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.