Ramadan and Sandwiches

Monday 16th August 2010.6am - 2pm

This is the beginning of a week of early shifts.We moved home at the weekend but in true Lithuanian style the refurbishment works weren't completed.

My son and I stayed at a friends house and unbeknown to me my son had fractured his collarbone on Sunday afternoon but i didn't take him to A & E until nearly 24 hours after the event.

I haven't bathed in 2 days and can't find any of my toiletries and am beginning to smell like i work in a Spanish brothel.

A consequence of Ramadan is that most of the staff are fasting during the day and subsequently have an excuse to phone in ill during the fasting period.

A fringe member of the Pakistani mafia phoned at 6.20am claiming to be unwell.This meant that the already threadbare team for the morning were going to be under severe pressure again.

The stocky Sri Lankan cricketer and the albino summoned me to the loading bay at approximately 6.45am to accept the Fu Go delivery.

I arrived to find an ageing delivery driver with white hair and a limp shlepping 2 huge boxes of fresh food out of the articulated lorry.My job was to place the boxes in 2 cages and count the number of items received.

Fortunately the queen was present to assist me in this task and i took the cage to the big unit where i unloaded all the fresh food which included,sandwiches,baguettes,sushi,pasta salads and fruit salads.Needless to say we charge more than Marks and Sparks.

I had the pleasure of working with the Cockney scrubber,who was subdued today.She had been to the Cotswolds with her Mum and Dad and arrived back late on Sunday night.
Even though my first thought was "what is a 30 year old woman going away with her parents for?" part of me was jealous because i stopped going away with my parents when i was 12 years old.

She didn't know the name of the village she stayed in because,"her Dad did the driving".

The compliments were flowing from the scrubber and she loves working with me and it was quite pleasant working with an English speaking person who understands instructions first time.

Thankfully,the ginger arrived at 12.30pm and he was buzzing.We had a riot for about an hour but he was moved to another unit.He is following the diary and goes along with it.He needs to be more discrete when voicing his opinions because the punters have been hearing his comments.I had a word with him and he'll learn with experience.

By the end of the shift i was struggling to stay focused due to sheer exhaustion and stress with move.