Tuesday, April 15, 2008

"This is not a no glass facility"

   Yep. You read that right. Probably did just what I did,too. Read it again just to make sure my eyes didn't stutter. There were several of these notices, posted by each of the time clocks and one in the break room where I work. Of course it wasn't supposed to read that way. Pull out the 'not' and it makes more sense. Especially when you work at a bakery. A commercial bakery.
  Scared yet? You will be. Come. Take my hand as we roll in the dough.
   That's not the best notice I've seen though. Oh no, not by a long shot! That dubious honor would be the one posted at the head of the stairs leading to the mens locker room which said," Please do not urinate in the trash cans. Thank you." The locker room is on the other side of the building from the mens room. Make sense? I didn't think so. We don't have to make sense, we know better. How about this one, posted in the break room, no less- "Please defacate in the toilet bowl. Do not soil the seat." Had enough yet? I'm just getting started...
   Just recently, we had an inspection. The owner pays for this inspection by the American Institute of Baking. Production is shut down, (so the inspectors can't see how bad it really is when it's running), everything is cleaned, painted, and repaired the month before the inspection so it looks like people care.
Joking around, I asked the sanitation manager to let me know when his crew was coming out on the loading dock to clean. To my surprise, he gave me a schedule, not only when they'd be out there, but where they'd be for the month up to the inspection! All well and good,you say? Well, the day came when everything was moved off the dock (by me) to facilitate this sanitation fiasco. No one showed. I asked the sanitation manager what happened, he told me he got the dates wrong. I said my kids knew the days of the week before they started school, and asked him what his problem was. He sits in his office, on the pc, writing poetry books. He helped pressure wash a control panel to the computer for the roll line, the week before Christmas. The new computer took a week to arrive. We had to truck rolls in from upstate that week! The guy that owns the place must've been livid. (I never see him, I leave too early. ) That's the current sanitation manager. We've been through 4, I think, in the past 5 years. One went to start up his own towing service, one to a bagel factory, one left and came back as the production manager - he slipped in the steam box, hurt his back and is " no longer with the firm..." the last one went to work for one of the independents and is doing much better than he was as a manager here. That's what he says anyway. *shrug*