Into the fire.

I’ve been told numerous times by many people to never learn line. And for a long time, I stayed away. I stayed away because I feared being abused, running back and forth. Turns out that isn’t an issue at all. I enjoy running back and forth.

Let me explain how Panera works. There’s primarily four basic foods that we make. There’s sandwiches. There’s salads. There’s paninis. And there’s soup. A busy store will have a person on each – albeit I’ve never seen anybody dedicated to paninis. Paninis show up on the salad screen. Or, either the soup person or the consolidator will pop them from the steamer to the grill.

Ah yes, the consolidator. There’s all this stuff happening, and there has to be somebody consolidating all this stuff into individual orders. If you’re by yourself, you do everything yourself. If it’s two people, one person will do sandwiches and the other salads, and you’ll switch off consolidating. Or you’ll crank out your stuff and you’ll both realize, “Oh. We should probably put these orders together.”

Somewhere last night, I took the initiative of putting on the magnum gloves and helping out on line. At first, helping Brian on sandwiches, because he’s godawfulslow, then consolidating the orders as we made each sandwich. And somewhere in there, we had a huge rush. I told Rene to do salads, because I absolutely suck at salads. Suzanne kicked Brian off sandwiches and started cranking them out.

I forget where I got caught up. There’s a soup screen which we almost never use because we typically only have three people on line. And somehow, Brian wasn’t being fast enough with soups. Soups. Goddamn, that should not be the weak link! I did get a kick out of being authoritative, “I need a french onion to go!”

Thing is, I haven’t a clue how to bag togo orders. I had to slow down so much to make sure I had everything.

I saw the screen blinking 6 with an up arrow, indicating I was six orders off screen. Joy.

Earlier in the evening, I taught Marissa register. She did okay, all things considered. She made some n00b mistakes, and I had to redo a sandwich or two for people. It eats so much time when we have to individually fix orders.

Point is, the reason I was told so often to never learn line is because you’ll get stuck consolidating and um. Well, shit happens. I’m not sure how Sonia does it during lunch. I certainly couldn’t handle lunch rush. I can handle making sandwiches, fine. Suzanne (shift supervisor of the evening, if that wasn’t clear) was joking about how I was a speed demon. She made fun of the stance I was in. I suppose I’ll take it as a compliment.

I later asked her how I did on consolidating. Yes, it’s completely overwhelming. She said I did okay. I’m surprised she didn’t just kick me off and consolidate herself. Mastery through practice, I suppose. After all, it’s just assumed I’ll be god at line someday.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve put in my nine hours (and then some) for the day. I’m going to GOTO bed and go right back to PaneraLand at 5 AM. : D