Hi everyone, hoping someone can provide some useful insight, tips or experience to help me help my dad!
A bit of background, my parents live together, they're in their 40's and I have a younger sibling in high school. My mother has a chronic illness meaning she struggles to help my dad with his job, or get a job elsewhere for that matter. They run a tiny 15ft x 7ft staff canteen by themselves, which only seats ~30 at a time, so customer turnover rate is quite high (takes 10 seconds to tend a customer, and they get about 10 minutes to eat). They feed around 100 heads twice/three times a day. In September I left home for University, and prior to leaving, any days I had in school where I had no lessons I would go work with him to relieve the pressure. But now I've gone, he's really struggling and just looks like death incarnate.
So the basic rundown of the canteen is that my dad does almost everything, he; * Cooks everything * Preps everything * Learns and fixes most broken appliances (because the kitchen is bottom of the list in the maintenance departments priorities) * Shops for all his produce * Transports all produce on a daily basis * Runs the financial side of the business * Ensures he complies with food hygiene and operating regulations
The only thing he doesn't do is the washing up, which my mother/other employee does, but obviously with her chronic illness she struggles to keep up with the pace. Sometimes he has a part time employee in who does the washing up, but she has children so she doesn't get into work until 9:30 on the days she's in work because she has to take her kids to school, plus he really struggles to have enough money spare to pay staff.
Money isn't necessarily an issue, but he's a contracted employee - therefore he gets a salary from the company and any staffing, stock or operation is his responsibility/cost, they simply provide him with a tiny kitchen (bare in mind the size I mentioned earlier includes the worktops and appliances, so floor space is maybe 3ft wide by 15ft long) and customers to feed. We aren't in any debt, but we don't have any savings or fixed assets whatsoever (car is on it's last limb, costing £2000 a year to maintain, and we can't afford a new one).
I must mention as well he only has two 8ft tall fridges to store his stock in, and a small chest freezer - one fridge for drinks and one for food - so the idea of buying in bulk and storing is not an option, the fridges are rammed with one day worth of stock. We can't buy in advance and get it delivered, unless we could save up to buy a chest fridge/freezer - but that would have to come out of our own pocket, and we'd have to pay to run it ourselves.
My dad has asked for the company to build a extension onto the kitchen so he can have more storage and prep area, but they said the kitchen runs well as it is, so a extension isn't necessary.
Now, I'll give a brief rundown of my dad's day-to-day life.
| Time | Activity |
|---|---|
| 5:00 | Wake Up, get ready |
| 5:30 | Call butchers and order meats |
| 6:00 | Drive to butchers and pick up meat |
| 7:00 | Arrive at work, unpack 12 bags of food/drink and start prepping breakfast |
| 7:50 | Make up ordered toasties (usually 10) |
| 8:00 | Have food ready (Full English, enough to serve 100 heads) |
| 8:05 | Smoke break |
| 8:15 | Service starts |
| 10:00 | Service ends, smoke break |
| 10:05 | start prepping lunch and cleaning up kitchen & canteen from breakfast (tray's have to be soaked to remove grease/fat so can't cook anything until 10:30 |
| 12:00 | Finish lunch prep for 100 heads, restock drinks fridge |
| 12:15 | Service starts |
| 14:00 | Service finishes, clean up from lunch |
| 15:00 | Finished clean up, stock check and clean canteen/kitchen. |
| 16:00 | sometimes he will have to stay to offer tea/cake/coffee if the workers have to stay later if not he is home at this time |
| 17:00 | After changing out of work clothes, picking my sibling up from her bus and walking our dog he gets ready to shop |
| 19:30 | Has gone to all supermarkets to get his stock for the next day |
| 20:00 | Showers and has a tiny portion of dinner, starts tallying up money owed from people on booking rather than cash payments |
| 21:00 | Finishes book keeping and relaxes |
| 22:00 | Spends some time with my sibling and helps her with homework |
| 23:00 | Goes to sleep |
As you can imagine, this takes a toll on the system. He does this every weekday and shops on a Sunday so he has stock for a Monday. He's done that for the past 7 years, and in that time has never had a sick-day, and only 4 weeks of cumulative holiday (excluding Saturday). He's lost 4 stone since he started, he's a 6ft man who weighs 10st. His blood pressure is through the roof, he eats one tiny portion of dinner a day and keeps awake on lots of coffee and sugary snacks.
I'm personally into fitness and health, so I try to introduce him to healthy foods that he can snack on - but after cooking all day he can't stand to cook again, let alone eat food.
I'm seriously worried for him, because the doctors have said that if he keeps doing what he's doing his heart is likely to give out any time from the physical and mental stress he puts himself through. He hates his life, but he's such a family man that he does it so there's food on the table and that I never went without so I had the resources to allow me to go to University.
I'm open to absolutely any ideas, proposals, tips, tricks or anything that I can tell him to make his life somewhat easier!
Submitted November 10, 2017 at 10:46AM by 4orf http://ift.tt/2yOFEnQ
