The Bread Knife Hates Me as Much as the Wine Glasses Do

You would think after almost thirty seven years of serving I would know how to keep from cutting myself at work.

Guess not. About four months ago I slit my finger wide open on a broken wine glass. I knew the glass was broken, even thought for a brief second about how sharp that broken stem was before I tried to carefully pick it out of the glass rack.

Guess I wasn't careful enough.

This is after a week of healing.

It bled for five days. I had to keep five band aids on it while at work just so it wouldn't bleed through.

So I learned my lesson with broken wine glass stems.

It was crazy at work today. Ten thousand peeps flying out of international and the parking deck was packed tight. Massey and I got there an hour early and were the last car they let in. The attendant said they couldn't guarantee we'd find a spot but  said would take my chances and the gates went up to let me try.

As luck would have it,  just as we pulled in a man got off the shuttle bus with his bags from the terminal and headed for his car obviously on the first level, bypassing the bank of elevators. We slowly stalked behind him and snagged a spot in less than a minute.

It's gonna be a great day!

The security lines were like the line for a new roller coaster at Six Flags but also lucky for us had a Pre Check lane open and after going through the employee line quickly entered.

Now we're talking!!

 A great parking spot, quick security line and still had forty five minutes left to eat the subs we'd brought with us.

All good signs, right?

We had our menu meeting with the managers out back of the restaurant in the hallway at three. Our general manager who has been with us for about ten months ended the meeting with telling us Wednesday would be his last day. He had accepted another job offer outside of the airport.

Here we go again.

I should have taken that as a sign as well.

I like the guy and has always been wonderful to me but am also an employee who's never had to be ridden, corrected or written up to perform my job. I also know he's probably thrilled to be getting out of the airport. There are so many concessionaire  hoops to jump through and union rules to adhere to which seemingly to me make it a nightmare of a job for a manger of  a restaurant of our caliber.

Once again... I got on the floor at three thirty. My first table was right by the hutch which is next to the bread station

I hadn't been on the floor thirty minutes when I was standing at the bread stand slicing a loaf of bread for my table not two feet behind me. Someone asked me a question and glanced up for less than a second.

That's all it took.

Same finger, other side.

The exact second I cut it, knew it was bad.

I cut through the tip of my finger, slicing through my newly manicure nail. I immediately squeezed it together with my thumb and went to the back. I looked down and the tip of my finger was hanging on by a thread. I found the first aid kit and wrapped two finger tip bandages over it to keep the tip of my finger and nail on followed by a strip band aid around it.

Massey unfortunately walked into the kitchen just as I was putting my finger tip back together.

"Mother! What have you done?"

Here's my thing.

It's cut now but had plenty of bandages to stop the bleeding. I could leave and go have it stitched up, be gone for four hours and come back maybe five hours later and  be out over three hundred dollars in tips plus a co pay.

I went with the "Wrap it up" method!

I'll have to say, Massey did an excellent job taking over and wrapping it better with self sticking wrap gauze.

About an hour later, one of the server assistants came up to me and asked "it got that heart beat throb going yet?"

You know, that feeling when you cut the **** out of your finger and feel your heart beating through the wound?

Yep... I had it.

BAD.

It was totally my  fault but wasn't letting it deter me from making money.

I got off around eleven and we stopped by Kroger when getting back to Newnan. Bought some hydrogen peroxide, Neosporin, more gauze and some more of that fancy self sticking wrap.

Massey almost hurled when I took the bandage off and my finger tip flopped back.

I cleaned it up with soap and started to bleed again like a flowing fountain. She  put the antibiotic on the gauze and wrapped my digit up tight with the self sticking tape.

It isn't a life threatening wound and extremely grateful for that.

Going to bed with my hand above my head and trying to forget that comment "Feel that heart beat throb yet?"

What doesn't kill you makes you stronger and  wiser.