Holiday Parties
Yesterday there was a HUGE fire in the kitchen! It was really scary! It was after lunch was served to the residents and I was sitting in the dining room on lunch break with Mike (the cook), Matt (the dishwasher) and Brittanie and Brooke (also servers like me). A nurse came to put her dirty dishes in the bus tub and she asks us, "Is there suppose to be a fire?" She was pretty calm so I was thinking maybe it was a small fire and she wasn't sure if something was cooking. Mike gets up and is like, "Oh, shit". And we all get up and we can see the entire length of the stove (which is about the length of two home stoves) is engulfed in flames and it is about three feet tall! Mike tells one of us to shut the doors that connect the kitchen to the dining room so the smoke doesn't get out in that area and another one of us to open the garage door and make sure the door that leads from the kitchen to the dock is propped open to get fresh air. While I'm opening the garage door and the other back door and Brooke is getting the other doors, Brittanie is getting salt and a large lid that Mike has asked for. I didn't know salt was good for fires (although it didn't put out this one!); I would have just used water, which apparently you're not suppose to do, especially in a kitchen. Good thing Mike was here. So Carol and Stephanie come in (they have to unlock the door since it locks when you close and latch it) and Carol is making sure Mike has a clear path so he can take the FLAMING pan (he was wearing hot pads, but still!) so I held the back door wide open for him as he came through and set the pan on the pavement. Carol got some lids to cover the fire and it did die down within a few minutes. We put on a few fans to ventilate the room. Oh, man, that was really scary! I'm surprised the fire alarm didn't go off! But like Mike said, it could have been a lot worse. We were lucky that we weren't at a meeting (or a holiday party!) that was in a different area of the building. What had happened is that he was melting butter and forgot about it. I commented that I didn't know butter could be so flammable, but I suppose when you leave the stove on, anything can be pretty flammable! But besides a few burnt pans that had to be tossed, nobody or nothing else was hurt or damaged.
The big annual Heritage Pointe Christmas family party was that night and there must have been about 250 people there! Luckily, we had a lot of help! In the past, they would just have a big dessert buffet but last year they started doing a pasta buffet which is what they did again this year. There were four different kinds of pasta and four kinds of sauces including meat sauce and alfredo. There was also pasta salad and potato salad and they still had plenty of desserts like cookies, chocolate mousse, and lemon bars. Stephanie had Emily help with the buffet line with herself, Carol, and some of the other directors. She had me in charge of drinks. My job was to just make sure we didn't run out of iced tea, lemonade, water or coffee. The drinks were set up on a table in the coffee shop. I was glad I was doing that and not behind the buffet line cuz at least I got to move around and wasn't stationed at one spot! I made the iced tea and lemonade after I dished up some parmesan cups for the buffet. We had the drinks in these huge dispensers. I never had to make any more iced tea (good thing because it took the longest to make since you had to brew it), but I did have to make two more lemonades and add a couple more pitchers of water.
At first, we were just going to have the residents and guests go through the coffee shop to get drinks and I had some pre-poured drinks, but there wasn’t that much room on the table to do that. A couple of girls from activities said they were going to start passing out drinks to the people in the lobby where a bunch of tables were set up. I got some trays and there were about four of us passing out drinks. That worked out a lot better than the original plan! People were still able to come up and get something, but this way there was never a line of people waiting for drinks.
Usually Santa makes an appearance at these parties and passes out goodies, but this was the first year (that I’m aware of, anyway) that he had a “throne” to sit on. Barb was there and she was taking photos of the residents with Santa. I saw a few of them and she got some pretty cute shots. It was really funny because kids’ reactions were either they were really excited and ran up to Santa to hug him or they were really scared and were crying! Aww!
Emily, Matt, and I didn’t get out until 8:30 - that’s an hour later than when we normally get out! Everyone seemed to enjoy the party, though.
Today it was the party for the employees. We got our cash and checks and a pin that is color coordinated depending on how many years you’ve been working there. My color was “Alexandrite” a color I’ve never heard of, but it looks light blue, although there is a year for light blue so that’s amusing. One of the pins was “rainbow” and I wanted to see what that looked like! We also got some candy, although the assortment of cookies and brownies was much better than what we got in our gift bag! There were raffle drawings and I actually won one! It was quite exciting because I’ve never won a raffle in my life! They did raffles a few years ago and there were a lot of prizes to give out, but I wasn’t called! I won a Target Gift Card. After Carol did drawings for a tablet and a portable DVD player she started to draw names for five gift cards she had. She said they were all the same amount ($25), but were to different places: Target, Best Buy, and three restaurants: Olive Garden, Red Lobster, and a steakhouse. She said if we were here (some people had to leave to go back to work or go home), then we could pick the card of our choice. Since I don’t eat at those restaurants, like ever, and shop at Target, like, all the time, then it was a no brainer for me. It was funny because three of the first four names called were all from housekeeping, then my name was called. Add that to my cash from Stephanie and Carol and the check from corporate AND the $50 Jeans gives me every year (cuz she’s so awesome!), then I have some nice extra spending money for the holidays! Whoo hoo!
The big annual Heritage Pointe Christmas family party was that night and there must have been about 250 people there! Luckily, we had a lot of help! In the past, they would just have a big dessert buffet but last year they started doing a pasta buffet which is what they did again this year. There were four different kinds of pasta and four kinds of sauces including meat sauce and alfredo. There was also pasta salad and potato salad and they still had plenty of desserts like cookies, chocolate mousse, and lemon bars. Stephanie had Emily help with the buffet line with herself, Carol, and some of the other directors. She had me in charge of drinks. My job was to just make sure we didn't run out of iced tea, lemonade, water or coffee. The drinks were set up on a table in the coffee shop. I was glad I was doing that and not behind the buffet line cuz at least I got to move around and wasn't stationed at one spot! I made the iced tea and lemonade after I dished up some parmesan cups for the buffet. We had the drinks in these huge dispensers. I never had to make any more iced tea (good thing because it took the longest to make since you had to brew it), but I did have to make two more lemonades and add a couple more pitchers of water.
At first, we were just going to have the residents and guests go through the coffee shop to get drinks and I had some pre-poured drinks, but there wasn’t that much room on the table to do that. A couple of girls from activities said they were going to start passing out drinks to the people in the lobby where a bunch of tables were set up. I got some trays and there were about four of us passing out drinks. That worked out a lot better than the original plan! People were still able to come up and get something, but this way there was never a line of people waiting for drinks.
Usually Santa makes an appearance at these parties and passes out goodies, but this was the first year (that I’m aware of, anyway) that he had a “throne” to sit on. Barb was there and she was taking photos of the residents with Santa. I saw a few of them and she got some pretty cute shots. It was really funny because kids’ reactions were either they were really excited and ran up to Santa to hug him or they were really scared and were crying! Aww!
Emily, Matt, and I didn’t get out until 8:30 - that’s an hour later than when we normally get out! Everyone seemed to enjoy the party, though.
Today it was the party for the employees. We got our cash and checks and a pin that is color coordinated depending on how many years you’ve been working there. My color was “Alexandrite” a color I’ve never heard of, but it looks light blue, although there is a year for light blue so that’s amusing. One of the pins was “rainbow” and I wanted to see what that looked like! We also got some candy, although the assortment of cookies and brownies was much better than what we got in our gift bag! There were raffle drawings and I actually won one! It was quite exciting because I’ve never won a raffle in my life! They did raffles a few years ago and there were a lot of prizes to give out, but I wasn’t called! I won a Target Gift Card. After Carol did drawings for a tablet and a portable DVD player she started to draw names for five gift cards she had. She said they were all the same amount ($25), but were to different places: Target, Best Buy, and three restaurants: Olive Garden, Red Lobster, and a steakhouse. She said if we were here (some people had to leave to go back to work or go home), then we could pick the card of our choice. Since I don’t eat at those restaurants, like ever, and shop at Target, like, all the time, then it was a no brainer for me. It was funny because three of the first four names called were all from housekeeping, then my name was called. Add that to my cash from Stephanie and Carol and the check from corporate AND the $50 Jeans gives me every year (cuz she’s so awesome!), then I have some nice extra spending money for the holidays! Whoo hoo!