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This story was relayed to me by my high school Culinary Arts teacher.
A little background: the class took place in what was essentially the school kitchen. This meant that at the end of every school year, any food that was left over had to be disposed of, or it would go bad due to the lack of power going to the fridges/freezer/walk-ins. Pantry items would almost always expire before the next school year started so those had to be gotten rid of as well. /bg
When Chef started working at the school, she was hired mere days before the school year started. Between paperwork and issues with getting a set of keys for the kitchen, she wasn't actually able to get in until the day before school started. At this point, she had deliveries to take and she had to make sure everything was cleaned and ready for breakfast the next morning, so she expected a long day.
What she didn't expect was the smell.
She walked into the kitchen and realized almost immediately that whoever had been there last hadn't emptied the kitchen out. There were two fridges, a freezer, and the walk-in cooler and freezer that were nearly full, and a pantry full of dry goods. The spices had also been expired for several years, so those needed to be thrown out as well.
Chef actually ended up calling her husband and kids in to help her, and it was still an all-day job. They overfilled the dumpster that was allotted for the kitchen, had to buy several rolls of garbage bags, and ran out of hot water twice.
Just to make things worse, the deliveries Chef had to take were scheduled for really random times, and she was missing a lot of stuff she needed. The person that had done the ordering clearly wasn't trained at doing so. They hadn't ordered any spices at all, and some of the things that were ordered weren't nearly the amounts necessary. There was also excess of a few items, but that was actually the easiest thing to deal with.
You can believe that on our last day of class (we were the last class of the day, too), we emptied everything out and got hands-on sanitizing absolutely every surface of that kitchen.
On the upside, I got to take home some really tasty hand-made meringue cookies.
A little background: the class took place in what was essentially the school kitchen. This meant that at the end of every school year, any food that was left over had to be disposed of, or it would go bad due to the lack of power going to the fridges/freezer/walk-ins. Pantry items would almost always expire before the next school year started so those had to be gotten rid of as well. /bg
When Chef started working at the school, she was hired mere days before the school year started. Between paperwork and issues with getting a set of keys for the kitchen, she wasn't actually able to get in until the day before school started. At this point, she had deliveries to take and she had to make sure everything was cleaned and ready for breakfast the next morning, so she expected a long day.
What she didn't expect was the smell.
She walked into the kitchen and realized almost immediately that whoever had been there last hadn't emptied the kitchen out. There were two fridges, a freezer, and the walk-in cooler and freezer that were nearly full, and a pantry full of dry goods. The spices had also been expired for several years, so those needed to be thrown out as well.
Chef actually ended up calling her husband and kids in to help her, and it was still an all-day job. They overfilled the dumpster that was allotted for the kitchen, had to buy several rolls of garbage bags, and ran out of hot water twice.
Just to make things worse, the deliveries Chef had to take were scheduled for really random times, and she was missing a lot of stuff she needed. The person that had done the ordering clearly wasn't trained at doing so. They hadn't ordered any spices at all, and some of the things that were ordered weren't nearly the amounts necessary. There was also excess of a few items, but that was actually the easiest thing to deal with.
You can believe that on our last day of class (we were the last class of the day, too), we emptied everything out and got hands-on sanitizing absolutely every surface of that kitchen.
On the upside, I got to take home some really tasty hand-made meringue cookies.
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