Thursday, July 24, 2008

Carolyn to the rescue

Thursday 24th July 2008
We were one short on the staff front today, so needless to say it was busy, it also happens to be pension day on a Thursday so they come out in force.
Ian tried cleaning the sandwich toaster, which had it must be said, accumulated a thin’ish layer of whatever comes off toasted sandwiches on the toasting plates. The stuff he used to clean it is the same stuff that works extremely well on our Griddle, unfortunately it melted the Teflon or what ever it is coating. Ian checked the destructions on the bottle and nowhere did it say, do not use on Teflon or any other coated cooking surface. What it does say is, do not use on aluminium or painted surfaces, who in their right mind would cook on a painted surface anyway.
Fortunately Carolyn was able to bring another one out straight away and ended up having to work as we were rather busy at the time and in danger of running out of crockery.
Ian phoned the people who had supplied the cleaning product and spoke to some guy who quite frankly didn’t give a damn, that was until Ian pointed out that we now had a piece of equipment that we couldn’t use and somebody would have to buy another one. He then got serious and said that he would contact the manufacturers to see what they had to say about it.
A couple of minutes later he rang back and informed us that it should say in the instructions for the appliance how best to clean it and what chemicals to use, or not to use.
Unfortunately the sandwich toaster is something that we inherited so we do not have the destructions for it, Ian is determined to find a copy and read it just in case it doesn’t say anything about this chemical and if he is lucky he can sue the pants off em.
After all it isn’t just use of the equipment that has been denied us, it is the loss of trade, Trauma brought about by the coating dissolving right before Ians eyes, lack of warnings on the label, the stress involved while the supplier and the manufacturer conjured up a get out of jail quick excuse and of course the cost of fuel for Carolyn to drive from Home to the Café with another one.
Every couple of weeks in the shopping centre, Monika a partially sighted woman sets up her stall and sells goods to raise funds for Blind Dogs for the Guides Guide Dogs for the Blind. When she comes to the centre she is normally there for two days, so rather than take all her gear home at the end of the first day she leaves it in the Café overnight.
This evening while Ian was cleaning the Griddle, the non dissolvable one, Michelle quite innocently walked into the kitchen and announced to “Ian, Monika would like to see you” to which Ian replied “I bet she would”. It took a few seconds but eventually Michelle saw the joke.
Fortunately Monika didn’t hear any of this and when Ian went out to see her, she had only come over to thank us for looking after her stuff and also to chain down her Plastic Dog with a hole in its head, we think it’s supposed to be a Labrador but it was probably made by someone who didn’t know what a Labrador looks like.
Carolyn made a lovely stew for dinner tonight, Ian had two portions just in case she forgets to cook tomorrow.
The kids faction came top of the table last term, they have got to take cushions into school tomorrow because they will watching films and eating Pizza to celebrate.

2 comments:

Little Nut Tree said...

Eating pizza to celebrate coming top of what?

The HoJo's said...

There are four factions (houses I guess in UK) at the kids school, the blue faction got the most points (like house points) so they got a healthy (??) treat

xc