Day 2: Teamwork!

Tuesday, May 09, 2023 

I reflected on my first day at the food bank and determined that getting up at 7 a.m. was too difficult for me since I was fatigued, so I worked a later shift today from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. It started raining cats and dogs on my way to the food bank today, but once there, the same individuals I met yesterday welcomed me with open arms, and I completely forgot about the grim weather. I went immediately into the kitchen, where we were making ham and cheese sandwiches; our goal for the morning was to create roughly 1000 sandwiches.. I worked on the assembly line's bread crew, where I laid out the top and bottom buns individually on trays and passed them along to the assembly tray. Who knew that putting bread on a tray repeatedly was such a good arm exercise? We built all 1000 sandwiches in an hour and moved on to the hot dinner prep area. I was assigned to the position of "runner," which involved travelling around replenishing food trays so that individuals could construct their meals. We prepared chicken parm with mushy peas today, which was considerably more complex and used more ingredients than yesterday's cheese pizza with broccoli. With a more complicated dish, I realized that this job wasn’t easy as everyone had to work together harmoniously in order for every meal to be the same size and for everyone to be working at the same pace. I moved so fast that I caught myself in some wires and it accidentally ripped a little bit of my pants! We managed to get 1200 meals prepped for the lunch deadline at 12:00 PM and we started to clean up and prepare for the late lunch pre which was the same meal prep but 1600 portions. I had the runner's duty yet again, and I recall puffing for air since Houston was already hot, and the air in the kitchen was steamy, making it difficult to breathe, but I pushed through because I played such an important role in the preparation. My crew was assigned to rice prep tasks for the remaining two hours of my shift. We would measure out 2 pounds of rice, vacuum pack it in bags, and place it in boxes to distribute to schools for meal prep.. I saw firsthand the importance of collaboration and communication today, as everyone had to be on their game in order to keep the line running as quickly as possible and pumping out as much food as possible. I'm looking forward to getting to know my coworkers better as we conduct more team meal preps together!

Hours today: 6

Total hours: 14

Rice Rice Rice!

Assembly Time