Get it Done: Dining Room Manager

This year there were no epic walks

Nor having to be a mom for a week

But ladies and gentlemen we still learned how to

Get

It

Done

As dining room manager

As the manager is that your duty is to get the dining room from an absolute disaster to what is pictured above before the next meal or learning class.

The tools given:

A dinky shopvac that isn’t very powerful and has a broom nozzle that is about have a foot wide (note above picture is one half of the dining room)

A rag if you can find one.

But before you start sulking about what a @#%$*y job you signed up for remember one thing: it’s your job to make sure the dining room is clean however that happens.

This opens up a whole wide range of tools. A non-lethal, in fact, positive approach is to

Outsource to little kids!

Just round up five kids from younger division and tell them is the come and get the dining room clean they can come up to you anytime during shobbos and get two cups of soda. The farther from shobbos you do this the better because then they forget and then come to you on the very last day of camp and you will be all “why are you coming to me on the last day? You expect me to have soda on the last day?” and then walk away and get yourself a cold can of Pepsi for your victory.

But there is one fallback. If you want a job well done, you can’t trust anyone. they won’t do it. But it still helps. Heck anyone can pick up rubbish and push in chairs. Just make sure they don’t still the vacuum cleaner. Friggin kids always takin’ that vacuum.

As well as the rosh yeshiva.

Why does he always need it?

What is he doing?

Aside for that in general

Be grumpy and a little scary

You’d be surprised what you can do. Some kid drops rubbish. You say pick it up. He say , no, you.

How do you deal w/ a hard ass?

Twist his wrist!

Oh he’ll pick it up, and anything else after that. He’ll complain and threaten you but just be “so. I never got my working w/ children check card. I can do what I want. And he’ll be all “I’ll call the police.” But he won’t because the station’s always empty and he’ll have already picked up the soup cup he dumped on the floor.

A wonderful way to keep the dining room clean is the

Some-things-don’t-happen-twice rule

Lets say over shobbos kids have a birthday fabrengen and leave it a mess. Well, don’t clean it up! Go to their shul and say that there will be no food, no activities, no camp, until the whole dining room is cleaned up for the unannounced mess. You’re not even entirely sure if you can do this, but they don’t wanna find out!

And when counsellors discover that you will wake them up at 6:45AM because their little bbq last night wasn’t picked up to complete satisfaction, they usually don’t do it again.

Or perhaps yeshivad kayitz totally messed up one of the table and left it out by the pay phone. You say “you can keep the table and wipe it off yourselves.” They never do, but that’s ok. You lug it over to their zal and switch it out w/ one of their tables instead. It’s about five times the work. But the principle is what counts.

Now do what you may

But at the end of the day

You will be super pissed off and want to slap the parent of every one of these kids

That’s why we have a quiet happy place

The fridge

It’s a place where you can escape. No one follows you there. No one disturbs you aside for once in a while to get something, ignore the awkward look given. You can stay there forever w/ a sandwich and a good book. Bring a sweater.

Oh and if they’re ever making cake get the bowl. Yum!

Spontaneous Editing

It was on the wall
Screaming for a red pen.

Block Party!

“Ah, freaking hot!”

The young American man pulled away his latex gloved hand from over the grill. He must have cooked at least a hundred hotdogs. So far he had spent the afternoon carrying tables, taping up signs, trimming and disposing tons of tree branches to make room on the sidewalk, and cooking and serving hotdogs.

But he was loving it

It was a Chanukah block party! And why not help? It was fun. And he loved the community. All those people he had met in the past year would be coming, people that had opened up their hearts, homes, and wallets for him and asked for nothing in return. Hell is they needed a few tree branches cleaned up, it made the young American man feel a little more at home in this far off land.

Rain had almost ruined it all, but they waited and prayed for the clouds to leave. And soon the suns shown through and the sky turned blue.

So many people arrived! It was such a lovely thing. The young American man couldn’t help but smile. Neighbours and friends had all come together to mix and mingle and have a good time on this otherwise quiet street. The young man looked on with a touch of envy. But he knew, one day, his own hometown would be just the same.

And boy did they have it all! Hotdogs and latkes, cotton candy and ice-cream, a moon bounce and a band, he even heard something about a petting zoo!

Parents would pass the young man and say hello howya doing. Kids would run up as he grilled away and pester him about camp and what he would be doing. The young man would just smile and tell them to get excited ‘cuz he was gonna make it the best year yet! Really, he had no idea. Later some of his fellow YG guys came and joined. And of course everybody kept asking: how did you get out of YG today?

Egad!

I walked out is all!

The day waned and the sun set. Many of the young man’s peers and left the street, but the young man stayed as there was inglorious work to do. Tables ‘n’ rubbish were strewn all about. and sticking to the end is what really shows if you’re in it. The young man helped pack everything up and ran quick as he could back to YG. He lit the chanuka candles and plopped down on a chair as sore as could be. But still,

He couldn’t stop smilin’

The Fabrengen of the Year

“The Facebook app is made for fabrengens.”

The young man woke up to in the bright zal

His cup of coffee was waiting for him. Everyone had just stopped singing. That was the trick; doze off during the niggunim and return to earth when the Rosh, Rabbi Cohen, began to speak again. It was four in the morning, they started the night before at a quarter past nine and the young man hadn’t missed a word spoken by the captivating Rabbi Cohen.

It’s like a serious minded Captain Jack Sparrow fabrenging with us.

R Cohen’s witty humour, genius tales, inspirational reprimands, and absolutely captivating intonations carried the young man though the night. Every time he dozed off he awoke to discover a few less people present, but he and about a dozen others remained affixed.

“It’s in order to spread the teachings to the OUTside, yes? [to Moishe] Do you know what it means OUT side? Do you? Yes? No no no no, do you know? I don’t mean SYDNEY..”

The man was 70 years old yet his voice filled the entire zal for hours on end. He had been doing this for years and was still as sharp as anyone could be. He knew how to take a problem and put it right up in your face and tell you exactly what needed to be done. Better yet, he made you feel that it needed to be done.

“I expect to start hodu at HALF PAST five, BUT...AFter we go to mikva. Ah, so it is closed. Ah...BUT...[pulls it out] I have a KEY. This is guaranteed to...get us into the WAter...”

The young man jumped up to get hi towel and rush out to the dark empty street to the mikva. It had been the night that would carry him through the year...

Little Known Fact

G-d has been jipping the rest of the world with some knockoff

Monday is the New Sunday

Dinga linga ling...

Dinga linga ling...

Ughhhh

Bleep, boop

3:45AM

The young man gets up and heads over to the dark dining room. He says brochos and makes himself a coffee to wake up. In the dark. The sun won’t be shining soon. His friend enters from the hallway appearing a little less slumber-some than the young American man.

“Are you ready to go?”

“mmmm...”

The things we do for this.

The two set out onto the dark and empty street. They were able to walk up the hill right in the middle of the road. There was no traffic. It was cold and a little breezy. It was still dark. There was no one.

They got to the house and unlocked the door. Stealthily they made their way through the hallway, taking small pains to remain silent. They set up what they needed in the living room. Then they went to the kitchen, heated something in the microwave, and brought it back to the living room.

It was snitzel and chips

At 4AM?

Football!!

They ate their nosh and cheered for Miami as they took advantage of the time difference.

After all

With such a long yeshiva day

When else can you watch football than 4 AM?