Of All the Fucking Places to Stand, WHY THERE???

The BBQ Pit
1

I recently got a job as a dishwasher at PF Changs…not my idea of a career, but I’m trying to bust my ass so I can move up in the world a little. This is only day three, and while it’s hard as hell as far as constantly keeping up with dirty dishes and bussing them to the front for the runners to serve food, bussing the cook’s line for dirty dishes and making 10,000 lettuce wraps, I have no complaints. It’s busy, the people are cool and the head chef is a pretty decent guy.

I do want to pit a person though.

To the well dressed man who I have never met who obviously works there: there is only ONE four way intersection in the entire back of the restaurant. To the north is the prep area and the chef’s line. The south is the eating area. The east is where servers and waiters go. And finally, to the west, is the dishwashing area. It has traffic on a regular basis similar to a fourway intersection of the Vegas Strip on a Saturday with no traffic lights. As a dishwasher I have a shitload of duties, such that the thought of Waiter Hell seems a pale shadow of what my collegues and I go through on a daily basis. I have a hard time keeping up with the load of clean dishes. I can handle that. I burn my hands on clean hot dishes about 30 times a day at least. I can handle that too. I can handle getting dirty, getting smacked with a foreign object and my sore feet because my shoes for this job are new. But what I cannot fucking handle is your double wide trailer you call an ass IN THE FUCKING MIDDLE OF THAT INTERSECTION. When I have twenty dishes in my hands, which are as protected as well as I can make them, slowly burning my flesh off in a fasion similar to Pain Box in Dune, and I say, “Hot Plates, move please, coming through” as loud as I can, GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY WAY!

And if that isn’t bad enough, when you need to have a conversation with someone, probably one of the blue shirt trainers for any given time, where do you have it? In that fucking intersection. I had another mass of dishes, hauling ass across the intersection. Waiters are everywhere trying to get their jobs done, runners are everywhere trying to get their jobs done. People with dirty dishes are trying to get the washroom so they can do their jobs. And you and your two fucking blueshirts are gabbing away, forcing everyone to work around you, including me and my clean, hot dishes.

I swear by the throbbing cock of God Almighty, if you block that intersection on Saturday, which is probably going to be THE hell day of the week, I’m going to turn caveman, spear you like a fucking mammoth and use your rectum as a chopstick holder.

Sanscour

2

And yet. If you say “Excuse me. With all due respect, can you stand somewhere else please?” You might get a better result.

(only joking. I am sure you are polite)
It infuriates me how other people don’t seem to have that thing in their brains that people are supposed to have. That thing that lets them know things are happening around them. It is the thing that shouts and screams at me when I stand still for a milisecond in a crowded area. It stops me from doing it. How the fuck other people can do it and not care is fucking beyond me!

3

I deal with this shit in my workplace all the time. I work in an office (a.k.a. “cube farm”), so there are lots of little aisles and plenty of intersections. It gripes the hell out of me when two or more co-workers stand in the middle of a narrow high-traffic aisle that I must use to get to my desk. When I approach sometimes they glare at me as if somehow I’m intruding on “their” space when I’m just trying to get through. For God’s sake, people have had to post signs telling others that the aisles are not to be used for meeting places, not that this seems to matter. We have several little conference rooms and other common areas throughout the complex where co-workers can gather to talk about whatever.

And don’t even get me started on the morons who think the stairwell is an ideal place to stop, stand and chat away. :rolleyes:

4

I hear ya! My pet peeve is people who walk 3-4 people abreast in small corridors, chatting and generally monopolizing the entire walkway. Why on earth should I have to turn my body sideways to let these people pass? Gah!

5

I found out from my roommate, who also works at the same restaurant I do, that the guy in question is a manager from another store. Since the trainers are all going poof at the end of this week I hope he will do the same and the clotting of the intersection by that congealing cumstain will no longer be an issue.

Sanscour

6

This is just one of the annoying situations which I’ve finally given up on trying to be nice. Another I always loved was walking across campus on one side of the sidewalk and someone coming toward me moves to my side for no reason(unless it’s some mental game of chicken). Now, I simple stare straight ahead and walk into them. Either they move or we run into each other. Same with dipshits who feel the need to storm into the elevator the moment the doors open while I’m trying to leave. I just walk into them.

7

This INFURIATES me! As I walk along the pedestrianized shopping street on the way to home in the morning someone will be walking the other way. I will adjust my direction slightly so that I am well out of the way when we will eventually meet. The other guy then adjusts to the same fucking direction! WHY! You don’t fecking know me! why the feck are you walking towards me! Everyone seems to do it. It’s as if I am a magnet.

8

This happens to me all the time as well, really pisses me off. It seems like most of the time it’s guys who walk around everywhere looking pissed off because they think it makes them look cool. Seems to be sort of an intimidation thing (at least in my case). I still don’t understand why though, I don’t know these people…assholes.

As to the OP, I’ve had to deal with idiots like this working in similar situations. My advice would be to make sure that you run into him every time you pass by. Eventually he sould get the idea.

9

Might I suggest an airhorn? Perhaps a taser?

10

Oh and Sanscour, could you prepare me a Soothing Lettuce Wrap[sup]TM[/sup] (chicken) before you do that next load of dishes? Thanks.

d&r

11

I can’t believe how rude people are about this. Two people standing in a doorway having a conversation. What a stupid thing to do in the first place. But as you approach, they will look you in the eye and still not get out of the way until you say “EXCUSE ME!”. Then, they slowly move out of the way, letting you pass, only to go back to blocking the doorway again. I have, on occasion, turned back to them and said “You know, you’re just going to be in the way of the next person who needs to walk thru the door…”

12

Sanscour, whic P.F.Chang’s do you work at? I love P.F. Chang’s for many reasons, not the least of which is that they offer brown rice as an alternative to the flavorless white stuff.

And here is a phenomenon I would like explained to me.

I’m walking behind a pair or group of people who are walking single file. As I overtake them and move into the “passing lane”, they suddently fan out and start walking two or three abreast, usually just at the point when I’m stepping into what I estimate would be the peripheral vision field of the hindmost.

It used to infuriate me when I was working in the casinos. I’d be on my way back from break, with plenty of time to get back to my game, and end up being late because I got stuck behind some small herd of slow-moving bovines that I had been in the process of trying to pass.

13

A buddy of mine was a short order cook at a chain place. The custom there was when passing behind someone in the kitchen to say “behind”. This was to prevent accidents. One upper manager had a bad habit of standing behind the cooks quietly and watch. This caused problems when the cook would try to spin around and grab something out of the reach in cooler behind them. This pissed the cooks off.
One day my buddy is burning burgers and out of the corner of his eye sees this guy come up behind him. As soon as his grill is clear he takes his spat and scrapes down all the grease toward the front drain trough. Scrapes with much force. Sprays grease all over a very expensive suit. Oh gee I’m sorry I didn’t see you there, and you did not say “behind”
Last time that idiot did that.

14

I don’t know man, sounds like he is more important than you, in the restaurant scheme of things. Might want to try and get some patience and tolerance, if not for the guy, then for the situation. Pitting him was good I think.

15

No offence but, when I saw your name as the last reply in this thread I knew it would be critical of the OPs situation.
No person on earth is more important IMO enough than any other to justify expecting others to move around them. Even a King should have the decency to realize he is causing an obstruction.

Patience and tolerance are noble traits. It’s just a shame they seem to be exclusive to the ‘unimportant’ employees such as the OP.

16

Ah, finally a place to share an irritating experience that’s been chafing at me since Tuesday. I’m taking an economics class at a city college and after class, I really just wanted to get home. I’d woken up at 6.30 am and it was now 8.55 pm. Anyway, I tried to hurry down the stairs, but a couple girls were walking down the narrow stairwell so slowly and so obliviously that I was trapped, forced to go at super slo-mo. Finally, I just pushed past one of them, saying “Excuse me.” The girl I pushed past said loudly, “We usually say EXCUSE ME.” I turned around, and told her, “I did.” She whined “You almost knocked me down!” I responded “I SAID EXCUSE ME!” and left.

What I wanted to say (but didn’t because I was trying to LEAVE, not get into an argument on the stairs) was “Maybe if you were fucking paying attention to something other than your inane self, you’d have heard me saying excuse me! Maybe it would have occurred to you that you’re blocking the fucking stairwell, and that other people might want to get home TONIGHT and not sometime tomorrow morning! I’m sorry I almost knocked you down but if you had the sense god gave a flea, you would have been aware that someone had been trying to pass you for two flights - especially because I actually announced my intention ALOUD - and maybe you would have moved aside to let me pass, self-absorbed bitch.”

Yup, that’s what I would have said.

17

The 4 accross the corridor thing drives me up the wall as well. I won’t actually run into people, but I’ll just stop where I am (on my side of the hallway) and force the group to go past 2 wide instead of 4. At my place of work the people who do this tend to be medical students, whom I hate bitterly. Eventually these people graduate, do a residency, realize they AREN’T actually gods and begin to behave like normal human beings again, but when still in school, they’re the most clueless bunch of morons you could ever want to meet. 4 wide in corridors, blocking every door in the place, just generally being massive pains in the ass.

I used to be polite. Now I’m just bitchy. I’m not actually particularly bitchy anywhere else, so I suppose it’s good practice should the need arise eleswhere.

18

I’m relating to every single instance of obnoxious obliviousness here. Let’s not forget the shoppers, too - Saturday afternoon at Safeway, the store is absolutely thick with shoppers, and people park their cart across the aisle and wander about. Or take five minutes to rummage through the milk fridge, with their cart parked across three other doors. Or let their kids run free as the wind. (Okay, that last one wasn’t really about stopping and getting in the way, but it still shows an extreme level of obnoxious obliviousness.) To quote my husband, people piss me off.
(ps - Before I forget, Sanscour, your hands will develop thick callouses on the hot dish side of your fingers, and you’ll be grabbing those red-hot dishes out of the dishwasher in no time. Just remember when handing them to other staff that they don’t have the same callouses that you will have. I unintentionally did that to a couple of waitresses when I was a dishwasher - they just about dropped the plates I was handing them.)

19

No offense taken. I don’t see my comment as critical of the OP’s situation at all. Rather, I was trying to be helpful. I don’t see my role on this forum as being one of necessarily rubber stamping frustration, however correct the position of the OP may be.

I also try not to post when all I am doing is repeating the opinions of others, however much I might agree with them.

As far as your opinion about “causing an obstruction” and “importance” - well I’m not commenting on that, rather commenting on the reality of the situation.

As far as patience and tolerance go; my experience in life has been that the sun shines on the considerate and inconsiderate alike. And like Dylan says, “everybody’s gotta serve somebody”

20

Mm… I’ve got a bit of a pet peeve in that direction, if only because on two separate occasions, I worked in commercial kitchens where being a obstacle seemed to be one of the perks of being “management.” On both occasions, you did not tell management to move. You worked around management.

Precisely why these specific persons felt the urge to do this is unclear, except perhaps that it’s fun to step on people’s necks when you’re feeling down.

MOST management understood that cook territory was a frantic, hot, unpleasant place, and stayed the hell out of it. If they felt any need to observe, they did so from any of the various vantage points where they could be easily worked around, well out of the main traffic points.

But two I can think of… in two different restaurants … seemed to feel like being a safety hazard, an obstacle, and a general pain in the ass to their underlings was a necessary part of the job. Either that, or one of the perks of command.

…and on both occasions, action was taken by the underlings to right the situation.

Y’see, us grunts didn’t particularly care if you SUPERVISED. After all, we all understood there was a job to be done, and we made a point of doing it. What we RESENTED was having to slow down or work harder because some asshead insisted on BEING IN THE WAY for no apparent reason.

The first one I remember was Mr. Ed. Mr. Ed was the restaurant manager. He was NOT in charge of the kitchen – that was the Master Chef’s job – but he liked to come in on the Chef’s day off and push people around. His favorite stunt involved helping himself to a bowl of soup, or a plate of whatever the day’s special was… and planting it on the end of the line, right between the main cooking area and the dish storage zone… and slooooowly eating his friggin’ lunch.

Staring at the cooks the whole time. Meanwhile, getting dishes to put the damn food on was now a zigzag odyssey, involving a tight squeeze,instead of the straight dash forward and back that it had been.

We tried talking to him about it. He made it clear that he would eat his lunch anywhere he pleased, and if we chose to dispute that, we could find employment elsewhere. He didn’t DARE do it when the Chef was there – good chefs are hard to replace – and he didn’t wanna get in an argument with the Chef, and the Chef was very protective of his people, and his territory…

…but when the Chef was away, Mr. Ed got to be an asshole over the whole building, not just Waitress Territory. And ghod help you if you jostled him in your hurry to go get a damn dish to serve a steak upon.

So we quietly discussed the situation among ourselves… and we began preparing certain sections of floor. We did so by melting lard in the deep fryer, and carefully greasing down those sections of floor.

We wore rubber-soled sneakers, you see. He wore leather-soled dress shoes.

After he fell on his ass a couple of times, and dumped a fresh bowl of very hot vegetable soup down his front once, he quit doing that.

The other occasion was in a pizza place I worked. We dreaded when BB was the exec on duty, because BB liked to play Pizza Man. He’d come in and want to make an extra-special pizza for his own supper. To do so, he’d basically plant himself in the middle of the assembly line and caaaarefully assemble a small pizza for himself.

We offered to make it for him. We could make it any way he wanted, six times faster than he could do it himself. Hell, we could have it cooked and READY in the time he took assembling the damn thing. He refused. He LIKED playing Pizza Man.

The fact that he was interfering with the work of the entire restaurant bothered him not at all. He said as much. “I don’t have to move out of your way. I’m the boss.” :smiley:

It was after he remarked that that safety kind of went out the window. After that, the line assembly people quit being careful while handling large tubs of tomato paste and pizza sauce.

It cost the bastard five dress shirts and three pairs of slacks, and got one employee fired, but he finally quit plopping himself in the middle of the damn kitchen during Dinner Hour to make himself a friggin’ pizza…

The moral of the story: If you are management, NEVER forget that your employees are human beings, too. Make a point of treating them like peons, and you may well find that they’re capable of ACTING like peons.

As in “revolution” and/or “lynch mob”…