Their Daughter’s Hair is Lit From Behind
What a week it’s been.
So, Tuesday was the first day of low season at the zoo, and since Monday was a lot of people’s last full-time shift, we’re down to having about five people in back of house instead of the usual ten or eleven. It’s a big change, and so weird to have so few customers come in. Anyways. The week started off on a bad note right away, because Tuesday was the day that we all found out that one of the zoo’s front of house employees, a seventeen year old girl named Katie had been killed in a car crash on Saturday. So, not even taking her so-young age into consideration, she was a really cheerful girl and it’s so, so tragic that she died. Consequently, this whole week has had that lingering someone has died air to it. You know, when you feel guilty about laughing about things because it seems like a solemn reverie would be much more… sacred.
Because of the short staff, only two people close in the evenings now. And I closed every day this week, augh. Tuesday was Terry and I, and Ryan stayed behind a while to help, too. Since it was our first time closing with so few people, we finished at around 6:30, which is pretty good. Wednesday was the sweet one, though. Terry and I only, and we were out at 6:13. Seriously, that close was epic.
Thursday was Melony and me, but we were sabotaged in our sweet closing because the dish washer broke and the guy was fixing it until 3:30 so all the dishes piled up until then. It was also the day of Katie’s funeral, so the overall mood was very low, and they switched my pizza freezer for a piece-of-crap fridge that isn’t really big enough. But meh. Close took forever because of all the dishes; we weren’t done until after 7:10. If that wasn’t late enough, when we got to the train platform, it was packed. Apparently someone had been hit by a northbound train and so service was delayed a bit. We got to see all the news reporters, though, so it was kind of cool. Penny was so funny! Making faces at the camera and such. Ah, good times. We didn’t see ourselves in the background of the newscast when we watched it later that evening, though. Boo!
Today was a lot better. It was cold and rainy and low season, so that means it wasn’t busy at all. Around eleven, Sarah asked Rose and me if we’d like to help out in the catering kitchen so of course we went. We cut over a thousand buns (literally — I think it was 720 hamburger buns and 640 baguettes) but it was pretty good because the catering kitchen has a radio and I love Rose because she’s awesome. Normally we get glared at when we talk while working, but today we got to have almost three hours of unchecked chatter. It was great! And Alva gave us chocolate bars for free. I did dishes when we went back to Kitamba and I closed with Curran. Done at 6:35. So nothing topped the superhuman Wednesday close of Terry and Colly, but really, you can’t be so great all the time.
