Don't spill the mild sauce.

Welcome to "Adventures in a Professional Kitchen - Part Un." For those of you who are unaware, I'm on day two of my permanence in the Stool Pigeons kitchen. By choice. I love it. Even with today's events. Let's start with.....

1- The girl who was supposed to close this evening showed up "sick." We were in the middle of dinner rush when Dave (co-worker) said, "I guess Pooh Bear is no longer here. I've made her last eight tickets." In walks the manager for the evening, confirming that she is not feeling well. Aforementioned manager then turns to me and asks how long I'm planning on being there this evening. My reply, "I have to open. I cannot close." The night continues, steady but not slammed, and I'm starting to feel a little proud of myself. My ticket times are good. I haven't had anything returned by a customer. Life is good.

2- And then I dump the parmesan cheese into my cooler. I was trying to refill the chives from the line. Soooo, I pulled out the cambro (container) with chives, which apparently was resting on the parmesan cheese cambro. So, down into the bottom of my cooler it went. No big deal. Things could be worse. Note to self that pride is a sin. I am humbled by the fact that I now have to pull out everything from my cooler to clean up the cheese. This cooler contains extras of things I might need in the middle of service. Things like extra celery. Wings. Ranch. Twice baked potatoes. And.....

3-All my containers of wings sauces. I pull out all but three containers with success. How difficult can this be? I have opposable thumbs. Difficult when you take into consideration that this evening I was on the fry station. The greasy fry station. So my be-gloved hands are pretty slippery. Two hands into the cooler for the mild sauce. Two hands out with the....oh wait...that's one hand on the container and one hand on the lid of the mild sauce. Now the mild sauce is on the floor. All FOUR gallons. What's even better about this story is that the door to my cooler was open. Mild sauce on the floor. Mild sauce on the inside of the door. Mild sauce on the back wall. Mild sauce on the floor of the cooler. mild sauce on the two remaining containers of sauce in the cooler. Mild sauce on my pants. Mild sauce on my face. Mild sauce, mild sauce, mild sauce, mild sauce, MILD SAUCE!!!!! And then I had to make more mild sauce because it was no longer in the cambro. It was everywhere but....Of course, this is when orders came in for mild wings. 70 mild wings on the very next ticket.

4- Closer inspection of the situation revealed this was not TOTALLY my fault. The morning crew (thank you, Dee) made only half the sauce they were supposed to make. They also put the sauce in a broken cambro. You see, cambros are like commercial tupper-ware. They have a lid that fits around the lip of the container. If the lip is broken, the lid doesn't have anything to grab onto, and mild sauce ends up on everything.

Important life lessons were realized tonight. Use two hands. Look and think before you act. Close the door behind you. Things can always be worse. A job that makes you happy will ALWAYS involve dirty work. Ask for help, and keep moving forward.

Most importantly.....my mantra from this point forward in life.....

DON'T SPILL THE MILD SAUCE!