Ah, Sweet Memories

Today I was reminded of Napoleon Dynamite. The term “decroded piece of crap” is quite a mysterious image, but today I think I discovered what one looks like at the restaurant. I went into work today and scrubbed the scum off the kitchen floors, mopped, swept, and scrubbed some more. I had to go into all the nasty places that hadn’t even seen the light of day in about a year. Under sinks, behind refrigerators, near the stoves, and—I dread to recall—behind the deep fryer!
It was gross work. Near the deep fryer there was a patch of tiles layered with a slippery slime that resembled caramel. It wasn’t caramel. Before I scrubbed I put solvent and bleach on the stuff to no avail. And I even had my boss come over to scrub, because he didn’t believe it wouldn’t come off. He scrubbed, but it was futile. Then he went back into the pantry and retrieved a one of those little scrapers, the things used for dividing flour and such. He got down on his hands and knees (welcome to my world!) and tried scraping the slime away. The slime chanted back at him, “Resistance is futile.” That glob is there to stay. I knew that it was a tough mess when my boss stood up and indignantly said, “Well, I need to replace those tiles anyway.”
And so we both walked away, pushing the deep fryer over the spot, never to speak of it again.