Two Days of Winter

The one thing about my job that I need to expect is to expect the unexpected, especially as a newbie or junior. Your days can quite easily turn from a short 6 hour shift to a 12 hour one in mere moments. When I arrived at work today (after a 2.4KM run) there were about 7 of us on shift and then all over a sudden there were only 3; the majority of staff were removed from the kitchen and sent to another site to cater for a function. The unique thing about where I work is that the kitchen are inhabited by various groups of people, for example I belong to a certain branch that provides a specific service, and to signify this I wear black buttons on my chef whites, a black neckerchief and a black apron. Those from other branches within the organisation wear yellow, blue, purple and so on. It took about 10 of the purple staff to feed about 70 people today, I'm told. Just a few weeks ago we had a sit down dinner for 100 and it was taken care of by 4 of our branch, including myself. And that was at the end of a 15 hour day. The people you work alongside do truly make a difference to your own work, progress and perception of your purpose in the workplace. Just today after finishing up in my regular kitchen I was sent to another kitchen across-the-way to work with people I am not at all familiar with. And boy do they do things very differently. My shift-of-staff is by no means perfect but I'm certainly glad that I'm learning good habits from them and not the very many bad habits I notice of others.