Chapter 13
ALEC
“That sounds easy enough?” Richie, my boss at King Pin Bowling, asked.
I nodded my head. “Yup. Check out the shoes the way you showed me, if they don’t have their own, and make sure if they do, that they weren’t wearing them coming in. Help handle snack bar orders, and keep an eye out for bickering in case it escalates."
”And if it does? Not that it ever has, but one never knows.”
“Call out Xero’s name and ask for security, letting them handle it, but making sure the other patrons are out of harm’s way until it’s all over.”
Rich clapped me on the shoulder. “Got it in one. You’ll do just fine. Just make sure you don’t get involved in the fight, and you’re golden. Now, how good are you at following recipes?”
“Recipes?”
“Recipes,” he confirmed. “Nothing fancy. Just putting in the right amount of dough mix and water to the machine so it will make the dough for the pizza. We don’t offer replicated food here if we’re catering an event.
Normal nights where we just get people wandering in, sure.
But on league nights, youth group events, and birthday parties, we make our own pizza.
We also grill our own burgers then, after hand making the patties, so you’ll need to follow the recipe for those too. ”
“Um, I’m okay, I guess. I helped my dad grill sometimes, and my mom taught me how to make fried chicken, bake a cake, and make chocolate chip cookies. I had to follow a recipe for the cake and cookies, and they came out all right every time.”
“Excellent, come on back into the kitchen, and I’ll show you the pizza machine.”
It looked like a giant stand mixer that tipped out into a large round container, which had a cookie sheet with holes punched into it beneath it, on a moving rack.
The moving rack was about three feet long and went into an oven that looked a lot like the ones I’d seen at Domino’s when I went in to pick up a DoorDash order.
Taped to the wall beside the large mixer was a recipe telling how much mix to put in and how much water, saying to add the water first and that it had to be warm.
“The water from the faucet here,” Rich indicated the sink directly under the taped recipe, “comes out at the ideal temperature. Only use this sink to get water for the dough. Nothing else.” He pointed to a large bucket under the mixer.
“The mix is in there, along with the measuring scoop. Okay, go ahead and make enough dough for a small party.”
I swallowed, walking over to a smaller sink by the door that had a sign above it indicating it was the handwashing station.
”Put on an apron first,” Rich told me, so I grabbed one off the nearby hooks he was pointing at.
I quickly tied it on, knowing that since I was wearing the ball cap he’d given me when I first came in, I didn’t need a hair net.
I washed my hands thoroughly, then returned to the prep sink, where I used a measuring jug from the drain board to measure out the correct amount of water listed under the small party recipe.
I added it to the mixing bowl, then opened the mix bucket and scooped out the required amount of mix, quickly adding it to the water.
Then I returned the scoop to the bucket and closed the lid, making sure it was on tight.
“Perfect. Now see here,” Rich pointed at an LCD screen. “Scroll through until you reach S Party, then hit the start button. It’ll start mixing, proof the dough, and then top the pizzas and bake them.”
“It will top them? Where do we add the ingredients?”
He grinned. “Those are replicated. We just mix the dough ourselves and add them and bake instead of replicating the whole pizza.”
That seemed a bit like cheating, but it was less stuff we had to do to make the pizzas, so I wasn’t going to complain if the customers didn’t.
“You’ll need to keep an eye on them as they start to bake.
Callie, our kitchen AI, will send a notification to you when the first pizza starts to bake, so you just need to keep an eye out for it to come out and take it out to the buffet.
It’ll time the first six, one after the other, and after that, there will be another pizza every fifteen minutes.
There’ll be about twenty in all, so you’ll have to keep your eye on them.
Don’t worry, you won’t be alone working the counter, and you can take turns minding the pizza and the grill.
The burgers just need mixing up and put in the fridge when you first come in, as they are made to order, but we’ll wait until next week to have you handle that, as it’s done at the end of the lunch shift and Mark’s already gotten started on that. ”
I glanced over to where Mark was. He had gloves on and was hand mixing what looked like dry crumbs of some kind with various seasonings.
“Those are the meatless burgers,” Rich said as I watched Mark add a small amount of broth to the mix.
“Dried soya reconstituted with vegetable broth. We add salt, pepper, and a bit of paprika, and then press it into patties. Just that bowl’s worth, though, as most prefer our turkey and beef burgers.
Those we mix in the larger bowls, and also add Worcestershire sauce, too.
You’ll get the hang of it easy enough, I’m sure. ”
“Yeah,” I replied, thinking that it didn’t look difficult at all.
Now if only everything else turned out to be as easy as it seemed, I’d be happy.
“You’ve got nothing to worry about, really, other than making sure the food’s ready to go and people have the right shoes. The Mylos run a tight ship, and even the kids keep themselves in line. It’s practically an episode of Leave It to Beaver when they’re here, honestly.”
I nodded, feeling that just maybe I really could do this.
And according to my program supervisor, once I learned to do this well, I’d rotate over to another leisure activity center and learn the basics there.
Once I’d learned them all and was proficient enough to work unsupervised, I’d get a chance to train as a youth counselor and get to help run the actual youth program itself, or I could open and run a leisure facility of my own.
Though once they got around to having me come in to take the matching test, if I got matched and it was to a Dragonii, I suppose that it would be on one of their colony worlds.
Maybe I’d be doing a sort of 4-H thing there?
I didn’t know, but that was a big if anyway.
Everyone knew getting matched at all to a Mylos was millions to one, and I was pretty sure it was just as big, if not bigger, a chance to get matched to a Dragonii.
“Okay, let’s take off that apron and hang it up, then get you behind the counter handling the shoes and lane assignments.”
I followed him back out, filled with a confidence I hadn’t felt in a long while.