Which means my department - deli/prepared foods - gets absolutely mauled on weekends.
Today was by far the busiest day I've worked in the pizza section outside of superbowl sunday - except now I'm a lot faster at what I do (I'd only been there a month when superbowl hit - I'm on 9 months now).
We're already a little shorthanded, since 3 out of 5 people that normally work in pizza are back to 32 hours a week so they can do school (but keep their F/T benefits). Another coworker who knows how to work pizza was helping me tonight, but he has a second degree burn on his arm (accident with the steamer yesterday - his whole arm is bandaged up thanks to the local hospital), so he can't make any pizza.. just serve it. Normally one of the department managers will cover my break, except... there weren't any scheduled tonight.
I was scheduled 3-11 (close), coworker 1-9 - it finally started dying down around 8:45, and all of the pizzas-by-the-slice were full and ready to go, so I told him I was ducking out for 5 minutes to sneak a quick snack and soda (ate half a ham sandwich and drank 2 store brand colas). I got back and he got ready to leave, but not before telling me "Dude, you kicked ass tonight", which brightened my mood a bit.
About 10 minutes after he left, one of the store managers came up to me and gave me a $10 store gift card - apparently my coworker went up to her and told her how slammed we'd been and that I was able to hold it together (though at times, barely - for a solid hour I didn't have anything but cheese pizzas available for sale by the slice because of all the full pizza orders). We can fit 4 pizzas in our stone oven, 5 if I want to burn the crap out of the bottom of one, and it takes about 10-15 minutes to cook them. It's a full time job just moving the pizzas around in the oven so they cook evenly (it has hot spots, both top and bottom - old fashioned hearth oven). Adding to the fun was the fact that I was roasting green chiles in the oven at the same time on a small sheet pan - we have a huge chile promotion going on and I've been finding ways to use them on pizzas.
Anyway... both a rant about how busy it was and an appreciation for above mentioned coworker. No way in hell could I have done it alone. I'm going to sincerely thank our scheduling guy for scheduling a 1p-9p person on fridays - we used to have 5a-1p, 8a-4p, 11p-7p, and 3p-11p (leaving the closer to deal with the brunt of the dinner rush alone). On fridays he changed 11-7 to 1-9.
Today was by far the busiest day I've worked in the pizza section outside of superbowl sunday - except now I'm a lot faster at what I do (I'd only been there a month when superbowl hit - I'm on 9 months now).
We're already a little shorthanded, since 3 out of 5 people that normally work in pizza are back to 32 hours a week so they can do school (but keep their F/T benefits). Another coworker who knows how to work pizza was helping me tonight, but he has a second degree burn on his arm (accident with the steamer yesterday - his whole arm is bandaged up thanks to the local hospital), so he can't make any pizza.. just serve it. Normally one of the department managers will cover my break, except... there weren't any scheduled tonight.
I was scheduled 3-11 (close), coworker 1-9 - it finally started dying down around 8:45, and all of the pizzas-by-the-slice were full and ready to go, so I told him I was ducking out for 5 minutes to sneak a quick snack and soda (ate half a ham sandwich and drank 2 store brand colas). I got back and he got ready to leave, but not before telling me "Dude, you kicked ass tonight", which brightened my mood a bit.
About 10 minutes after he left, one of the store managers came up to me and gave me a $10 store gift card - apparently my coworker went up to her and told her how slammed we'd been and that I was able to hold it together (though at times, barely - for a solid hour I didn't have anything but cheese pizzas available for sale by the slice because of all the full pizza orders). We can fit 4 pizzas in our stone oven, 5 if I want to burn the crap out of the bottom of one, and it takes about 10-15 minutes to cook them. It's a full time job just moving the pizzas around in the oven so they cook evenly (it has hot spots, both top and bottom - old fashioned hearth oven). Adding to the fun was the fact that I was roasting green chiles in the oven at the same time on a small sheet pan - we have a huge chile promotion going on and I've been finding ways to use them on pizzas.
Anyway... both a rant about how busy it was and an appreciation for above mentioned coworker. No way in hell could I have done it alone. I'm going to sincerely thank our scheduling guy for scheduling a 1p-9p person on fridays - we used to have 5a-1p, 8a-4p, 11p-7p, and 3p-11p (leaving the closer to deal with the brunt of the dinner rush alone). On fridays he changed 11-7 to 1-9.
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