I woke up feeling a wee bit groggy the next morning when the alarm woke me up scarcely two hours after I fell into my bed, and I must say, if my sense of duty didn't as usual got the better of me, I would have just turned over and went back to sleep. As it was, I was in the kitchen at about two minutes past seven, hoping that Lorna would leave me in peace to nurse my headache, as my head felt like it was cut off and screwed on wrongly, and my mouth felt very, very dry.Lorna appeared a few minutes after me looking like a greenish soury plum, her face all wrinkled up with disgust, but although I overheated my poor brain in an effort to think of something I had again did, nothing came to mind, so I decided that the little cowboy must be the unlucky culprit.
The guests were not in a hurry to come down for breakfast, and seeing that everything was done, I decided to drain the two fryers while I waited. I was just beginning to put the Deepio paste, a very strong cleaning powder that I mixed with water,on the fryer pans's insides, when Lorna came in with the first order, She stopped dead in her tracks, looked at me with disbelieve, then asked in her thinnest voice what the hell I thought I was doing!
I told her calmly that I had too much work to do the fryers her way, that is with a blunt knife and steel wool, and this way I just wipe the Deepio off, and rinse the pans thoroughly. As this fryers are sadly antiquated, the pans can't be removed to clean them, but I rinse them and drain them a few times after wiping the Deepio away. But Lorna was not to be appeased, and barked at me that I must be off my head, the Deepio being very poisonous! I was startled at this, and looked at the insides of the pans that were soaking merrilly in the sinks in hot water and lots of Deepio, the way she told me, and I told her that I can't understand her point, as the insides were soaked in the stuff.
I thought she was going to explode as she walked up to me, pulled herself up to her full length, stuck her bally finger under my nose, and shrieked: 'I have been cleaning fryers for twenty three years, don't you DARE tell me how to clean MY fryers!
That was it! I finished my shift, then went up to my room and phoned the Boys at the Munro Inn. They were ecstatic, and wanted to know what took me so long, as they wanted to ask me, but as it was a silent understanding that hotels don't steal emloyees from their rivals, they just hoped that I would give them a try!
They had indeed forty hours per week for me, but the only snag was that the staff rooms were all full, but Irene, their head chef, had offered me a room.
I drove back to my hotel, packed my stuff, and went down to give Lorna the news!