byGinene

Random… as I think of random stories I’m going to share them. I think I explained how I had shared so many stories in FB then lost them when my account was disabled. So as things come to mind, I’m going to document them for posterity.

People often tell me I’m so calm in the face of a crisis. When they do, I say ‘is anything on fire?’ When they say no, I say ‘if nothing is on fire, it’s a good day’ and explain why I’m so calm.

A few years ago, on a busy Friday lunch, I was working on the pack line. Look, I know I haven’t explained where I work yet and I was holding off, but I guess now is the time. I manage (or attempt to manage) a KFC. So, busy lunch… packing chicken… One of my chefs comes up to me and tells me he needs me upstairs right away in the kitchen. I look at him sideways and say something about taking a look at how busy it is.

He says ‘a cooker is on fire.’ Ummm, you are forgiven for interrupting customer service. I dash upstairs with him and yep, flames are shooting out of the cooker. It felt like it was minutes but I’m sure it was seconds. I looked around and thought to myself ‘somebody better do something!!!!!’ Then I realized that I was the somebody.

I said ‘turn off the gas and unplug the cooker.’ Good thing is, they had already done that. One of the chefs said ‘should I pull the fire suppression system?’ I said ‘NOOOOO. If we do that we will be cleaning up for a day.’ Next I thought of the fire extinguisher but again thought that it would make a huge mess. Finally, the most obvious, easiest thing came to mind… the fire blanket!! No mess, effective, easy to clean up.

We grabbed it off the wall and threw it over the cooker. It was effective for the flames coming out the top of the cooker but it didn’t cover all the way to the ground. So, we had to use the fire extinguisher after all.

Got the fire out. Had to shut down the kitchen while we cleaned everything in it. Since we had used the fire extinguisher we had to be careful. Not as bad as if the fire suppression system had gone off though!

We closed for a couple of hours to clean up then got ourselves open for dinner.

So, when the water is coming up through the floor… a pipe is leaking from the ceiling… part of the cement ceiling is falling down… and I’m not panicking, that’s why! More stories to come… I think I have at least one from every day of the 8 years I’ve been here!