Total pages in book: 54
Estimated words: 52100 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 261(@200wpm)___ 208(@250wpm)___ 174(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 52100 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 261(@200wpm)___ 208(@250wpm)___ 174(@300wpm)
“This isn’t about who anyone likes or dislikes, Shea,” he said. “Last weekend, the kitchen had so many unforced errors that the level of service was far below our standards. I had to comp so many meals that it affected our bottom line.”
I shook my head, irritated. “Over what? Running out of bacon? Regular butter instead of whipped? Caden, we always struggle to keep up with the breakfast buffet when we have eight baseball teams here. I hate that buffet. And you don’t have to comp an entire family’s meals just because we couldn’t keep up with a hundred boys’ appetites at once.” I went over to the walk-in cooler to get ingredients, stacking them in my arms and continuing what I was saying as soon as I came back out. “Anytime someone complains, you start falling all over yourself comping things. That’s on you, not Nina. She did a damn good job on a weekend with a baseball tournament while we’re understaffed.”
I set out my ingredients. One of my morning cooks, Ray, nodded at us as he walked in to start baking biscuits.
Caden lowered his voice but didn’t let up. “You deserve the occasional weekend off, Shea, but you have to leave someone competent in your place if you choose to be gone.”
“Nina is more than competent,” I fired back. “And I could tell from the text she sent me this morning that you stressed her out even worse than any of the issues she was having. We are understaffed, and this job isn’t easy even when we’re fully staffed.”
Caden put his arms out in a gesture of frustration. “So hire people, Shea. I’ve given you the green light.”
“I can’t find anyone I want to hire! Last time I advertised, the only applicant was Jan Forbes, but with her criminal record, I’m not comfortable hiring her.”
“You wanted to be a department head,” Caden said, crossing his arms and ignoring my very real staffing issue. “You get paid more than anyone else in this kitchen because the buck stops with you.”
“I shouldn’t have to be here seven days a week. And if things were so awful, why didn’t you call me? You call me when the slightest thing goes wrong.”
I hadn’t thought about work once the entire weekend, thanks to alcohol and being with Holt. But now that I was thinking about it, Saturday had been my first day off work without a single call, and Sunday had been my second.
“Oh, I called. I was about to call the police because I was so worried when you weren’t picking up or calling back, and Nina told me that your brother blocked incoming calls to your phone for the weekend.”
“What?” Now, it was my jaw on the floor.
Priscilla walked in and gave me a little wave. Caden sighed dramatically and shook his head.
“We need to finish this conversation after breakfast.”
“I go straight from breakfast into lunch prep,” I said. “I’ll have time around two this afternoon.”
“Fine,” he said. “Find me whenever you can fit me in.”
He left the kitchen in a huff and Priscilla walked over to me.
“You okay?”
“Yeah, other than the alarm clock going off offensively early this morning. How about you?”
“No complaints. Lenny caught an eight-pound bass on his fishing trip. Can you believe that?”
“Wow, that’s great. I want to see pictures later.”
She tied an apron around her waist. “Of course. How was the bachelorette party?”
“It was fun. But I’m going to have to beat my brother up for messing with my phone, and he’s a lot bigger than he was the last time I beat him up. He was around seven then.”
She chuckled. “He just wanted you to get a real weekend away. He told Nina to call him if there was a true emergency.”
I gave her a mock angry look. “Grr. You knew about it, too?”
“Course I did. And if Caden says anything about Nina, I was here Saturday until one and that girl worked her ass off. We were going through bacon like you wouldn’t believe and we didn’t have enough stove space to keep up, so Nina had us cooking it on the stove and in the oven. People would run up to the buffet servers and clear the bacon out of the containers before they could even get it to the buffet.”
“I hate that buffet.”
“Girl, same.” She gathered a few kitchen tools. “You want me to prep some sausage gravy and get it in the warmer?”
“That would be great, thanks.”
She turned and pointed a whisk at me as she walked away. “Don’t let Caden guilt you for taking a weekend off. You deserve a lot more time off than you get. He has no life outside of this place.”
Lenny switched on the local AM radio station, which we always listened to when we were doing breakfast prep.