I can has Logic.

I work a hand-to-grit job as a custodian for my University's kitchen. We have 8 of us on the night crew, 1000+ dishes, a 300x300 floor to sweep and mop, 70+ garbage cans to empty, and a frickin' crapton of stuff to organize and put away.

Oh, and some 200 pounds of food to throw away.

Despite that I become really worn out by this job, despite how "easy" it might sound, the part I hate the most is the amount of food we throw away. We throw away unopened, clean, perfectly packaged pans of lasagna, salad, chicken, and all sorts of delicious meals. I don't understand. I had it explained to me once that it's because of health code violations.

Somewhere in there, I think wasting that much food is a health code violation. Or at least that it should be.

The part that caught me the most today was my Student Leader. He's barely older than me, also a student, and does the same labor as me, but tells the rest of the crew what to do. He's a fun guy, who enjoys video games more than me and is studying to do some fun stuff.

So basically, here's the throw-down of how we do things (at least when I take charge, behind his back):

1. Sweep the kitchen (thoroughly)
2. Organize the dishes on the conveyor belt (the first wave)
3. Scrub first wave
4. Send first wave through the dish-washer
5. Repeat for the next 4 waves of dishes until all are done
6. Put said dishes away and organize them
7. Mop the kitchen, scrub the designated room for the day, and clean the dish-washer and river
8. Put down the mats
9. Book it home, to try and forget today's work

It's the same for him, except he wants to scrub right after we sweep. I don't think he realizes that the area's we scrub are high-traffic most of the time. This means we'll scrub them, which consists of drowning the floor in cleanser and bringing all heck down on it with scrub brushes, and then have to watch the catering crew other workstations trample all over our now-shiny floor. Somehow in his mind, this means we'll get out earlier. I asked him today, and his response was, "I want to get out at 8:30." To which I replied, "we won't. We'll have to mop again." Then he basically told me to screw off, which I adequately and appropriately replied the same way. We do this every day, but never mean anything by it.

Anyway, this is basically how my boss looked to me:

So yeah, that's work for me. He's not even the worst. My boss's boss is incredulous, and makes no sense. She goes on crusades every day to try and impress her boss, whether it means making us stay an hour later, or us all going home throwing up from smelling too much grease.

I decided to just move past his derpative logic and just do the work. Even better, I realized that if you apply his tactics to any kind of leadership, you can get away with awsesome stuff. In case I'm ever a leader of anything unimportant....


Screw Logic. I does it my way.