Happy Valentine's Day, everyone! In honor of the holiday, I have a confession to make. I acted a little impulsively a few days ago and made a decision I may come to regret. I acted out of panic, but I feel my actions were justified. I hope that you, readers, will agree.
All right, all right, tense yet? I got a job washing pots for Campus Dining Services. The job offers the best pay on campus, although it is less than I earned for sitting on a beach and watching the water. I had my first shift today, and although the work is harder, it is also
less meaningless more meaningful.
The orientation wasn't much: a friendly coworker grabbed me an apron, showed me the pot sinks, and resumed working. My experience as an OSCAn probably didn't have much bearing on my job performance -- experience doesn't matter a whole lot when it comes to scrubbing grease -- but it did help me feel more at home in the kitchen. (OSCA has taught me WAY more important things than the nuts and bolts of crewing. More on that in another entry.)
The job was also much easier than I had steeled myself for. Most of the time, a once-over with the scrubby pad and thirty seconds in the sanitizer was all the utensil needed. (With a dip in water in between, of course -- our soap and sanitizer neutralize each other, so it's important to rinse.) There were a few difficult pots, but scrubbing a CDS pot to perfection takes maybe a tenth of the work it would take to make a Keep pot look good. That's not to denigrate Keep. Our pots and pans are sanitary and more than clean enough to cook in -- the fact that our stainless-steel equipment is black on the bottom and in most of the corners is simply not relevant. But in CDS, the stainless steel is practically stainless.
Not to mention, the sprayer
sprays. I am told that other co-ops also have sprayers strong enough to blast away food instead of giving it a gentle shower, but I haven't seen this wonder for myself. The sinks are also big enough to lay a cookie tray flat. No more sloshing sanitizer up and down! I never mind in Keep, but I would have felt silly playing in the sink in Lord/Saunders.
But no matter how nice the equipment is or how good the chefs' cooking smells, my job is just a job. It pays. That's all I care about. At Keep, my job matters. Every one of the pots I scrub might be the pot a head cook
desperately needs to feed us all with scrumptious lentil soup. (In fact, we only have one of each pot, so it's just about guaranteed to be needed.) The stacks and stacks of shining trays can't compare to Keep's blackened ones, on which are served homemade cookies, Friday pizza, and -- once -- caramel. At Lord/Saunders, some disembodied Entity owns the sinks, the stoves, the spoons, the potwashers. At Keep, the potwashers belong to ourselves, and the kitchen belongs to us.
My job is a good one, as jobs go, and I feel incredibly fortunate. I'm working to pay off my loans faster, and at the end of this semester, I'll probably find a better job and never look back. Elsewhere, kids younger than me are doing worse work for less pay and looking forward to a future of more of the same. I am growing in leaps and bounds: learning how to think, how to work, how to be kind. I am loving Oberlin, pot sinks and all, and running into the future on light feet.
Speaking of kindness, and of food, I received lovely Valentine's Day wishes from many of you. Thank you! And thank you, Nana, for the chocolate-dipped pretzels and caramel mix. They're delicious, and as always, a hit.
