Monday, April 18, 2011

Knife Safety With Alex


Part I
The Restaurant

I cut my finger open recently at work. It was a Saturday night, super busy.  I remember I was supposed to leave about fifty times that day. I started at 9am and every time I was about to leave, somebody would run out of something and I would have to make it. 

6pm: “Alex! Were out of stuffed mushrooms!”
6:30pm:”Alex! We need more Hawaiian Rib Eye Marinade!”
            7pm: “Alex! This stuffed mushrooms and rib eye marinade tastes like shit make it again!”

Just as im finishing up and about to leave, the salad guy runs out of crumbled blue cheese. Well, fuck, Im a block of blue cheese away from going home. My initial instinct is to put together the grating machine which quickly and SAFELY crumbles the blue cheese. But as I begin to assemble the machine, my then kitchen manager approached me with a revolutionary concept. Why not… get ready for it…crumble the blue cheese….WITH A KNIFE! At the time, his method seemed as logical as painting a wall with a fork, so I couldn’t help but ask for clarification. It remained just as logical. My clarification was a hand gesture of what I should do with the knife…this is the extent of my works training. I imagine his safety course consisted of a hand puppet telling workers that if at any point during the day they see blood on the cutting board, they should stay where they are and wait for an adult to come find them. But I digress, this is subject for another blog…or legal statement, whichever comes first. So I begin trying to cut the slick, greasy, round edge of the blue cheese wheel. Slicing the blue cheese thin enough to crumble was one obstacle, but holding the wheel in place so that it didn’t slide around was another problem. In order to safely cut anything, your one hand needs to always be out of dangers way. However, in order to hold the blue cheese in place, I ended up having to put my hand directly IN dangers way, and danger, as fate would have it, was determined not to let anything get in its way.  
                The knife went along my finger and sliced it open with the ease of a lightsaber through a confederate droid. My immediate reaction wasn’t anger but instead amazement at the sight of a wound similar to those in 300 and Gladiator. I took a moment to re-enact my favourite scene, then it was off to seek first aid. Armed with a tiny alcoholic swab and a bandage, I went to the bathroom and and started rinsing off my cut. I realized when the bandage wouldn’t stick to my finger cause of all the blood that I might need something else. Back to the first aid box I went. At this point, I was standing there with one arm under my armpit and another rummaging through the equipment looking for something that looked like a med kit from Call of Duty. I grabbed a few things and went back to the bathroom to try them out. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t find an application for any of it, though, in retrospect the eye wash bottle was a wasted attempt. By this point I had dripped blood all over the floor and sink and pretty much everything else in the bathroom, and managed to leave a pretty solid trail of blood leading to the first aid box as well. My friend Jason saw this and decided to investigate, and, it just so happens I forgot to lock the bathroom door. So Jason opens the door and bears witness to a room covered in blood and me frantically trying to bandage myself up with pretty much the most useless medical equipment I could have grabbed. He saw the cut and said, “Bro, bro…you gotta go to the hospital bro.” So I wrapped some paper towel around my finger and discreetly walked up to my manager who was in the middle of…pretty much preparing and sending out thirty plates of food on the busiest night of the week and said, “James, are you busy” This turned out to be a bad choice of words so I reworded my statement. “When you get a mo’ I kinda need to see you in the back” And with all the subtly in the world, he yelled out “WHAT DID YOU DO!? DID YOU CUT YOURSELF!? SON OF A BITCH!” Everyone knowing about my injury really didn’t help but at least he got the message. So we go to the back and he wraps my finger up and gives me forty bucks for a cab to the hospital. I got my stuff and was leaving the restaurant when he yelled out one last thing, “Make SURE you get a receipt from the taxi!” His concern for my well being was heart warming and almost had me in tears. Just like that I was off to spend my Saturday night in the emergency waiting room. Who knows what evil lurks in the dark dank of Scarborough General Hospital…

2 comments:

  1. AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!! I LOVE U ALEX!!! literally LMAO!!!! sorry to hear about the finger, didnt sound painful though.

    Adnan M

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  2. LOL... I actually laughed out loud. Sorry about your finger dude. Don't worry chicks dig battle wounds, you should write a couple stories about how you might tell a hott girl you got that scar tissue.

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