The Butt Kicking

Day two in the kitchen kicked my butt, big time! It was the night of British Petroleum's awards banquet for 800 people. The kitchen was complete mayhem. It may have been organized mayhem, but since I was the only non-Spanish speaking person in the room, it was difficult for me to tell. One thing was certain, the piles of dirty cookware were piling up faster than I could wash them. And, since I didn't know where most of the things were supposed to go after they were washed, I started building my own piles of clean stuff.
When it came time to start dishing up the plates, all of us lined up along a kitchen counter. With Chef Gonzo standing at one end shouting instructions (in Spanish), we started putting the main course together. First came 4 halves of roasted baby red potatoes, then a scoop of mixed vegetables (squash, mushrooms, peppers), then a piece of fish (my job), then a piece of meat (fillet), then sauce over the meat, then a lid on the top, then into the big warmer-on-wheels. Eight hundred times.
My back and right arm were throbbing by the time it was over.
All of that food had come off of innumerable big sheets, roasting pans and trays that needed to be washed, but before we could get to them, the dirty salad dishes started coming back.
From then on, it was simply overwhelming. You've heard of mountains of dirty dishes? We had entire MOUNTAIN RANGES of dirty dishes.
Four of us, working as fast as we could for 3 hours, didn't make a dent in the pile. When the end of my shift at 10:00 finally rolled around, I said - to no one who understood - "I am exhausted. I gotta go." I felt a little guilty about leaving them in the "valley of the shadow of dish," but I was actually feeling weak-kneed and light-headed. On the way home I started to wonder how much more of that I could stand.
When I went to work yesterday at 2:00, about 10% of the pile was still there. Mohammed, one of the day dish washers, said they had been washing continuously since 6:00 AM.
I changed the water in the dish-washing machine and started washing. When Ramon and Enrique came in at 3:00, the three of us worked together on the dishes until about 5:30. By then, we had the pile pretty well eliminated -Just in time to start preparing for last night's banquet for 350.
And it started all over again.
I have serious doubts that I will stay at this job for more than another week. I just don't have the stamina for it. It is the most physically demanding work I have ever done. Scrubbing hot cookware with steel wool over hot water then loading same in trays and running through a hot dish-washing machine, then sorting and stacking them (when they're REALLY HOT) on carts, then putting them back in the kitchen so they can be dirtied again, just drains the energy right out of me.
Worst of all, I'm NOT looking forward to going back there today. So what's the point of going back? Why should I spend a moment of my time doing something that I don't enjoy doing, surrounded by people I can't even talk to? It's crazy!
Oh, and one more thing: The floor in the kitchen area is treacherous. Oil and water on top of ceramic tile makes it as slippery as a skating rink. Last night, as I was scooting my way around to keep from slipping and falling with a hand full of knives, one of the Chefs said, "Ju got to get different shoes! Company no pay nothing eef you fall and don got the right shoes!" I said, "Okay. Where do I get the right shoes?" He showed me the bottom of his shoe and said, "Ju got to get shoes like dis ones." I didn't see anything particularly unusual about them. They looked like ordinary rubber-soled jogging shoes, but they did have lots of surface area. It's nice that someone finally mentioned it.