Saturday, March 6, 2010

44- A run solves everything.

Ohhh man, what a day!  *warning, I may go off on a HUGE rant about work....you've been warned...

I would just like to start by saying that I began today in a good mood.  The alarm went off at 4:15 am, I fed Ollie, grabbed my coffee and an orange and was off in the car.  The roads were clear, life was good.  Then I arrived at work at 5:50am and pretty much the day went downhill from there.

The SECOND I walked in, one of my coworkers informed me that there had been a "Code Red" (ie customer complaint) regarding a Roast Beef sandwich that I had prepared.  The customer claimed it was 'rare' ie not cooked, and wasn't sliced thin enough.  Mind you, I was in a rush when preparing them yesterday, but both of those claims are a matter of opinion.  It just really pissed me off, because I hate screwing stuff up and I pride myself on being really good at my job at the bakery, even if it is a job that a trained monkey can do.  So this sort of set the tone for my whole day....

Let me tangent by explaining what I do at the bakery.  It is a very big, well known bakery in SE Michigan, and I work at sort of the 'warehouse'.  There are different departments/kitchens including bread, pastry, candy, as well as a storefront.  I work in the 'Savory Kitchen' as well as the storefront.  Saturdays is the main prep day, so I generally get all the food ready for the week (soup ingredients, sandwich ingredients, pulling stuff from the freezer, etc.)  While I'm doing this waaaaay in the back of the huge warehouse, I am also 'on call' to be paged to the Bakeshop in case there is an overload of customers.  The saving grace of my Saturday shift is we do not sell hot soup like on the weekdays, and I only have to make ~30 sandwiches as opposed to 100+ on the weekdays (most of our lunch business is from surrounding businesses.)  Butttt, today there was like 100000 million special orders, so I kept having to go back to the kitchen and make more sandwiches, little by little/inefficiently which I HATE.  Plus, I had tons of prep work to do and the shop was short staffed, so my manager kept paging me to come help up front every 5 minutes so I couldn't get anything done.  Which made me cranky.  Along with the fact that it was 10:30 and I hadn't even eaten breakfast yet because I was soooo busy (besides an oragne at 5am on the way to work.)  Which in turn made me more cranky! (I need my egg whites in the morning!)  And I could totally feel myself being in a bad mood and giving bad customer service which isn't like me, but I just felt burnt out and frustrated that I couldn't get my work done and I was walking like 10000 miles from the savory kitchen to the Bakeshop all day. 

Let me also give you a mental picture of my manager.  He is a great guy that is always in a REALLY good mood and uber-sprited and everything.  Most of the time, I think this is great in the food service industry and really respect him.  But you know when you're in a bad mood the last thing you need is someone all smiley around you?  Yeah, that's how I felt.  Our vibes were clashing all day and by the end I though I would go crazy if I heard him sing (yes, sing) "We have bacon apple donuts today" to anyone who walked through the door.  It was the craziest day in the shop since the holidays because I guess spring-like weather makes everyone want to get a loaf of bread an a big ass pastry from the best shop in town or something.  For me, I just thought I was going to explode and looked out the window longing to bust out of there and run.

I didn't get my lunch until 1pm (ie 7 hours into shift) and I couldn't eat much cuz I was planning to run right after.  At 2pm I was soooo ready to get out of there!  Walked outside to a beautiful day.  50 degrees and sunny and I had packed my running stuff.  Despite the ideal conditions, I felt just plain exhausted- physically and mentally from the week.  I knew I had to run then or risk not doing it.  After changing in the car in the employee parking lot (because I'm classy like that,) I decided to be totally easy on myself.  I picked a hilly route (one of the reasons I wanted to run there vs. my parents is it is soooo much more hilly there = better Boston training).  I said "'Self' just run for 1 hour.  Pace doesn't matter, just keep putting one foot in front of the other."  And let me tell you, it was great.  The run got better and better.  I tackled the hills like a pro and felt so light in my shorts and long sleeve T.  It felt so good to sweat and have the sun out and all.  I finished the run, wanting more but I needed to get home to the cat and I've got a long run tomorrow.  I looked down at my Garmin for the first time to see I averaged an 8:14/mile pace.  This was great not because it was super-fast, but because it felt like a 9:15/mile pace and it was hilly.  I'm really happy how my pace is consistantly improving without a greater effort.  And since I've accepted that I'm not going to increase my milage, I want to really keep the quality of my miles (even on easy days) high.  Since there is only 6+ weeks till Boston, it seems stupid to try to hit my ideal (80+ miles/week now).  Instead I'm going to hold at slightly under 70/week.  We'll see how that goes.

Speaking of which, I've got a long run in the morning.  Should be a pretty flat one around here though, unless I go find some hills.  Hoping for good weather too.  It is 7:42pm and I am unashamably going to be in bed by 8:30pm.  Tomorrow is my one day weekend, and my only day to sleep in.  I am beyond excited.

Yikes, that was a marathon of a post!  There is no one around here for me to vent to (besides little Ollie) so I guess I just put it all out in cyber space!  Even if no one reads it, it feels good to get it off my chest!

Hope everyone had good days and good runs!

2 comments:

  1. rant away!! sounds like a day at work when nothing is going to go right. but thank god for running!!

    and don't worry about my shin. everything i'm blogging about recently is preventative and meant to keep me from ignoring small stuff and letting it get huge. soooooooo i'll be there chasing you at boston :)

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  2. I find it "interesting" (and by that, I really mean "uncool") how people treat those in the food service industry. They'd be in the middle of a super-polite conversation, and then BAM! Food isn't how they want it, and they become uncouth ogres. Rant away. You have an ally in me.

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