Part 8 of a 9-part series
Another irritating thing about the
Quire job situation was that it was never “my” kitchen. In just about every other place I’d ever
worked, even when I wasn’t the head dude, there was always a sense of team
spirit, sharing, and respect for the other guys’ things. At other places, if I was working on
something, whether it was delicate chocolate leaves or spun sugar garnishes or
just a pan of chopped onions for a soup mise-en-place nobody would think of
messing with it. There was no such code
in the Quire kitchen.
The Quires loved my Sour Dough Bread
so I tried to keep a jar of starter going all the time. It was a hopeless task. As many time as I explained it, as many
different ways as I came up with to mark it, as diverse places as I found to
hide it, the starter regularly vanished.
Always, I’d ask Mrs. Quire what had happened to it. Usually she’d say something like “Oh, I threw
it out, it was all bubbly, going bad”, or, “It smelled funny so I got rid of
it”. Over and over I would tell her that
it was supposed to be bubbly or whatever but she always chucked it when I
wasn’t there. I got tired of having to
continually bring fresh starter from home so eventually gave up and stopped
making the bread for them. Naturally,
Mrs. Quire began complaining that my bread wasn’t as good as it used to be.
I would regularly come into work and
not be able to find some prep, ingredient or item I had been working with the
previous day. It was just gone. If I was lucky there would be more raw
product to start again with, but sometimes I’d have to re-plan a whole days
menu because of it. Mrs. Quire was
always rearranging the refrigerators “organizing” or straightening things
around in the kitchen. I really don’t have a clue about why she would
even have a call to go in there between 10 PM one night and 10 AM the next day,
aside from getting a glass of milk or an egg for breakfast. I know it was her kitchen and all but she was
paying me to do a job and then making it as difficult as possible for me to do
a good job at it. Very frustrating
indeed.
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