Flies and Blairs

Song of the Day

Theme song from Punky Brewster

What the flies ordered today:
--2 large orange juices
--1 medium decaf coffee
--2 large coffees
--2 senior lemonades
--no coffee

Our screens are super sensitive to touch, so flies like to order stuff. It's fun to see what they want from day to day. Must have been thirsty today.

Yesterday was my Monday at work. I dropped my cash drawer. Pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters rolling allll over the floor. It was very festive! So the pit person I was replacing and I played a variation of '52-card pickup.' My manager came back to switch us out, saw the mess, and I told her "don't look! Just turn around, and walk away until I call you" (you'd appreciate that Cowboy). She did and we picked it all up. I acutally ended up being over in my drawer, so we must have scored some lost coins.

While we're on the subject of accidents, I had a good one a few weeks ago, and the beauty of it is, NO ONE noticed! It was a big one too. Potentially catastrophic! Only one other person knows, and that's my grill homie, who I told and he found it rather amusing. I was in the front drive through in pre-change over time. We were selling a lot of iced tea and the tea urn was put way far back on the table. I needed a large tea, so I grabbed the urn by the spout and pulled. Would have worked, except whoever cleaned it and took it apart last didn't screw on the spout tight enough, so I yanked, and it came with me. Tea came spurting out of the hole like a fountain. I gasped and looked around to see the placement of my managers...all clear. I shoved the spout back on the stream of tea. It wasn't that effective. It was kind of like trying to put a nozzle on a hose while the water is on. I hung in there though and shoved it even harder and tried to screw it on. We battled for a few seconds and then I got it to stick. Once the fountain was stayed, I surveyed the damage. The table had been turned into a mini-lake of brown tea but amazingly, my shoes absorbed the waterfall and there were only a few drops on the floor. I sopped up the lake as much as I could with the towel I had, then calmly walked through the front to get some more towels so as not to raise alarm from my manager who had returned. I prayed she wouldn't go in there. She didn't, and I got it cleaned up before anyone noticed. I was impressed with myself as to the small degree of damage and how quickly it was contained.

Other accidents?
-I've started the coffee without a pot underneath. But then another person did the same thing the next day. We tend to follow each other with our accidents. Maybe she'll have a tea incident as well.
-Dropping a full try of biscuits. This was during my first weeks there.
-Dropping numerous utensils (happens to someone at least once a day. I take my turn with the rest)
-Dropping the try of scraps from off the assembly table

--

I was watching CNN today on my break and I was very impressed with what Tony Blair had to say in his public address. He, of course, urged a sense of calm but then went on to stress that this was the act of terrorists. Why is that important? He was saying that the people should be calm because the people who did this wanted a reaction of fear. They also wanted the British to turn on themselves and ignore the root problem. Bingo. So Blair reminded the people that this was the act of terrortists, and they [British] were not to blame and the blame would not be turned on them. Hmm...kind of like what we did after Sept. 11th. The fact that our country turned away from the terrortists and began to blame airport security, CIA, FBI, the government in general disgusted me. We completely lost sight of what happened and how it happened. Suddenly, airport security was to blame for a group of men who decided to use a plane full of people as a missle. It had never been done before. How can we prevent that? Who would have conceived that? I'm not saying we should be lax with our security, but what were these men armed with that would have given them away? People were looking for someone to blame, someone to be angry at, and instead of turning that anger towards the problem, we aimed it at ourselves and the very people who work to keep us safe every single day. We don't thank them for the incidents they prevent every day but we sure are quick to point the finger when something happens. It's like suing McDonalds because your kid gets fat (oh wait, that happened). It's like every other ridiculous lawsuit we Americans bring against each other. They ignore the problem completely. I'm sure you've seen the imbecillic "caution" signs on our products today. An iron: they tell you not to iron your clothes while they are still on. Genious! But the sad thing is, someone must have done that and I'm sure it turned out to be the iron-peoples' fault. Would they have ever dreamed that someone would be that dumb? So how could they have prevented it? I know, I'm comparing a terrorist act to an iron, but stick with me on the concept here. As they say, hindsight is 20-20.

I was so glad after Sept 11th to see American's rallying together, and before it happened, I prayed that we wouldn't turn on ourselves. But...we did. People turned against the government they had rallyed behind only a few months before. They couldn't put a face to the terror, so they blamed the faces they saw. They added insult to injury, blaming the people who probably already felt horrible. But the key here--it was an accident. A horrible, tragic accident that we never conceived happening. It was no one's fault. Blair said the same thing today. He said it wasn't anyone's "fault" that the tubes were bombed. It happened and instead of pointing fingers at each other, they need to work to find who caused it, not who might have prevented it. During the Sept 11th hearings, were the terrorists ever brought up? Did anyone blame them? Did anyone call them into question? No. We blamed each other; we blamed everyone we could think of, except those who were guilty. It disgusts me.

So I applaud you, Mr. Blair, and may you learn from our mistakes.