One Small Step for Man

[Forgiveness, please, if this goes into too much detail.]

This morning I went to my first day of work at the catering company. It isn't real work yet, but a three-day training and trial period. Unluckily I arrived after 11 a.m., because while I reached the school in time it was difficult to find a proper entrance. After going to the office, I was directed to the kitchen and lunch room. There my training supervisor met me, guided me into a nice little room to change out of my outdoor shoes into my indoor ones, and out of my outdoor shirt into my cafeteria uniform shirt, and to put my things in a locker. (What I must also have along is the Rote Karte.) Besides I washed my hands, of course. It was snowing a trifle outside and the grassy areas and sidewalks were still covered. And there was still time before the food was to be served.

Then I learned the simpler tasks. Firstly we lifted the stainless steel, lidded bins out of the grey-blue styrofoam boxes, and checked the slip-tags to see that the right quantity of food had been delivered in them. (If it had been delivered to the wrong school, or there had been insufficient portions, we would have phoned the number given on the slips to correct the mistake.) Out in the lunch room a container each of tea and water, glasses, and cutlery had already been set up, and in the kitchen stacks of dishes with neat blue-and-white tea towels draped over them were awaiting use. At the window from which the food is served, there is a bain-marie, like a steel sink with at most an inch of water on the bottom, and my supervisor had switched on the heating underneath. Into this bain-marie we lowered the bins. Then, for the sake of food safety, we measured the temperature of one bin of each of the different foodstuffs with a thermometer much like the kind one uses at home for amateur medical purposes, and after the number stopped rising recorded it in a chart.

Eventually the business of serving food itself began. Since it's an elementary school, the children are for the most part friendly little characters, and as I ladled out tomato sauce and, every now and then rice with chickpea curry or the pasta with which the tomato sauce goes, I liked catching glimpses of their personalities. A couple said "danke," quite charmingly, and I was careful to recognize their effort to be polite by replying "bitte." As they grow older they'll probably find that most people aren't polite, besides which it's a bit presumptuous for me to dabble in pedagogy, but in the words of a certain Englishman, "How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world."

In the meantime I had to keep in mind that the littler ones receive more modest portions than the larger ones, and that when they ask for a second helping (which many did, because they love the noodles), this helping is slightly smaller; besides one must pay attention whether they want sauce, a little sauce, a dab of sauce to taste, or no sauce at all. For reasons of keeping demand within the limits of supply, neither third servings nor taking a portion of rice as well as of noodles are permitted. The supervisor already knew the preferences of the children and therefore had ordered a much larger proportion of noodles than rice; besides she handed out the apples to those children who weren't enrolled in day care and who wouldn't therefore be receiving them later. Surprisingly enough the children were quite enthusiastic about the apples, which did possess a pleasant rosy tinge; only one handed his back to me, and another wanted to exchange his because it was a little gnarled.

A third lady was busy in the dishwashing room, spraying off trays of dishes with a highly pressurized hose, and then setting it under the hob of a compact but impressive washing machine. The dirty dishes came in on trays set in wagons, and sometimes the children helped by pushing them into the kitchen, under the watchful eye of the lady so that they didn't roam loose. Out in the lunchroom the teachers wiped off the tables as their classes left. And the remaining business of cleaning was spared me, as I was sent off home right after the very last children had received at least their first portion.

So I'm a little anxious about the next two days, especially because I can be absentminded and forget things, and because when I'm under pressure instructions to me can go in one ear and out the other. But it seemed that today the only signs of abject stupidity were, firstly, not catching the name of my supervisor and, secondly, writing down my phone number incorrectly. Given the fact that I've thought of Proper Work with the same awed trepidation with which Frodo Baggins might have regarded the borders of Mordor, the last thing I expected was to have fun; I did, a lot.

***

It's also Papa's birthday!