"Take every chance to relax, to hope, to heal, to dream, to play, to give, to receive...to love."
4:30 in the morning comes awfully early, as my father used to say. Although I slept til 6am, I still was not quite awake for work at 6:30am! It was Millie, Carl and myself today. Cal disaster! Carl didn't come in until 8am so Millie had me set up the Pantry station-no buffet today. I was getting ready to take food out of the reach in, MIllie said, NO! Get your dishes first! Ok.....got my plates, got my sundae glasses for the fresh fruit sundaes, THEN took out the yogurt, fruit, smoked salmon and cream cheese that goes in the cold portion of the station. I made sure there was also granola and capers out. At 8am, Carl showed up and Millie had me move over to hot line. I'm not sure if she wants me there so I can work and she can do whatever she wants, or if she thinks I do a good job or what. Interesting though. It started to get busy about 8:30-9am when we got about 12 tickets within a 15 minute period. Tickets that sometimes had up to 8 orders on them from 8 different people! Mille came back over to help me finally but it went down hill from there. She gets every bit as flustered when things get hectic as Cliff does. Carl just stood around telling us how unorganized we were and that I should not be listening to anything the waitresses say. Cliff pits the ticket with the food he puts up under the warmer. Millie just pits the food up. The waitresses then come in, see an order that looks like theirs and just take the food that's up there. Which means, orders put in late, sometimes get food first if they take someone else's order. Pretty much chaos and short tempers. I thought Millie and Connie (a seemingly unhappy waitress) were going to have a knock down drag out fight! Lori from HR has told me that is their nature on the island, to fight one minute then sit down and eat lunch together like nothing happened. Ni can't quite agree with that. I feel the atmosphere in this case is very destructive and certainly from my standpoint, very uncomfortable. Calgon take me away!
Carl left at noon, things quieted down some. I still had the hotline, Millie did Pantry. She and Cliff still watch me do things and correct me or just take over and make whatever I was working on. Oh, well, only a week and a half left!
I talked to Janee when I came in and asked her how the chocolate torte went over. She said it was so flat, she trimmed off the top crusty layer and sandwiched two pieces together as one piece was too thin. She said the taste was great-she tried it and loved it. She suggested the pans we used were too big and that caused the tortes not to rise as much as they should have. Makes sense, because the finished torte is made to collapse on itself because it has no flour to give it structure. Something to remember for the future. It is entirely gone, so it couldn't have been that bad!
After work, I showered, mailed myself a package filled with cookbooks so I didn't have to cart them around the country. Then I went on the Heavenly Daze sunset cruise. That is something I will miss. I love to sail and you see beautiful sunsets here. Sigh...
I had a light dinner when I got back. I ran into Bill and Ann Leslie (the birthday Bill) and they told me how much they appreciated the cakes I had made (although I found out one of the staff took one of their cakes-the culprit admitted it to me!). They sure are nice people. Ann had a stroke several years ago and never quite got all her mobility back, but she does all right. She does not have any speech problems. Bill sure is crazy about her, which is nice to see. They gave me a bottle of Bailey's Irish Cream and another $20 with a nice note. And speaking of money, I stopped by Iggie's before going back to my room and James gave me an additional $34 for last night! He collected $3 from all the wait staff so I got a part of their tip money. Nice of all of them to think of me!
Looking back over the last three months, I can't say I regret coming to St Thomas. It has certainly been trying, the work hard and certainly not glamourous and not like any of the reality cooking shows you see on TV. The island is beautiful, the weather lovely this time of year (that equates to being here when it is not hurricane season, lol) and the ocean peaceful and calming and a lovely shade of turquoise. I have met some nice people here, even if sometimes that was over shadowed by the not very nice people. It has helped me discover what I don't want to do, which can be almost as important as knowing what you DO want to do. It has reminded me how much I love to bake and how
much I miss baking. And of course, I had a chance to see Suzanne and Pat, and see a little more of the Caribbean than I have in the past. But I am ready to return home, get back to family and friends and to start working on a new career. This last week or so will go quickly.
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