My Pointy Stick

So I am on day 1 of five days in a row frying and decorating. But each day, my Nicer than Nice Manager is going to pass the reins to me. As in let me fly solo. As in let me fry and then decorate goods the customer will SEE! Yah, I know. Be afraid. The Super Sweet Baker is…




Today, I just fried. For about 5 hours, I stood and fried and fried and fried. When I wasn’t frying, I was mixing up more donut batter to fry.



My arsenal – a 20 gallon deep fryer vat full of hot grease, a bent cooling rack that I lower and raise in and out of the vat of hot grease to pull up items, a slotted spoon, two potholders and the pieces de le resistance – two pointy sticks. These sticks likely have highly technical names among my industry cohorts (I will ask the fryer at Dairy Queen next time I’m there) but we fryers, using our secret insider language, cryptically call them, “pointy sticks”.



With these implements – I fry my masterpieces.



Now, going back to the idea that my deep fryer of grease is really blinking hot, and I ‘m dropping in 100’s of donuts and frying and flipping and scooping out and dropping and burning and squishing them – it is not unthinkable I would drop my pointy stick in the grease.



Actually, I do this often.



And occasionally I forget that I am wearing cheap plastic food prep gloves and these will not only not protect my hands if I stick them in the grease, they will add an additional layer of hot plastic to melt onto my flesh along with the hot grease. Delightful! I tell myself, women pay big bucks for hot wax hand treatments at spas. Here at the fryer - I get PAID to give myself one several times a day! The perks here are huge.



So today after work, I was sitting on the sofa telling my adventures of the day to my Dear Husband. I tell him how yet again, I dropped my pointy stick in the grease and yet again I burned my fingers trying to retrieve it with just a slotted spoon and my other pointy stick.



I hold up my burnt finger tips and make a sad face, expecting him to rush off for our Boo-Boo Bunny ice-pack and some burn cream.



Instead, drawing on his years of high level computer, technical and mechanical expertise, he blows me away with this sentence.



“When you drop a stick in the vat, why don’t you just retrieve it with some tongs?”



Duh. Yah why don’t I walk 20 feet to the deli where like 500 tongs are lined up on the wall and use them to dive to the bottom of the deep fryer?



Instead of agreeing with that idea, I simply roll my blood shot from all the fryer smoke eyes, and scoff at him.



“Why don’t I use tongs???? Tongs???? Well I’ll tell you why…uh…uh… Because all the OTHER fryers don’t use tongs. If they drop their pointy stick – they use their other pointy stick and yes occasionally their lightning fast fingers. We do not rely on deli tongs to do our job. We are under intense pressure and we have to use what we have handy…you have no idea the throngs of people there when that store opens – demanding these donuts – it’s an insane amount of pressure and I’m just a JUNIOR fryer remember!”



“I thought you said when the store opens it’s like 4 Senior Citizens who all share one donut 4 ways?”



“Well maybe it IS only 4 Senior Citizens sharing one donut but that doesn't mean we know WHICH donut they will want. I have to have all 200 fried and decorated just in case they go crazy and ALL buy one! That could be FOUR different donuts!”



“I don’t expect you to understand” I sigh. “Frying is like a fine art – no wait, it’s like a martial art! Yah, it’s like KUNG FU! We are KUNG FU black belts in frying and we don’t use any stinkin’ tongs. We accept the PAIN! We feel the BURN! If you don’t fry – you just can’t understand.”



Sweet Husband simply stares at me then says, “I would have just used tongs”.



Amateur.