What a day! When I arrived for work this morning, it became quickly apparent that the power had gone out just before I arrived. Who knows why. In my little town, periodic mystery blackouts are the norm...particularly in the spring, and in totally arbitrary patterns. You can lose all power and sit fuming in the dark as the sounds of your next-door neighbors merrily sniggering at Everybody Loves Raymond waft through their living room window. It could be out for two minutes or two days.
I proceeded to the cafeteria in darkness to find the kitchen crew all sitting together under an emergency backup light, discussing possible courses of action. In the adjacent kitchen, multiple trays of frozen pizza (why do the 'interesting' stories always occur on Pizza Day?) sat in near-total blackness beside defunct ovens, and fridges full of milks, fruits and salads were slowly and inexorably thawing. The obvious and reasonable solution would have been to send the kids home - no telling how long the blackout would last and this was going to be a real problem - but word came down from the main office that we would not be closing. Scramble time.
So, let the chaos commence! Obviously the 'hot' food wouldn't be feasible today, so it was time to dig through the stores for ready-to-eat options. The PBJ Uncrustables, the tortilla chips, the snack packs. The hamburger buns, thrown together with sliced turkey from the rapidly warming fridge to make deli sandwiches for those kids with peanut allergies. All sorted through with flashlights and transferred to the gym, the only large room with natural lighting. And gym class was in progress as we tried to sort this out. Honestly, a stray ball missed my face by inches as we set up our long line of tables along one side of the gym.
When lunch began, the setup consisted of a check-in table near the entrance, where we attempted to collect names from the surging swell of children before sending them to the buffet line to pick up their items. On the other end of the gym, students with their trays of food clustered together on bleachers or sat together on the floor to eat. It was stiflingly hot, noisy and crowded, and I was vaguely reminded of a refugee camp. Or a prison camp. Hold on to yer spork, kid. Any kid loses his spork gets a night in the box.
The power finally returned near the end of the lunch rush, and I was faced with a new challenge: take the hastily scribbled lists of three different cashiers and enter all the lunch information normally taken over a two-hour period into the computer by hand. Ten single-spaced pages of student names - spell name on touch screen, pull up account, make the appropriate transaction, rinse, repeat. And though I had strongly urged them to have kids hold off on money transactions until tomorrow, they had also accepted cash and checks in big disorganized piles. And the system often behaves in erratic ways when it's been shut down unexpectedly. When all the names were finally entered about half an hour after my shift should have ended, my register informed me that I was approximately $500 short. Later it recognized my transactions, but mixed breakfast reports in with lunch and told me I was at least fifty dollars short. Then thirty-eight dollars. At one point I had to leave to pick up my son from school, take him home, and then return because we could not leave until the totals balanced.
Two hours after the end of my shift, we had it down to seven cents short and sagely decided that it was an acceptable variance. Anyone who begrudged me that seven cents would have found that I would happily give them the seven cents myself...probably nasally.
I proceeded to the cafeteria in darkness to find the kitchen crew all sitting together under an emergency backup light, discussing possible courses of action. In the adjacent kitchen, multiple trays of frozen pizza (why do the 'interesting' stories always occur on Pizza Day?) sat in near-total blackness beside defunct ovens, and fridges full of milks, fruits and salads were slowly and inexorably thawing. The obvious and reasonable solution would have been to send the kids home - no telling how long the blackout would last and this was going to be a real problem - but word came down from the main office that we would not be closing. Scramble time.
So, let the chaos commence! Obviously the 'hot' food wouldn't be feasible today, so it was time to dig through the stores for ready-to-eat options. The PBJ Uncrustables, the tortilla chips, the snack packs. The hamburger buns, thrown together with sliced turkey from the rapidly warming fridge to make deli sandwiches for those kids with peanut allergies. All sorted through with flashlights and transferred to the gym, the only large room with natural lighting. And gym class was in progress as we tried to sort this out. Honestly, a stray ball missed my face by inches as we set up our long line of tables along one side of the gym.
When lunch began, the setup consisted of a check-in table near the entrance, where we attempted to collect names from the surging swell of children before sending them to the buffet line to pick up their items. On the other end of the gym, students with their trays of food clustered together on bleachers or sat together on the floor to eat. It was stiflingly hot, noisy and crowded, and I was vaguely reminded of a refugee camp. Or a prison camp. Hold on to yer spork, kid. Any kid loses his spork gets a night in the box.
The power finally returned near the end of the lunch rush, and I was faced with a new challenge: take the hastily scribbled lists of three different cashiers and enter all the lunch information normally taken over a two-hour period into the computer by hand. Ten single-spaced pages of student names - spell name on touch screen, pull up account, make the appropriate transaction, rinse, repeat. And though I had strongly urged them to have kids hold off on money transactions until tomorrow, they had also accepted cash and checks in big disorganized piles. And the system often behaves in erratic ways when it's been shut down unexpectedly. When all the names were finally entered about half an hour after my shift should have ended, my register informed me that I was approximately $500 short. Later it recognized my transactions, but mixed breakfast reports in with lunch and told me I was at least fifty dollars short. Then thirty-eight dollars. At one point I had to leave to pick up my son from school, take him home, and then return because we could not leave until the totals balanced.
Two hours after the end of my shift, we had it down to seven cents short and sagely decided that it was an acceptable variance. Anyone who begrudged me that seven cents would have found that I would happily give them the seven cents myself...probably nasally.
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