One of my favorites, amongst the residents at the retirement home where I cook, is a 98-or 99-year-old woman named Annith. Annith is always up bright and early, so she often comes into the kitchen to say “good morning” while I’m getting things ready for breakfast. She’s extremely spry for her age — she uses a walker, but she appears to get around fine without it, and it looks like it’s mainly to lean on when she needs a rest — and still very mentally agile. She’s also a “tough old bird” who won’t take any shit.
So Friday morning, I was getting breakfast ready, and Annith came into the kitchen. She was asking me what I was making for breakfast. Then our Resident Care Coordinator (a member of management, in charge of the caregiver staff) walked into the kitchen and spotted Annith there.
RCC: “Annith! You can’t be in the kitchen! It’s very, very dangerous!” *
Annith: “Why? Is the cook gonna throw something at me?”
The next morning, of course, Annith was right back in the kitchen, telling me “good morning” and helping herself to the coffee
One of my pet peeves is retirement home staff, including some in management, who think they need to speak to these seniors like they’re little kids.
Reminds me of my mom, on her death bed about 15 min before she passed. She asked for a hot cup of coffee, my sister giving it to her in a spoon, after one sip she says" Is this dam hospital too cheap to supply sugar" or something to that effect. Those were her last words.
When I briefly worked at a retirement home, we had a few residents like that too, fit and well in many ways, and mentally fine. They were also supposed not to come into the kitchen when we were working. Mainly this was just so that we could have some quiet time preparing veg and the like, or taking a break, so asking them not to be there was fine for that reason. It wasn’t due to health and safety, it was just that staff usually spent 11 and a half hours with the residents and we needed our own space too.
But the residents were so fucking bored that I could understand them wanting to be in another part of their “home.” For the women, especially, the kitchen is where they spent a lot of their lives so it was weird for them to be barred from it.
We basically relaxed the rules a little now and then in a really inconsistent way. Sometimes I let a resident in - only one, because there just wasn’t space for more - because I was the only one there working, and I was the only one there because the other staff were off shagging in the residents’ bedrooms. All the staff were sleeping together, except for me (I really wasn’t interested).
Another resident with serious early-onset dementia was often allowed into the kitchen during the periods her drugs let her stay awake because then she’d sit down and stay there, telling us about her times in the Boer War (she was born decades after it) whereas otherwise she’d be off bothering everyone else.
Annith was at it again today. After lunch, she apparently grabbed a stack of napkins and started helping set the tables for dinner. Somebody tried to stop her, but she was all, “The cooks don’t throw me out of the kitchen, I can damn well help set tables!”
Annith told me once that she worked until she was 77 years old. Damn, she was still working when I first entered the work force (I’ve been at this for almost 31 years; she’s been “retired” for only 22 years …)
She helped me out last week, too. I was again working the breakfast shift, and my server hadn’t shown up (somebody had changed the schedule and pencilled her in, but neglected to tell her). So I ended up phoning her and waking her up, and she was on the way, but … somebody still needed to fill water pitchers and put them out on the tables, and make coffee, and fill the coffee pots and get them out where they needed to be, so I was scrambling to get that stuff done and not really knowing what to do because that normally isn’t part of my job. I got the water pitchers out and got the coffee made, but I didn’t know where to put the coffee pots. Annith came in and told me, “I’ll take care of it for you”. So I filled the coffee pots, and she carried them out to where they needed to be, and even went around filling everybody’s coffee cups.
Sidney Amber, of San Francisco, lived to be 109 years old. (He went to high school with my grandma.) Up until two weeks before he died he attended every single 49ers home game since they were founded and still worked at Sears restaurant a few days a week as the host. If you want to live a long and happy life, keep serving others.
I work as a cashier. Whenever a customer checks out a lot of "paper goods (plates, glasses, silverware) I ask “What’s the occasion?” which lead to this exchange:
What’s the occasion?
My mother’s 104th Birthday Party
Wow! Tell her congratulations from me.
We’ve had to do this every year since she hit 90. She says “You don’t know if I’ll be here on my next birthday.”
My grandmother entered the nursing hom when she was just past her 97th birthday, and was there for over ten years. Up until the last couple of years of her life she kept notes on estimated calories in her meals, because she didn’t want to gain too much weight. She loved sweets, and we all told her she’d earned the right to eat whatever she darned well pleased.
Her birthday dinner on her 99th birthday was two pieces of pizza and half a can of beer. She loved chicken and pizza, and up until just before her death she could eat anything she wanted, as she was not on a special diet.
I think her religious faith helped extend her life too.
I had a little lady, Lucille, at the senior center where I did Meals on Wheels. She was amazing at 97, sharper than I’ve ever been in my life, seriously funny and so sweet it hurt when she passed away several months ago. She could talk to you about anything… great works of art, current music or tattoos and piercings. One of my favorite pictures of her is when she dressed up for St. Pat’s. She was incredibly devout and always brought a smile to everyone’s face. Oh, how I miss her.
Holocaust survivor? I don’t know. I don’t get much time to actually sit down and talk to the residents, since I’m usually stuck in the kitchen running my butt off. What I know about her I’ve either heard from other staff, or from her that one time she stopped to chat while I was sitting outside on my lunch break.
I’ve been working for Payless for 1.5 years now (with only 10 days to go!!). For the last two summers at least we have had this particular pair of sandals for sale. They are gloriously comfortable. When they’re in the box, on the floor or in the hand, they look like nice normal sandals.
I have only sold one pair. Every single person who tries them on says they’re the most comfortable shoes ever but that, “I’m not old enough for these shoes”.
A few weeks ago I was helping a very nice 90 year old lady. She was looking for comfortable black sandals so of course I showed her the super comfy ones. She tried them on, walked up and down a bit and said how wonderfully comfortable they were. Then she looked in the mirror.
“Sweetie, I’m not old enough to wear these things!”
She ended up with a less comfortable pair but she looked much better in them. The Sandals
