The One-armed Paperhanger

At times this is the way it feels at work when I’m overwhelmed with people waiting for me to serve up food samples.  There never seems to be a piece of equipment that makes enough at one time.  This is something most people don’t understand, but nevertheless have to tolerate because things have to be cooked, or prepared, before we put them on our trays.

Friday was one of those days at work when all of us had a never-ending line.  There were so many shoppers you would think it was a few days before Thanksgiving or Christmas.  Many of us thought we “had the worst demo” in the world that day.  I can laugh about this now because it always seems that way when you’re working at a frantic pace, hence the name of this post “the one-armed paperhanger.”  Haven’t you ever had one of those days when you wished you had two or three more hands?

Once I set food out, it was gone in a minute causing the crowd to get bigger as they waited for the next tray of samples.  I thought to myself that none of these people will have cook dinner tonight because we had tons of demos that day and the shoppers made the rounds.

Part of the delay was probably my fault for not being better prepared for the demo I was serving, so on my break I went back and got some other implements to make things easier.  Another bad thing was being right outside the dairy door, “my favorite place in the whole store.”  It’s so damn cold there, even in the summer.  I was serving toasted English muffins with imported butter.  I was dressed for serving English muffins with chicken salad, which would have put me in a different area of the store.  We had done that demo several times in a row so I figured it was my turn.  Usually we rotate through the demos.

I never caught up until 3:30 in the afternoon and that was for a short while.  To make matters worse, the district manager decided to pay us a visit.  We’d been expecting him, but it would have to be one of the busiest days when none of us could keep our trays full of samples due to cooking issues.

Oh well, we all made it through like we always do and breathed a sigh of relief at the washout station at the end of the day.  Despite it all, I really love my job.