Someone's in the kitchen

Well, I am halfway done with the halfway point. If that doesn't make sense, I'm halfway through this work week and at the end of the week it'll be halfway through with camp.

I'll also have a two-day weekend when it's all said and done. For whatever inane reason, weekend camp is still going on for only SIX kids this weekend. Go figure.

This week, though, camp has improved, if just the administrator caved and decided to just leave me in the kitchen. It's far best for the camp, that's for sure, so I don't mind it. It definitely beats working 17+-hour days.

There's no pay raise at all but no pay cut. Oddly, this is the proposal HiHo (the guy with the food contact) suggested both the first and second weeks of camp. SoCal, the administrator said sure, but I'd have to take a pay cut. So no deal.

But in the end, feeding kids wins out. They do get hungry when you leave them for a week, so it's best that I look after them.

So with that, combined with the fact there are 40 fewer people, it's not too bad. That's not to say it's fun or anything like that. The camp director is doing things such as coming through the food line and not speaking to either Pocahontas or myself, so I know she's angry at being usurped. Or something.

She is a nice person and loves the camp, but she's just not ready for the position she's in. Way too young -- even flirty with the "junior leaders." I think she's under a lot of stress and just doesn't know how to deal with unhappy leaders, which she created by not informing them properly and by not looking after them.

The administrator and director still aren't good at communicating, either. With us, the staff or whomever. Two days ago, on Breakfast One, the group came in to lay out the place settings. They asked how many cups for water and I said none; because we had juice, we didn't get water, also. (They also get milk.)

About 15 minutes later, after the leaders and group had gone and the whole mess of kids was piling in, the camp director came in, walked over to the cups, took a tray of 36, and walked to the ice bin. She walked right by me and didn't say a word.

When she started the process of icing the cups, I went over to her and asked what she was doing. She said, "Getting water." That was it. No mention if it was for her, a sick kid or whatever. So I said, hesitatingly because I really had no idea why she was getting the water, "We're having juice today so we don't need cups."

Without looking at me, she uttered some short sentence that meant we needed water cups. I told Pocahontas and we verified there'd been a change because some kids were getting dehydrated.

So that's not a big deal to change the system, and it's a valid reason. But the execution is extremely poor. Why not come back, say, "Hey, I know we haven't done water with juice for camp this year but we changed our minds -- can you help me get 130 cups of water? And the kids are coming in now so we need to hurry. Thanks!"

Not hard, is it? But it's beyond the capacity of the leader of leaders.

I'm trying to hang in, though. I'm getting a nap-sized break during the day and have the ability to check e-mail on a decent and regular basis. So yay!

No improvement yet

Well, I am 3/8 of the way done with camp and counting every second. Needless to say, it hasn't improved.

Early into last week's camp, I thought we'd hit rock bottom. Then the power went out. As if I could joke about that.

This past week was deaf week, and although the kids (24 of the 188 total people there) were mostly great, not all of the staff was. The ones who were not nice were rude, demanding and basically really bitchy. I'll skip the details, but let's just say I'm glad they're gone.

I did get to work outside the kitchen this week, but because f poor hiring decisions, I also worked inside the kitchen. I counted. I'm working eight hours in there and about 8-10 out. Each and every day.

At our debriefing -- which is more of a joke than anything; at 4 p.m. Friday, just send us home instead of waiting around until 6 to chat -- we went over our "highlights" of the week. I made something up.

I told Baloo my two real highlights were:

1. When, that morning, Pocahontas absolutely lit into the camp adminstrator because the maintenance man isn't taking out the kitchen trash. They'd had a confrontation earlier in the day and he called her a liar, saying he had, indeed dumped the trash out. He had not, and she had enlisted about eight different guys to get rid of it all. She was SO mad.

2. When the toilets stopped up (this was because the deaf girls kept flushing pads and tampons down the toilet, despite repeated requests to leave such disgusting objects in the trash) and Balto had to plunge and mop. Side story to this is basically he, a nice guy all the same, hasn't been doing squat at camp (and even leaving at times on errands the rest of the staff would kill for). It's really making two people in particular angry (not myself, but I am the listening ear) so the fact he had to actually do hard labor for a day was kind of amusing.

Working continues to compare to slavery. Besides the hours and wages, I learned the leaders, when they do get their one free hour a day, are not allowed to leave campus. They have to sit in this rat-infested (but camper-free) cabin in case they are needed.

Indy got sick, too. She has been so overworked it's insane -- staying in the sun all day. She could barely stand up and the administrator had to take her to the walk-in urgent care. The doctor said to go home and rest.

They wouldn't let her. Instead, she had to go to the administrator's house -- across the street -- and recoup there. She could have left Thursday for her parents', which is just over the border in Georgia, on Thursday and really had a long time off, but it's not allowed.

Honestly, I just can't believe this is happening.

Kamp Krusty would be three steps above this

OK, I just posted a long rant about camp and it got eaten. Brilliant. As if last week couldn't get worse.

Anyway, camp horrible. Just absolutely horrible. They are understaffed and everyone is doing stuff way outside their job description.

I am light years away from mine. I'm still in the kitchen, only now I am doing the work of two people instead of one. The other person, who thought she was making $9 an hour but tried to make a go at $30 a day, walked out Monday.

And the maintenance guy also quit Sunday, too. I've plunged toilets, dumped trash and everything else. I've gotten one hour-long break in the week, which came on Monday. On my way to my cabin to brush my teeth, I got intercepted to do my real job and spent 40 minutes trying to deal with a homesick kid.

Kicker on that was he is a day camp kid, not an overnight. And this was an hour and a half short of pickup time. I couldn't believe it. He was whining, pretending he had a stomache (he'd been to the infirmary earlier with the same phamton complaint) and sobbing to the point of snot dripping out of his nose and hanging in mid-air until he sniffed it back in.

So, since then, I do not wander far from the kitchen. I make a quick run to the break room, dodging spiders and cockroaches to check my Internet, and then run back to the kitchen.

No job offers yet. I am getting antsy on Amarillo. I know the federal government takes awhile, but I've no idea what to expect next, or when to expect it.

The past week started brutally at 1 p.m. Sunday, when the first thing out of the director's mouth was "So, let's debrief on last week. What were the bad things that happened?"

This should be done BEFORE you leave for the weekend so you don't have to relive the nasty memories you just spent a day and a half trying to forget! (To her credit, she learned this and yesterday we debriefed in more positive (meaning anonymous) fashion.

Tomorrow (my work week is from 11 a.m. Sunday until 6 p.m. Friday) the four members of the supervisory staff -- and I hope everyone returns -- meet an hour before everyone else. I am relieved. I spent three hours Thursday talking to my staff's concerns and want to pass them on. They're disturbing.

One girl, honestly, I will be surprised if she comes back. I talked to her Thursday and she was so tense I could have snapped her in two. Poor thing. She's only 19 -- not ready to be working so much, with so much mental and emotional output.

Another, who is about 20, came back in the kitchen at one point sobbing. She'd made an innocent mistake -- which was all right in the end -- and it just pushed her over an emotional wall. She said it was the second time she'd cried that day.

Another, on the supervisory staff, did the same thing Friday. These people are just too young to have to deal with this emotion-wracking crap.

Next week, we have been warned, will be the most intense week. First, we're at capacity, plus it is deaf week. In addition to a full round of campers, we will have 25 hearing-impaired kids and interpreters. Busy, it will be.

I am going to be in the kitchen at least this week, too, I think. They keep hiring (or pretending to hire) people who don't show up. Even when one gets there, they need two, and they need to make sure they stay, so I will have to stay in there long enough to train them.

It's a quarter of the way done. I am so relieved. I'm just so exhausted it is not funny.

Lunchlady Doris

It's Sunday again and I'm headed back to camp.

Oh my, camp is brutal. And the first week, inchallah, wasn't like things to come.

Essentially, I was hired to oversee the girls' leaders, who are kids age 17-23 acting as counselors. They are a great group of people.

There are four of us in these supervisory positions, and none of us have been performing the jobs for which we were hired -- at least yet.

My circumstance is basically I wound up being Lunchlady Doris from the Simpsons. What happened was the really awesome kitchen lady, Pocahontas, had two people who were supposed to work for her. One is Scooby, who is awesome but she can't get there until 9 a.m., which is after the 8 a.m. breakfast, for which you need to prepare at 7 a.m.

The other, who is nameless to me, got bad information from the Y: she thought she was making $9 an *hour,* as opposed to the $33 a *day* she's making. So she left, and I stepped in. And was essentially on my feet for 13 hours a day. Non-stop.

Now, I like the rush of it and getting to see all the kids, which includes the boys and day camp kids. But I missed bonding with the girls themselves. I had hoped to go canoeing or horseback riding and stuff like that.

So what I've been doing is spending the day in the kitchen and then joining the evening activity, then assisting Lilo in taking her littlest camper for night meds, then heading off to the two girls' cabins to have devotions and talks then.

Basically, I get up at 6:30 and then don't return to my own roach-infested cabin until 10:30 p.m. Then I try to do laundry, read, decompress, bathe and talk to the two girl leaders who are working with day camps this past week. I'm there to support them, so I need to be available to listen to them.

So basically I'm exhausted by about Tuesday. Fortunately, in the kitchen, there are few of the flying bugs and I didn't get stung or bitten too much this past week. There was also AC, at least after Monday. It, like the ice machine, was broken then.

I missed Friday because I went out to Amarillo for a job interview. The people out there were really, really nice but I have no idea when I will hear about the job.

The American Quarter Horse Association is headquartered out there, right next to the little hotel I stayed at (you cannot get from Tallahassee to Amarillo and back in one day). I tried to get Wendy something but the store closed at 5 p.m. and I missed by 10 minutes.

Flights went fine. I hadn't been to the Tallahassee airport since September of 2006.

I managed to do what's next to impossible: I flew out of Tally and back and didn't pass through Atlanta! I flew Delta/NW on the way out and went to Memphis and took American back and went through Dallas.

On the AMA-DFW flight, I was in the very last seat next to a 20-year-old soldier heading back to Ft. Campbell and then Afghanistan. He was going through a rough time but was just so sweet. I had a lot of fun talking to him, and it made sitting in the very back seat of a bumpy plane less scary.

Getting under way

Camp starts this morning. I am not ready for it, but I'm ready for it to get under way. I'm just tired of the waiting and pretend training.

Day camp began last week, but, since the Y doesn't have a big budget, I didn't report until Thursday. When I asked "morning, noon or night?" the answer was whenever I wanted, so I arrived at 5:30, after working an almost-full day for Florida Law Weekly and in time for dinner.

And I learned almost immediately that during day camp, they don't provide dinner for staff, which sucks. I mean, you're dealing with below-poverty wage and then you have to fork out money for one meal a day. Brutal.

I had a kids' meal at Sonic, which was gross. You know, as much as I ate fried food before Morocco, it doesn't have the same appeal. I like it, but not that deep, deep fried stuff that's about 2/3 breading.

Anyway, I worked Thursday camp. As soon as I arrived, the day camp staff alerted me to three names of trouble kids, X, Y and Z. Well, Z wasn't there, but X and Y were and boy oh boy. If they were dogs, they both would be alpha bitches. They were in the same group, so we had fights.

They are both really sweet girls, but attention-seeking in their own way. X has ADHD or something like that and had learned she can use it for a crutch. She does something wrong, she says, oh, but I have ADHD. It's like um, kiddo, you're on meds and it's under control.

Y makes me sad. There's no mom around and the dad works all day. She's an only child, so basically she's starved for attention and used to be the center of it. She really, really made enemies fast and would complain about this or that. When there was a line at the water fountain, for example, and she got accidentally pushed, she would shove back -- hard.

We had a lot of talks about how you can only control what you do, not what others do. If they push you, shove you, yell at your or whatever, that's their choice. You don't have to choose to push, shove or yell back.

It didn't stick the first day I was here. We'll see how we fare through camp. I'm sure these three won't be the worst ones and the group will vary from week to week.

Oh, there is a little 4-year-old who slipped by the age limit. B is everyone's favorite. He's well-behaved and just a little helpful angel. Apparently his age was discovered on the first day and the camp was hesitant to take him, but they agreed to give it a try. On the second morning, he was upset when his mom dropped him off and she pulled him to the side and said he needed to be a good boy or he couldn't stay. He shaped up.

On the third day, he had some other altercation when his mom dropped him off. She again pulled him aside and said, "Now, remember what we talked about. Be good and don't ruin this for Mommy." And he was fine.

I laughed and laughed. That's just so funny to have a mom telling that to a toddler, really, and boy, he understood it no problem.

The kids do say funny things. The last day of camp last week, two brothers were still to be picked up. Upon realizing M and N were there alone, M said, "Hey! We're the last two campers here. Well, this is awkward." He's 10.

The training has been one miscommunication after another. I just want to get the show on the road and let the kinks work themselves out.

We had been told, I swear, to be here at 11 on Saturday. Everyone but one person heard this, and we all trickled in. (Not everyone had to be here for day camp.) Friday after day camp, we went our ways to dinner and I lollygagged, choosing to shower and get clean while it was still light out. I checked my email and then set about for foraging for food. I ran into MacGuyver, the maintenance guy, and said something about being here at 11 tomorrow for training. He said he thought it was 4.

Great. And later, Indy went out to work with the camp director (the big boss), who confirmed it was 4. Now, during the training, the big boss and the little boss often had clearly miscommunicated, so I wasn't willing to believe this, but the big boss made it clear to Indy that we weren't getting paid for Saturday, although we were expected to finish our CPR training at 4.

So, even though I mentioned several times I thought there was a miscommunication, the girls went ahead and did laundry Saturday morning. I headed up to the training room and indeed, there was a group there with the little boss, who had, indeed, not only said 11 but miscommunicated that to the big boss.

So, since not everyone was there and we weren't getting paid, she couldn't make us work. We ended up being off until 4, which irritated me because Zippy had Mackenzie and I could have hung out with them.

I really, really hope that this falls into place. Even if the worst thing happens, though, I still have less than two months left.