Field Trip: Syrup

Like I said, I spend most of my time at work serving food rather than working in the dishroom. Hence, I will sometimes make little updates tagged "Field Trip", describing the other things I do (the idea is that I'm taking you on a field trip outside the dishroom, see?).

Today at breakfast, we served a breakfast version of the corndog—a sausage dipped in blueberry pancake batter on a stick. It sounds weird, and frankly, it is weird. (Though I give props to whoever was clever enough to come up with the idea.)

Each plate is served with a little syrup packet. The cheap kind that's basically straight-up high fructose corn syrup with maybe a bit of flavoring thrown in.

You're not fooling anyone, Heinz.

It amuses me greatly that it doesn't even claim to be maple syrup anymore, despite that maple leaf. Instead, it's..."breakfast syrup".

Oooh, what a world we live in.

Silverware

Today I worked the silverware machine.

This picture from Google is the closest approximation I could find to the one we have at the MTC.

Silverware was a good job. Better than some I've had (more on that in the future).

This is how it works:

The people on pit (the ones who are interacting with the trays) drop the silverware in a container of water with a big square strainer-type thing in it.

When that's full, we run it through the silverware machine once.

Then we dump the silverware on the counter and sort it into little cups.

Then we run it through again.

Then we dump them into bins and the people on salads/dessert/silverware come and pick them up.

The most philosophical part was sorting the silverware. You pick either knives, forks, or spoons and dig through the pile to grab them all. While the forks are poking you the whole time.

At first, I liked picking out the knives. They just seemed so friendly because they're nice and smooth and don't jut out obnoxiously at the end, like spoons and forks do. But the problem is that knives are heavy. Your wrists start hurting after you have a handful of 'em in each fist.

So later, I liked going for the spoons. They hardly weigh anything and the handles fit nicely in your hand because of the way they're shaped. But there weren't many of them.

So by the end of the shift, I went for the forks, despite the fact that they poke you all the time, because there were just so dang many. It was easier pick them out because really, forks were the majority, and besides, picking up the knives and spoons afterwards was more enjoyable when there weren't forks to poke you.

As I pondered these preferences, I learned a couple of important things.

1) I personify everything. Not just my laptop ("Toppy") or my little red car. Each type of utensil had a personality, I tell ya. For example, I'm pretty sure that spoons are women. And that forks are jerks.

2) Everyone and everything has merit. At first I didn't like the forks. In the end, they were the ones I picked out first. Give people a chance, even if they don't seem like "your" type of person. Everyone has a place. Everyone has merit.

À bientôt,

Camilla

An Introduction

Hello, friends!

My name's Camilla. I'm a BYU student working in the MTC cafeteria for the summer.

Charming.

Most of the time, I work the line shift, meaning that I serve food to the missionaries (or do a variety of other behind-the-scene tasks. That salad bar's not gonna refill itself, you know).

But on Saturdays, I work in the dishroom. Conveyer belts, noisy machines shooting steam, "The Pulper", you name it.

There's something about doing repetitive menial tasks that turns the brain to thinking. And let me tell you, the four hours I spend in the dishroom every Saturday are the four most philosophical hours of my week.

That is, until the mind-numbing repetition gets to me and I become a brain-dead zombie.

But before that happens, I am the dishroom philosopher. And so, my dear friends, I thought that I would share with you the lessons I learn in the dishroom every week.

À bientôt!

Camilla