Serving food to people you never meet...
I was hired for three days to help cover an illness in the kitchen at Walls's sausage machine factory in Machester's docklands. This was the oddest canteen I've ever worked in. We kitchen staff spent most of the day cooking food. We cooked/prepared everything starting at 8 am and working until 1 pm; from breakfast, through lunch, dinner, supper and snacks; eggs (scrambled, fried and poached), sausage, bacon, tomato, black pudding, pies, hot-pot, stew, chips, fish, chops, salad, cheesecake, cakes, fruit, the bloody lot.

What did we do with all this freshly cooked food? Serve it through a hatch? Carry it out waitress-style? Silver service, even?

No. We flash chilled it, plated it up as if it was hot, then entombed it in cling film. These culinary masterpieces then had a coloured sticky label stuck on by the 'chef de cuisine' Tony (of course) and were placed in rotating compartments ranged along one wall of the kitchen. As we opened the door to do a 'fill', the light on the far side went out and only we could turn the carousel. The carousels would turn round at the request of someone in the canteen, who would remove the meal and follow the colour coded sticker placed by Tony. There was, apparently, a bank of microwave ovens out there with coloured labels stuck over the buttons.

We filled the drinks dispensers with cans and bottles from the rear as well, and there was another, smaller carousel for plate returns.

The factory staff worked shifts, 24 hours a day, and we never heard any more than a dozen or so people at any one time in the canteen. We never went into the canteen, only Tony did that. He would unlock the door and return a few minutes later with a tray of empty sauce bottles, sugar dispensers and salt pots for refilling. He would take out a box of sealed, disinfectant soaked cloths which the workers used to clear up after themselves. The canteen floor was mopped by the factory cleaners, we mopped the kitchen floor.

We never, ever, EVER saw any of the workers. One night, I lurked around outside the gates waiting to see one of these mysterious workers, but all I ever saw were shadows moving behind the obscuring, translucent panels in the walls, high up on the side of the factory.

It was very freaky.
(therandomthink, Wed 26 Jul 2006, 12:43, Reply)