's recipe) but he never takes the time to come in and make it. We never have Chess pie. In the newspaper article it says to come in and ask the cook to make you strawberry shortcake biscuits. Because the boss made them for the newspaper reporter and said he loved making them for customers. Well, you just try to get the cook to make you one of those, I dare you. 1) we never have any strawberries except on Thursday and 2) the cook doesn't have the slightest clue how to make it. In fact the cook is just that, a line cook. Let me tell you that he did not know the difference between butter and margarine. I had to enlighten him.
So last Friday was another shit day, Briskets cooking in the oven at four hundred degrees because the boss didn't tell us to put them in earlier, so he comes in and rolls his eyes and grunts angrily at us because we are not mind readers and I get to work back in the back with the oven set at four hundred. And get this! the boss was getting set to cater a party on Saturday, for which he had cooked about fifty pork butts, ON THURSDAY, and PUT THEM IN A COOLER to sit until Saturday. He left a note (which I will post here) that was supposed to keep us from opening the coolers. Granted, they stayed pretty warm in there. (They were wrapped in foil) but I don't think that is a legal method of keeping meat for two days. At any rate, the note mentions one of the servers (I blurred it out to keep her anonymity) who I happen to really dig. She's only 19 and the boss gets on her like a tyrant about things. Also her sister who is 16 works there too. And the sixteen year old is in my opinion the best server we have! Anyhow, I didn't think it was a very nice note. I don't know why my boss can't just leave a note saying "Don't open these! Trying to keep the meat hot!" Also : I don't know why he can't leave notes for stuff we need to know like putting the brisket in early. Or what we're having for a special.
Recently boss man made it so we have to pay for our meals. Half price, which would be cool at say, Pizza Hut or something, but I refuse to pay for pure shit. And that is what that diner serves. Literally if Scatman is around, haha. Anyhow, I refuse to pay for that food, so I don't eat unless the cooks give me something they were going to throw away. Which they do! And when I walk in in the morning, the cook brings me a pan of oatmeal. Every morning. I don't pay for it, no one says anything, it's just the cooks paying homage to me because I save their ass on a regular basis. I do so much for them that they follow around behind me doing stuff for me too, it's pretty tough there and just like in an army, we recognize we won't make it through a single day if we don't have each other's backs. And that is how I look at it, like I'm in the military doing KP... I have to make a game of it. I know that when I go in in the morning, there will be a hundred flies and food on the kitchen floor and meat juice all over the fridge inside and out, there will be brown lettuce and wilted salad and wrinkled tomatoes and brown hamburger patties because no one seems to be able to wrap them worth a crap.
There will be waitresses who don't tip me out, who stand around talking half the day while I bust my ass. There will be the regulars, who I need to write a poast about, because they drive me straight up a tree all by themselves. There will be the same cars in the parking lot, the same nasty disgusting coffee brewing, and the same smell of red -eye gravy in the air.
And I'll have my tired feet, my headache that starts as soon as I walk in (I think the water heater leaks gas), everyone asking me what to do (because I'm the only who knows what to do! I dont know why a dishwasher is the only one who knows what to do but that's the way it is) and I'll start the countdown until I'm free again and can come home and take a shower. And do a shit load of homework wishing I wasn't too exhausted to put on some nice clothes and go fill out more applications.
Tomorrow I will lift that fifty pound sack of sugar that no one else will empty into the bin, I will rinse out that nasty mop that no one else will rinse, or hang up! I will take all the rotten and spoiled food out of the fridges, check the expiration dates, refill all the chemicals on the dish machine (no one else does that: when I leave, I suspect it will not get done, ever, and the dishes will come out looking like pure hell) and empty the scrap screens and clean the floor drain and sweep the store room and empty my boss's trash (full of Mountain Dew bottles and cigarette butts) (he recently lost all his teeth to drinking too much Mountain Dew but that didn't stop him!)(he got dentures) and wash his ashtrays (I have to do something nice for him every day. IT's the only way to balance the hate that builds!) and I will begin saying the serenity prayer over and over and over.

The fly bites.

I have fly bites on my ankles. At the place I work, the flies are so aggressive that I am constantly stamping my feet like a horse. Would that I had the long tail too; those flies are so invasive. The dumpster is right next to the back door and the owner of the property refuses to move it. Despite those long plastic strips hanging from the back door frame, the flies still come in droves. When I take out the trash, I open the dumpster door and see a moving wall of white: an army of maggots crawling up the sides of the container. I have gotten up close and personal with those little buggers and I can tell you that they are fast and they are tenacious.
*Look, a pic of me when I was first sober and glad to be working at ALL.

I have to do the laundry at work. Our diner is attached to a motel that is owned by a man whose skinflintery excels that of my boss (my boss is the diner owner, but not the property owner). There is a guest laundromat. I wash the diner towels in those machines. I feel pity for the motel's customers who wash their clothes in the same machines I wash those greasy towels in...but there's nothing I can do about it other than wipe them out when I am done. For a while we were having maggots in the cook's towels, because that bucket o' towels we set outside on the grease trap (which is right next to the dumpster, yeah, it's FLY PARADISE!) and the flies were lovin' laying their eggs in that mass of towels that had hash browns, egg yolks, grease and all kinds of yummy stuff on 'em. I'd go to wash the towels and before you can say "jesusfuckingchristgettheseoffme" I'd have myriad maggots crawling up my arms. Once in a while one would make it up my sleeve and boy howdy, you wanna talk about something giving you the hibbity-jibbities! I'd shake the towels out into the dumpster, letting the bucket maggots redeploy with the dumpster maggots. Now, shaking maggots off towels into a dumpster is not such a really wonderful thing. Because sometimes a maggot will fly into your face. And if you had the hibbity-jibbities already, that will give you the serious creepy-crawlies tenfold. Especially if one lands anywhere near your lips. The great thing about dealing with the heebie-jeebies that come from maggots landing on your face is that it prepares you fully for emptying the lint screen of a dryer that has just dried maggoty towels. What you clean off that lint screen I'm pretty sure is considered a delicacy in some other country. I would look at the fried maggots (you can't shake them all off the towels. Some simply will not let go!) and think to myself, "Wow. Isn't that a lovely smell."
Once I got the majority of the maggots off the towels, I'd take them into the diner to pre-wash in the sink. And I was always fascinated by how they could survive bleach water. They can crawl straight up stainless steel too. AFTER being douched with bleach water. And they can crawl very very FAST. After a few times realizing that if I turned my back for a second they'd be up and over the sink, I quit doing that. It finally dawned on me that I needed to soak the outside towels in a mixture of degreaser and fly spray. And that ended my bucket o' maggots routine.
I have tried to decrease the number of flies in the dumpster but really, there isn't much I can do other than spray some fly spray in there from time to time and when they empty the dumpster, pour in some bleach. But my boss doesn't buy enough bleach for me to really go to town on that. I have to conserve. Because I never know when he's going to get me more bleach. So we toss our huge bags full of food scraps in the dumpster and the flies go in there and lay eggs and then for some reason they fly out of that smorgasbord and into the diner. I was talking to a coworker yesterday about this. "Why do the flies want to come in here? The dumpster is perfect, plenty of food, it's hot in there, moist...dark...why leave that fly palace and come in here trying to eat my legs off me? They must be the suicidal ones." (We talk about flies a LOT. Because there are so many of them).
When I get to work in the morning, I spend about fifteen minutes killing flies. I am always reminded of that old folk tale, "Fly-Killer" where the country fellow has notches in his belt and boasts of killing "Seven at a time" and people think he is talking 'bout killing people but he's a fly-killer. Yup that is me, folks. I spend some time killing flies in my area and then later I go out into the dining room and kill the ones on the left side then I go to the bathroom area and get some there too. I used to try to be discrete about it but the flies are so bad now that I'll be killing flies right on the table while people are eating. I came out into the dining room the other day and saw a couple eating at the corner table (for some reason the flies most like the corner tables!) and there were three flies on just one diner's straw. I can't for the life of me figure out why customers put up with that shit. My boss won't buy fly traps. Because they are too expensive. What he does is spray fly spray on everything at night when he is in there alone. He did it once while I was still in the building. I felt sick for two days. He sprays it prolifically and I shudder to think about people eating with the utensils and plates that have fly spray on them. But there is nothing I can do, except write to OSHA. Which I did. I haven't heard back from them, yet.

SCATMAN.

YUP. The title says it.
There is this guy. He's about sixty something I reckon. Overweight, walks with a cane, wears overalls. Comes in very clean, sits and chats with the server. Orders water and a soda and then gets his food. He eats, and sits reading the paper or anything he can get his hands on: reads until the urge hits him. Then he gets himself up out of the booth and makes his way to the men's room,at which time I sigh heavily and go get my elbow length black rubber military chemical handling gloves, my bleach water, a handful of towels and a trash bag. And I wait.
About fifteen minutes later he emerges...sits down at the booth, and I steel myself to go in and check. Once in a while he's done nothing more than pee (and he doesn't flush). But usually he has crapped all over the toilet. Sometimes he gets it on himself, and some on the floor, too. And I clean it up and grumble and swear I'm going to ban him from the bathroom. I wash my hands and arms then sanitize them while imagining how I can keep him out of the restroom in the future.
But the other day he came in, did the same routine, then when he came out and sat back down, I knew I was in trouble. Because he had shit all over him. I use the word shit because it is a powerful thing, shit. Especially when you are faced with cleaning up copious amounts of it. I had my buddy the cook go in to scout the situation (and to witness it (!) because people think I'm making it up) and when he came out he looked as if he had seen a... no strike that. He looked like a ghost. I thought he was going to pass out on the floor.
I got my cleaning supplies and went into the bathroom. The moment I opened the door I had to fight to keep my gorge down. I have never seen so much human feces scattered loosely in one place. And I used to work at an old folks' home. It looked like someone had set up a sentry gun that was loaded with SCAT and when the old man came in he got nailed with it. I was busy, too. I had biscuits in the oven I needed to attend, I had full bus tubs that needed emptying, I had food to prep. I had a handful of things I needed to be doing, and taking ten minutes to clean the bathroom put me not only in a bad mood, and made me ill, but it put me way behind. And the sad thing is, no one else saw it but the cook. The server was oblivious to the shit all over the guy. They all wondered what I was doing when I hauled the trash can out to prop the door open, and was throwing everything in site into it to haul back to spray down (the toilet brush, the plunger, etc. all had to be washed and sanitized a few times over). The trash can itself was covered. The man had obviously tried to clean it up (and in the process covered the paper towel dispenser and the soap dispenser!) but to little avail. I was overwhelmed with the task, and ill-equipped (OH WHY did I not bring my gas mask to work that day???), and found myself just spraying the entire room down with bleach water. OF COURSE I had worn my clogs that day: the clogs with the holes in the top. (I had ordered proper footwear but it hadn't arrived yet) So I had shit on my socks! I had to wash my clogs and change my socks (I have been dealing with an ingrown toenail and the doctor had advised me to wear roomier shoes and change my socks often). So!
I drag all that feces covered stuff back to the dish room and begin washing it in the mop sink, I wash my shoes, and I can't breathe. I feel shaken to my core, and I comment to the cook that for some weird reason cleaning that bathroom has fucked me up: I haven't felt that way since the time in basic training when they were firing live rounds over our heads! I had a hard time recovering from that bathroom experience and I know it was made worse by the knowledge that that man will come in again and there is nothing I can do to stop it, and I will always be expected to clean up after him. As I was cleaning up his mess, he was sitting only a few feet from me, talking calmly with another 'regular' ... who also didn't notice the shit all over the man. The scatman finally got up to leave and calmly began walking out, and had the nerve to turn to me and say "You be good now!"
The conflicting emotions within me were hatred for my boss for making me clean that up (he didn't make me, I just know it's my job) every time that guy comes in, hatred for my boss not telling the man he can't go in the bathroom and do that every couple of days... and pity for the man himself. But really, if you know you are going to cover the bathroom in shit every single time you eat at a place, why go there? I want to tell him I don't get tips, and it's hard enough working there without the extra crap he looses in there for us. Now I have a very hard time going in the men's room to change the tp or paper towels: I know I didn't get all that shit. And I can't get the smell out of my mind. And I hate to htink of what sort of emotional reaction I'm going to have the next time he comes in and sits in the same booth (the one we employees use to eat at!)(which is by the way the only cool spot in the diner.)