A rancid and/or rotten smell decided it would make itself known today in the centre. It was like sewage, but worse.
The centre staff noticed it pretty quickly, and they clocked us sniffing the air. Security were looking round, one had the nerve to come up to me and ask "Err - is your extractor on ?" Yes it is thank you!
The outcome was, that it was a burnt panini. I seriously doubt that explanation - it smelt worse than sewage. And I have had a recent experience with sewage when someone decided they'd tip oil down the sink and some pipes had to be ripped out and replaced as it had got clogged with various substances. The same person also put a separator (a plastic disc which allows pizza pans to be stacked on top of each other) through the oven and melt onto the conveyor. I do like this person but wish they wouldn't be so thick.
And on the subject of smells. Making pizza and dough is a smelly occupation. I come home and I stink like oil and dough, and my hands no matter how many times I wash them, still smell of cheese.
Being in the kitchen doesn't provide many customer stories - which for me is rather pleasant. I do enjoy the odd complaint however. I have noticed though, that for some reason customers seem to respect you more when you come from the kitchen out to the front to help them. I wonder if it is the apron or that I've just been lucky.
Christmas isn't far away now and this will be my second Christmas at Pizza Hut. I can't wait for the centre to go all festive. The trees, the lights, the robotic animals, the music, the festive cheer from customers (!). Last year I posted about what I should say to customers at Christmas. I ended up just being the same and not say anything special. This year I've got a lot more confidence with customers (potentially bordering on cocky) so I don't know whether to be happy and jolly or delibrately miserable. I might be delibrately miserable to express my disgust that Pizza Hut don't pay ANYTHING extra for working Christmas Eve, Boxing Day or any other bank holiday for that matter. And the likely recognition we will get at store level will be "Disappointing Christmas, down on last year" forgetting the fact we gave up our family and holiday time so we could sell pizza - and be paid the same as if it was any other weekday.
There we go, another moan over with. I've done meat and pay rates now... Next time it might be about the constant nagging for brand standard quality products. We try but when you send wafer thin "chunky tomatoes" and tomato concentrate which is 30% thinner but don't tell anyone until 3 weeks after its introduction, it really isn't easy! And the fact you have got rid of the Pizza Hut logo on the napkins (any other PH employees noticed that?) but you want to build the brand. Oh AND the way they are selling off some restaurants to franchisees and telling the store team and managers after it has happened with a phone call saying "by the way, you are now owned by.."
Motivation and communication are not Pizza Hut's strongest points.
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9 comments:
Nothing wrong with a bit of a moan!
Can't believe you are thinking about Christmas already! I love that time of year as much as the next guy, but by mid-December I could cheerfully throttle anyone with a Jingle Bells ringtone, and going anywhere with Christmas "muzak" puts me in a terrible mood!!
Now, to start on my Christmas card list...
"Err - is your extractor on ?"
I think I'll start using that phrase myself!
Smelly hands... have you tried using some of that anti-bacterial "no wash handwash" gel that you can get? I remember reading that it's bacteria that make the "smell", so soap alone may not be doing the trick.
Do you get many people buying Pizza on Christmas Day?
I know of a friend who always gets a Chinese takeaway on the 25th, and it's sort of become his family's "traddition" now. Similarly, I noticed last year that all the amusement arcades in Southend On Sea had "Open on Xmas day" signs up around Xmas.
I can understand some people going to places like this, but what's it like in PizzaHut from your experiences?
Oh, anyone else seen the "email follow-up comments" thing?
That's new! And I like the idea too.
Try toothpaste for cleaning your hands.
We don't get paid anything extra for Christmas Eve either and it's not optional. If you would normally work the day it lands on you have to come in. I was lucky last year as it worked out I got 5 days off for both Christmas and New Year, this year it will be three each. Bank holidays are worth more though, from double time to time and a quarter depending on which set of t&c's you're under.
I've also noticed that two different jobs in the same place will get different levels of respect from customers. I seem to get more as a photo lab dude than I ever did as a cashier. Customer service is somewhere in the middle I find. I think it's perhaps because the public tend to think that any idiot can work a till but that making pizza/processing pictures requires someone of a higher standard and therefore more deserving of their respect. Then there are the people who will treat you like shit just because you work in a supermarket/Pizza Hut regardless of what you do.
With Christmas I don't generally make a special effort to say Merry Cristmas etc. until the last couple of days before.
Please don't mention smells. Someone, a little old lady I think let a stink bomb of on the bus yesterday. All control said was, "Open all the windows."
James we don't actually open on Christmas day - no Huts do as far as I know. Staff are still required to prepare dough and defrost products, and they are paid 4 times their normal rate, which isn't bad - but I'm not doing it.
OK, ta mate.
You mean the Xmas stuff isn't up already? It's been up for weeks round my neck of the woods - even before BST ended...
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