Friday, May 06, 2005

Fire In The Disco... Fire In The Taco Bell

Quote of the moment:
"EVERYBODY OUT!" - Chef.

There was a fire at work today! Around 6.40pm something inside the central dividing partition in the kitchen apparently exploded (although not with a great bang) and smoke started billowing through the building. Everyone had to go stand in the carpark, customers and staff. We also had to be ticked off on the staff list. At first I thought it was just the pizza oven again, because it smokes if the wood isn't dry enough. Obviously not.

Two fire engines turned up right after the list was finished and another a minute later. Ten minutes later another one came with a huge extending ladder on top, which was totally superfluous, and after another fifteen minutes yet another one arrived! Five fire-engines for one measly burning stove, out of a total of seven in Chelmsford, I think. At least, that's how many doors there are on the fire station!

After we'd sat in the carpark for about an hour and the customers had gone home (eventually including the pair who brought out their glasses, wine and icebucket) we had to go back into the event hall to clear out the decorations from the 'Back to School' disco which was supposed to be on tonight, along with all the cutlery and crockery which would need cleaning. Ditto both restaurant floors, then the waiting staff disappeared home and the kitchen staff had to clear out every bit of exposed food or ingredients from the kitchen and bin it. There was so much that the sauce was slick on the yard floor and Zulu licked my boots clean when I got home.

Since the fire had exposed and melted holes in the water pipes, the sinks were unusable. The restaurants are shut tomorrow and only the wedding buffet in the evening is still on, since it doesn't require cooking, but I'm going to be in for the daytime shift as scheduled, cleaning up all the pots, pans, tubs and tools from today. What fun! The senior chefs are doing the buffet and dividing the juniors between scrubbing the walls and acting as porters for the day. Some of them actually volunteered to help wash up the stuff which the food will have dried on overnight. Suckers. Sunday's hopefully a day off while they replace the entire wood-and-tile partition with a steel panelled one.

In other news, my flight details arrived from Camp America today:

From: London Heathrow
To: Newark International, New Jersey.
19th June
Virgin Atlantic Flight # 1
Check in 13.00
Depart 16.00


SIX WEEKS TO GO! HELL YEAH!

3 comments:

prillopie said...

Awww..:( Will m8. Don't leave..!:( I'll have no one to moan to about the bastards I have encountered since coming to uni.. [sobs]

Will said...

Awww... bless... you can email me instead, because they do have a computer suite. If they have messenger I'll be on in UK evening/nightime, so lucky lucky you :p

For those who skipped to the end, like Prill had:

Hulk says: nm, will summarise:
Hulk says: there was a fire at work
Hulk says: w00t!
Hulk says: The End
Hulk says: P.S. Got my flight, leaving June 19th

Will said...

I just realised that Prill will be in Taiwan with her mummy to look after her, so she has nothing to complain about! :p