Oct. 14: Donuts and The Evildoer

This morning was our Donuts with Dad event at the school. It was a smash hit—lines out the door—dozens more dads and kids than we expected—ran out of almost everything—and very, very fun. We had 20 dozen donuts, ran to Albertsons and got six more, and still ran out. Three gallons of milk disappeared quickly. Coffee was the only thing that was still left at the end.

We hadn’t expected so many people to show, but I guess free donuts and dads go together well. We’ll try it again in the spring, maybe, with lots more donuts and milk, at least one additional line, and more people to help out.

But, for the most part: Hooray! We done good!

The PTO serves dinner to teachers on the one day of conferences that run through the evening, and that meal falls under my umbrella of responsibility this year. Fortunately, everyone else will chip in to bring the meal components so it’s not as though I have to whip up the whole thing on my own. In a meeting last week, someone suggested I talk to the cafeteria manager about using the ovens so we can have the food nice and hot for serving. Excellent idea!

But today I decided I’m not going to talk to the cafeteria manager about using the ovens. In fact, I’d like to go the rest of my time at this school without ever facing that woman again.

You know how some people enjoy their job, don’t freak out when little unexpected things happen, and are nice to others? This woman—I’m going to call her Lunchlady Doris—is definitely not one of those people. It’s sad, too, because she works in a friggin’ school. How often does a school day go as planned? Isn’t there always a kid who gets hurt or wets his pants or throws up in the hallway or cries because a PTO vice president gave him a wedgie again? Really, we try to structure school days as much as possible, but I don’t care how good you are; there’s only so much a person can do.

We had barely walked in the door of the cafeteria this morning when Lunchlady Doris asked—quite cheerily, actually—“What’s this?” Dina, Random Sunshine™ and I were carrying gallons of milk and a huge box of plates and cups so it was obvious we were up to something. One of us said, “We’re doing ‘Donuts with Dad’ this morning.” Lunchlady Doris said, “Oh, no one told me.”

My first thought was “Oh well!” because we didn’t expect Lunchlady Doris to help with anything, so why did it matter whether she knew about this? We weren’t planning to go into her kitchen. We weren’t even going to be in her way, as we set up our tables at the far end of the cafeteria.

Then her assistant says to her, “You didn’t know ‘Donuts with Dad’ is today? You didn’t see the 3-foot sign out front?”

Heh heh heh. I kinda loved her assistant.

In fact, he was so awesome that even though his shirt said Gabriel, I’m going to call him SuperMegaDude.

SuperMegaDude came out and helped us set up our tables and checked on us a couple times to make sure everything was going OK. He might have just wanted donuts. I don’t care. I would’ve given him a whole box for being such a SuperMegaDude.

At one point there was some conversation between Dina and Lunchlady Doris and I heard Lunchlady Doris yell—YELL!—“I can’t hear you with these fans going!” so Dina yelled back, “OK!” and then gave me a look like she had just been punished for something. I don’t know what that was all about, but as Dina walked toward me she shrugged and said, “Oh, that’s nothing new” as though she’d dealt with Lunchlady Doris before and she was exactly as big a psycho control freak as she seemed.

As we began to open the boxes of donuts I asked if anyone had packed plastic gloves for serving. None of us are food service experts, so we don’t keep a big supply of these on hand. Maybe we should. We had none, and considered using our bare hands, but with all the swine flu precautions going around, that seemed careless. I went up to the kitchen door and (politely, maybe even kinda flirty) asked SuperMegaDude if they might have two or three sets of gloves we could use for serving.

SuperMegaDude said, “Sure! What size?” and went over to a cabinet to get them.

But then Lunchlady Doris looked at me and said, “We don’t have to provide those, you know.”

I stood there for a second, waiting for her to laugh and say she was kidding. Or say she didn’t have to provide them, but would anyway. Or something, anything. But she just stood there and stared right back at me.

So I turned around and walked away.

It’s not like I wanted the gloves to make balloon animals; I wanted them to keep from spreading germs among the kids and their dads. YES, we should’ve been more prepared and had them ourselves. But you would think that a lunchlady might be more concerned with food safety than having to share her 5-cent gloves with idiots who can’t plan a food-related event well.

We got the donuts distributed just fine without the stupid gloves. I licked my fingertip before grabbing each donut, so I stayed nice and clean. Now all the dads have my herpes.

Point of my story: Lunchlady Doris is now in a very elite group, created in her honor by at least one PTO Executive Board member—the Society of Evil Lunchladies Who I Hope Have an Unfortunate Colander Mishap (trust me, that’s waaay better than my Shit List). Come conference dinner time, the teachers will have a warm meal, but probably not piping hot.