Look, I don’t care

I don’t care if you think everyone should be wearing masks.

I don’t care if you think masks are useless.

I don’t care if you think the pandemic is going to kill us all.

I don’t care if you think it’s all a hoax.

 

You know what I care about?

The lowly retail employee who went from being vilified as a minimum wage drone to applauded as an essential worker in the space of a week.  The cashier who got told they were putting their life on the line so that people could buy something.  The sales floor employee who got told they were probably going to get sick so that people could buy something.  The retail employee who spent 4 months getting a minimum “hazard bonus” for working double shifts to try to keep the store open while the rest of the world lost their collective brains.

The slightly simple greeter who gets assholes yelling at him because we dare to have signs up spelling out the states facial covering mandate.

The service desk worker who has assholes yelling at her because we don’t kick out someone who’s not wearing a mask.

The sales floor employee who’s getting yelled at multiple times a days because “why the fuck aren’t you carrying bird seed any more?!” (seriously, bird seed, I’ve had more pissed off people over the lack of bird seed than anything else this past week)

The specialty department supervisor who’s almost old enough to be MY mother who’s been doing this her whole life who walked off the sales floor in tears after dealing with that one last asshole on the sales floor last week.

It’s not the fault of anyone in the store that we’re out of what you want to buy.  We’re stocking out onto the shelves every single god damned thing we can find that even kinda sorta fits.  And the company is using every bit of their pretty massive buying power to try to get us stuff to put onto the shelves.

It’s not the fault of anyone in the store that the state not only wrote up a facial covering mandate but has started fining stores for each unmasked person they find in the store.

I suppose it might be our fault for not turning away people who aren’t wearing masks, but since we carry some pretty essential supplies the company has decided they’re not going to do that.  And frankly if you want to come stand at our door and try to stop that big ass angry dude from coming in without a mask then feel free.  Frankly I’m not paid enough, and neither is anyone else in the store.

If you want to bitch about something the company might actually be able to control feel free to take it up with the corporate office.

If you want to bitch about the politics of it feel free to take it up with your local politicians.

Don’t take it out on the people who’re way to massively overworked and underpaid and who don’t have any control over it anyway.

(and yes, all the described incidents of asshole customers have all happened, either to me personally, or where I could see them happen to a co-worker.  I seriously have no idea how in hell this country made it through the last few months without some kid working their first retail job losing it completely and going postal on customers, I really don’t.)


One Day Sourdough bread

The below recipe was the result of exhaustion and error that worked out beautifully.  Also note: the below loaf of bread is sized to fit into my 2.5qt dutch oven.  You’ll want to double things if you’re baking in a 5qt.

In case you haven’t figured it out from reading the rest of my blog, I work at Home Depot.  As soon as the shutdown hit Home Depot’s sales went absolutely batshit.  Someone described it as “Black Friday Weekend for 3 months straight” and I haven’t come up with a better description.  Except it was worse than a normal Black Friday weekend.  A normal BFW we know when its going to happen, we know when its going to end, we know what we have to sell, we know when we’re getting more, and what we’re not getting more of.  On a normal BFW the average customer knows that things are limited quantity and that they may  not be able to get what they want.  None of that was true of this last 3 months.  The last 3 months have been retail hell.  My pedometer app on my phone clocked me at over 24,000 steps one day.  Over 20,000 became my “normal” for most of this.  The brand new shoes I bought back in March look like they’re a year old.

And to top it off, store bought bread is no longer an option for me on any sort of a regular basis (great big long post coming on THAT), and you STILL can’t reliably get yeast at any of my local grocery stores.

So, I’ve been making sourdough bread for most of this.  Which is fine, I LIKE sourdough.  But its a time/labor intensive bread.  I have to plan ahead by several days in order to bake on my day off.  Which is a pain!

One week, back mid-May, I got out the sourdough starter to feed up, so I could start sourdough bread so I could bake on my day off.  Except that I was so exhausted that I never got the dough started.  I managed to keep the starter on the counter fed twice a day, but anything more complicated than that just wasn’t happening.  So my day off came around and we didn’t have any bread in the house, and I hadn’t started any sourdough, and I didn’t have any yeast, and I can’t do store bought bread any more, and……fuck it, lets see what happens.

(the below % are what I’m currently baking with, it did take some trial and error to get them right, but you get the idea)

pull starter out of fridge the night before and feed*

the morning of baking day:

~350 grams of flour (I use 100 grams of Red Fife Whole Wheat, the rest King Arthur’s All Purpose)

225 grams of warm water

6 grams of salt

~60 grams of recently fed sourdough starter (ok, I don’t actually measure this, I tend to just dump in a nice sized glob)

mix till reasonably cohesive and no clumps of flour remain, adding extra flour as needed to keep it from being to sloppy wet

cover and let set for 15 minutes, then fold the dough in half, turn the bowl 90 degrees and fold the dough again, turn and fold.  Repeat 15 minute set and folding a total of 4 times

cover and let set in a warm spot till mostly doubled.  I’ve had this happen in as little as 1.5hours and as much as 3.

prepare your banneton, if you don’t have a banneton then a properly sized pyrex bowl will work – spray bowl with oil and then dust heavily with flour

shape dough into round loaf** and place seam side up with banneton/bowl, cover and place in fridge

I’ve let it set in the fridge for as little as 5 hours and as much as 10, both work just fine***.  I imagine overnight would work too, but I wanted a same day loaf.

When you’re ready to bake place your empty dutch oven into the cold baking oven and set the oven to 500 degrees (F).  When oven is up to temperature take the dough out of the fridge and carefully flip out onto a piece of parchment paper (I like to sprinkle cornmeal on the parchment first), and slash the top.

Pull the dutch oven out of the oven (careful, its HOT!) and, using the parchment as a sling, place the dough into the dutch oven, place the lid on, and put back into the baking oven, turn temp down to 450 degrees, and bake for 20 minutes.

At the 20 minute mark remove the dutch oven’s lid and bake bread for another 20 minutes.

Pull out of oven and carefully remove bread from dutch oven and remove parchment, place bread back into the baking oven, directly on the rack, and bake for another 5-10 minutes till properly golden.  Let cool before slicing, no matter how much like heaven it smells.

*while pretty much everyone agrees that you can feed your sourdough starter with plain white/all purpose flour I have found that you’ll have a MUCH happier sourdough if you feed with at least half whole wheat or rye flours

**if your no-knead/sourdough breads tend to flatten in the oven instead of poofing properly you’re most likely not shaping the loaf of bread correctly.  There is a temptation with these to just wad them into a ball and call it done.  Don’t do that, hit the internet search engine of your choice and watch some videos of the pro’s shaping loaves.  Or here, this is one I like.

*** this produces a nice mildly flavored sourdough loaf.  The longer it sets in the fridge the stronger the flavor will be.  If you like a stronger flavored sourdough then experiment with longer set times.


Life update

Garden is in, and I got my first two cucumbers out of it yesterday.  Husband is still working from home, and was just informed that he’s going to be working from home through at least September.  This is one of those summers where I’m very glad for the watering system I have in place for the garden.  Dry doesn’t say it enough!  The old pool is down completely, and gravel is in the hole.  I did my math wrong and didn’t get enough to fill the hole, so now we’re deciding between more gravel, or a layer of pavers.

In the wider scheme of things:

Meat prices MIGHT have stabilized, but I’m not holding my breath on that one.

My work has started receiving deliveries of pressure treated lumber again, enough that the aisle isn’t COMPLETELY empty, but its still not enough to stem the demand.  Cleaning products are still in very short supply.  Walk behind lawnmowers are in short supply except for a few specific models.  Pesticides are coming up short in several areas, notably wasp/hornet sprays.  Tomato cages are still a hot commodity, chicken wire is hard to get.  Landscape edging is hard to get.  Weed barrier is still non-existent.  Patio furniture is selling out faster than I’ve ever seen before, and we still can’t keep firepits in stock.  We’re short on several garden soils as well.  Bird feeders, wild bird feed, shepherds hooks to hang them on, are all in short supply or gone completely.  Hose reels and hoses are also hard to find.  We’re out of buckets.  Yes, buckets.

One question that I keep getting over and over again is why are we out of so much?  In a bit of irony its almost always the person with double masks and gloves who’s asking.

Look people.  We just shut down huge swathes of manufacturing for 2-3 months.  The few who were able to stay open had to reduce capacity in order to space their employees out, or to deal with people calling out sick.  So, the factory that makes that walk behind lawn mower had to shut down for 2 months.  The factory(s) that make the parts to make the lawnmower had to shut down for 2 months.  The factory(s) that process the raw materials to make the parts for the lawnmower had to shut down for 2 months.  So, now the lawnmower factory is waiting on parts, the parts factory is waiting on raw materials.  And they’re all running at reduced capacity due to the need to space people out further.  Repeat the same steps with the warehouses.  PLUS there’s transport issues.  Trucking/transport companies had to also deal with employee call outs, and issues like the states shutting off rest areas.  AND that assumes everything is coming from the USA.  Do I  need to explain the  issues with stuff coming from overseas??  I sure hope not.  Not to mention what this does to all those jobs involved.

Look, its going to take MONTHS for things to catch back up.  I don’t really care if you think the shutdown was the right thing to do or not.  We just screwed the HELL out of our economy.  And since we’re pretty much guaranteed to have another virus spike come fall when flu season comes around I have some serious doubts as to whether it was worth it.  And god protect us all if the .GOV decides to try to shut us all down again then, cause if you think the unrest now is bad, its going to be SO MUCH worse if they try to do it again.

Edited to add: no sooner do I post this than I see this post over at Borepatch.

The largest specialty bike shop in town, one that has been open for over 50 years, is closing next week. They sold every bike in the store and had been told it might be months before any could be delivered. They couldn’t get replacement parts, either. Selling tires and tubes and fixing flats is the bread and butter of any bike shop.

Click through and look at his picture.  Yup, this is gonna suck.