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!
