Kevin

About me:

When I first graduated college, I had decided that I hated teaching. This remains true to this day. I *do* hate teaching. I hate being held unreasonably responsible for the actions of others, and at the same time being given no recourse to change their actions. In any case, I had no idea what to do with myself, so I sort of tramped around with jobs. That summer I got two jobs. I'm not sure why, but the first thing I went for was to work with the local YMCA. Perhaps it was because I wanted something familiarly comfortable, or perhaps it was simply the first opportunity afforded me, but I worked as a camp counselor that summer. At the same time, I was working part time at nights as well. The job I had was so disgusting that it makes garbagemen seem like they work at a perfume counter. It was so nauseating that I would rather work as a professional vomit-taster. Still, though, I worked the job. I worked that summer and beyond cleaning the grease off of restaurant oven hoods. Now, those who have worked in some capacity at a restaurant may have *some* idea of the nature of this particular occupation. What happens in a restaurant situation is that the grease used in cooking vaporizes, and the heated air travels into the oven hood and is drawn out a vent by a fan. The vaporized grease condenses on the sides of the vent, and over a relatively short time it accumulates to the point where it becomes a fire hazard, so someone has to clean it. That someone, as it turns out, was me. My uncle runs a business doing this, and chinese restaurants were so gross that they required two people. The procedure for it was first to cover everything with plastic, as we did not want to contaminate the random raw meat left out on the counter overnight. Next, we stood on the hot ovens and took paint scrapers (I'm not kidding), and actually scraped all we could get off of the hood. I'd get bits of rancid grease in my hair, in my eyes, down my back, all over. I was also just a little bit too tall to stand up straight on top of the oven, and just a little bit too short to stand on my knees, so I would have to arch my back while scraping rancid grease. My back would ache all night. We would also have to do this from the roof, which could get dangerous on a slanted roof if it frosted during the night. Still, though, the roof seemed like heaven after standing on hot ovens. Once we were done scraping, it was time to mix up the caustic solution, strong enough to burn off the remaining grease, and also strong enough to burn a hole through your shoe and foot, as I found out once. Then we would have to spray down the entire place, with the caustic so strong in the air that I would have to take regular breaks to cough it out and clear my head outside. When the spraying was done, we had to wipe the solution off of the hood and filters, and make sure to dump the grease solution in the grease dumpster outside. Then we had to clean up the kitchen. It would take me two days of five showers a day to completely clean the rancid grease off of my body. I would go to the YMCA in the morning, and the kids would ask me about the black mark on my arm - I wouldn't tell them. By the way, I would never recommend eating at a Chinese restaurant - ever. For those who wonder why I so wholeheartedly jumped into my ultra-high stress security job, now you know.

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