Staff and new things

I'll do the products first, it is easier:

--We now have BBQ pizza. It has a BBQ sauce base, bacon, chicken and red onion on it. It is vile.

--We now have cheesecake. It has cheese, cake and no fruit. It is also vile.

--We are getting a meatball pizza. It will probably - be vile.

Now we stock bacon I scrounged a bun from KFC to make a bacon butty. I was told to put it on a full oven pass. Gradually the kitchen filled with smoke and the distinct smell of cat wee. Then out popped my bacon! It was extremely crispy, black and about a fifth of the size it started. The smell put me off entirely so I didn't bother trying again.

Then the staff...we have some new team members.

They worked well for about 2 weeks. Now they just stand there. Doing nothing. They're all desperate to work BOH but they can't even be arsed to do their front jobs properly. It isn't that they don't know what to do, they just leave it...and have no sense of urgency EVER. I taught them my good ways (ha) with "If you have no one to serve then do things which will make it easier later." So for example, rather than standing there playing Snake, restock the fridges...clean up that puddle of Pepsi...get receipt roll for that till which has had an error message for 2 hours etc.

I mainly work BOH now so I don't get to watch them all the time but I'll go out to the front to fetch a drink and the tiled floor for customers will be sticky with patches of black dried drinks. I look round, and there are 3 front team members standing there staring at their tills but with no customers. Because I trained these people I try and make sure they do things right. So on one occasion I asked "Umm maybe one of you could get the mop out here, it's sticky and going black with dirt..thanks.." and I smiled. The response was "You ain't a manager!" by the gobbiest of the lot. "I know but I trained you to not just stand there doing nothing, and when you do, it makes me look like a prick who hasn't showed you anything". "K." "Are you going to mop it then..?" "Later". A manager then walked in returning from his break, and the first thing he said was "___ clean this floor if you're doing nothing." to the person who gobbed off. Ha, I smirked at her and walked off!

Also, when they get out late, they are surprised - but blame it on being busy not that they stood there doing nothing.

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I'm not too sure how RSS works but I hope if you subscribe to this blog you aren't getting loads of updates...I'm adding labels to my posts...?

Apologies if you are!

Prank call

The phone rang and I decided to get it:

"Hello do you delivery?"
"No sorry.."
"Do you do pick up?"
"Yes. We are an Express store though..so we just have set pizzas"
"What toppings do you do?"
I went through the pizzas extremely monotonously.
"Right ok...I'll pay extra if you shit on them"

I went silent and then I heard a lot of laughter in the background. It didn't really bother me so I laughed back at them and they were the ones who hung up first...I won I reckon!!!

I tried 1471 just to see if I could call them back, but it said they were international...do they not have pizza restaurants abroad..?!

No smoking

I find it quite funny that we now have No Smoking signs on the back door and in the kitchen. Like anyone is going to light up in a commercial kitchen!

Oh well at least we won't be fined.

Early and late

Early
When I mention to someone I have to be in at 8am...they usually go "You work at Pizza Hut though...who wants pizza at 8am!?" and I suppose it is understandable.

But we have to do quite a bit in the morning... Pan dough, it arrives frozen so it is put into pans - defrosts - proofs and then retards. We have a machine called an ADPR for this task. The A stands for automatic and well the rest I'm sure you can work out. Panning dough basically involves putting 11g of oil in the bottom, putting a frozen disc in, twisting it to remove any air bubbles and then 2 times round with spray release. Spray release is a glorified oil. We use trolleys to put the dough on. Each trolley can hold either 180 or 240 pizzas depending on how busy we are. We have 7 trolleys so can effectively have 1680 pizzas but we never do as the system isn't designed for that. We have a large quantity of pans and seperators. These are Pizza Hut branded (with the old Pizza Hut logo, not because we're old but they still make them with this logo). Quite a lot of the utentils are Pizza Hut's own including spoodles, rockers etc.

When the dough is ready we do pre-top. Which is making the pizzas in advance. HSR/RBD/FSR do not do this except for when they have buffets. We have speed rings which are plastic rings which sit on the dough so we get a brand standard crust. I did a search for an image of these but couldn't so I'll have to get one when I have a chance. I always think about getting pictures but forget. It isn't that exciting anyway. We use a spoodle a cross between a spoon and ladle to sauce. Then we use cups to get the measured amount of cheese on the base. Put the topping on, and we use a two finger space rule for each topping. If you're feeling generous you can on occasion put a piece of pepperoni on top of another and someone will get a treat. I don't do this very often!! We make pizzas in quite large batches and not individually.

Then put pizzas back in the walk-in fridge and they are cooked when required.

Late
Nothing to do with pizza to be honest but I found it quite funny.

On Sundays each store does a fire alarm test as well as the centre itself. They're all linked so when we test ours everyone else goes, but we have to test them one by one!!

We still have our shutter up, it is about 5.20pm and the last customer left about 10 minutes ago. Security check toilets etc but today they only have lady officers, so didn't check the mens.

Being a Sunday, we start the fire alarm test! Depending on the type of unit and type of alarm the system will do different things:

For example, our alarm when a sensor is activated goes to a 'standby message' on the tannoy for 1 minute then to evacuation. If we press a fire point it goes to evacuation straight away.

The alarm is going intermittently and on comes the voice
"Attention please. Attention please. An incident has been reported within the building, please wait for further instructions."

We like to test ours quite a lot because it annoys the hell out of centre management so leave it running.

A minute passes and the alarm goes constant and a REALLY loud voice (they have separate speakers for the alarm tannoy)

"ATTENTION. ATTENTION. PLEASE LEAVE THE BUILDING BY THE NEAREST ROUTE. ATTENTION ATTENTION EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY."

This happens every Sunday so employees know it is ok. But then from the toilets comes running this man looking really annoyed but then stops looking round at the empty place and notices that our shutter is now lowering because of the alarm, starts waving and then runs to the main doors. They're locked and he thinks he is going to burnt to death. Being a nice person I put the shutter back up and walk over to him (quite far actually) and tell him it is ok. He is going crazy though, kicking the doors, running into them, shaking them. I do wonder what he thinks he will achieve and whether I should retreat back to the Hut.

He sees me and asks
"Have you come to unlock this door, theres a fire!!!"
"No it's ok they do tests on a Sunday."
"Well I need to get out right now!"

They must have seen his antics on camera as two security officers arrived at the door and he was released. He got out and one of them went "What an idiot...he must have been on the toilet for 20 minutes!" I concurred, went back to Pizza Hut and drank an Orange & Peach Fruitshoot (new favourite drink).