The Misadventures of a Mess Hall Manager

So you know who I am and for the most part what I do; I’m a student, a part time longboard builder, a part time financial para-planner and a (for the most part) good guy. One little bit of information that I don’t remember if I shared or not was that I work at the mess hall here on campus, and I have for a while now. In doing so I have moved up in the ranks from a grunt who wears a blue polo to a manager in a red button down shirt. I’ve seen and had my fair share of disasters while working in the mess hall and I’d love to share some of those stories with you. I think I’ll start with what is still my most memorable and probably one of my most embarrassing:

It was the fall quarter October to be exact. It was dark outside and the unwashed masses were besieging the mess hall. I was on duty as the “beverage runner.” This job title means you get to run around the mess hall all night restocking cups, coffee, tea, honey, plates for other stations, and generally working your ass off. Well, this particular shift wasn’t going well, there were a few dropped plates which resulted in shattered ceramic strewn about the floor which required me to drop whatever I was doing to sweep up the bits. I hate it when somebody breaks something at work because it’s obligatory that the entire mess hall go quiet then burst into applause; then one of us has to rush out and sweep up the pieces. Oh, so much fun.

On top of that we were out of chocolate milk and one particular customer of the female variety was quite unhappy. She would constantly ask me, (imagine a high nasal voice with a valley girl accent) “Excuse me sir, is there anymore chocolate milk?” Every time I’d have to reply “No miss, there is no chocolate milk,” then I’d walk off; only to be stopped a few minutes later and asked again only more obnoxiously for more chocolate milk. Finally at some point during the night she asked me again,

“Excuse me,” she paused to look at my name tag, “Chester, is there any more chocolate milk?”

“No there isn’t,” I replied.

“Then why don’t you go in the back and get another box and bring it out here; I want my chocolate milk.”

“Because miss, there is no chocolate milk and I’ve been telling you that all night.”

“Then why don’t you go down to the C-store (our campus connivence store) and get me some.”

“Because that costs money and you aren’t worth it.” I walked away. Truth be told there was another box of chocolate milk, but there was only about fifteen or twenty minutes of service time left, and the annoying girl had left. As an aside she does this about everything. Well with about five minutes left in the shift I decided to replace the chocolate milk. So I went to the back to get a box of milk. These aren’t just little gallon boxes of milk these are five (5) gallon boxes. If a gallon of milk weighs about 8.35 or so pounds so it’s safe to say that these boxes weight about forty (40) pounds, and I’m expected to replace those several times a shift; also mind this, they are ice cold in rickety plastic crates.

I jog this forty pound box out to the service floor and get ready to put it into the milk dispenser; I notice that the crate looks cracked. I don’t think much of it as I lift the crate into the dispenser  but then the milk bladder shifts and breaks through the lid of the crate. With both hands I shove the bladder and jagged edges of the broken crate back into the dispenser. I hear a quiet pop and then the next thing I know there is a wall of chocolate milk coming down on me. I got an ice cold chocolate milk bath in front of some two hundred (200) of my school mates. I was covered from chest two toe in freezing chocolate milk. Calmly I pulled the now shattered crate from the dispenser and laid it aside. I then made a bee line for the back of the house and stood shaking in the loading bay of the mess hall where my boss found me a few minutes later. She asked me if I wanted to go home early to clean up. Rather I asked for only a clean shirt. I returned to the service floor my shoes making squishing sounds my pants soaked in chocolate milk but with a clean shirt. I finished the shift and went back to the dorm.

I missed the elevator to my floor so I ended up walking up three flights of stairs to my floor and then to my room where my roommate at the time was busy playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. He looked up only long enough to tell me that I looked like shit before he returned to his game.

If you like this please let me know. If I get any interest I will continue

No Side.

CGVP