Food To Go

I am an employee of BYU FoodToGo. It's basically the highlight of my life. My average shift (when I even get the hours I'm supposed to) consists of boxing rolls and cookies, washing pans and hot chocolate thermoses, counting and bagging paper goods and plastic utencils, checking and double-checking orders to make sure everything is ready to go, wandering around to make it look like I'm being productive, meandering in and out of our walk-in refridgerators just for kicks, and when I'm lucky, taking deliveries in the van to various locations on campus.

You see, I was hired as a driver. Going into this job, I thought I'd just be in and out of the kitchen, loading up my ride with food and delivering the goods to grateful recipiants all over BYU. I was pretty excited to cruise around in the pimp green service van and have carts of cookies to deliver or lunch buffets to set up. Little did I know I'd be spending much of my time twittling my thumbs or playing with the Kung Fu Panda McDonalds toy that someone left on the end of the dry-foods production table.

Tuesday morning I got a call from Chris: "Don't even bother coming in today, we are already way ahead with production and have no deliveries during your shift."

Lame. This job wasn't turning out to be as cool as I'd hoped. But since I'm an optimist and know that there's always hope for a better tomorrow (or in my case a better day-after tomorrow, since it was Tuesday and I wasn't scheduled to work again until Thursday), I put that hope to the test and hoped my little heart out. I hoped that my shift wouldn't be taken away, I hoped there would be work, I hoped that there would be many deliveries, and I even went so far as to hope that there'd be extra food I could eat (as is sometimes the case when working in the kitchen of a food service business).

My hopes and dreams were realized this morning as I experienced the fastest 4-hour shift of my entire FoodToGo career. I was out the door on two deliveries before I even knew what was going on. I got back in time to get the next deliveries ready and loaded and had just enough time to eat a couple extra rolls that were left out on the corner of the counter, which every employee knows is the fair-game food corner.

But the fact that I had 6 deliveries (more than all my previous deliveries this month combined) and free food isn't what made my day. It was the fact that I got to do what I was hired to do: drive the big green van.

I get a lot of satisfaction out of driving around Provo simply because I don't have a car of my own. But my delight in taking deliveries goes beyond simply driving AROUND campus. Even if I did have a car of my own, I couldn't drive it ON campus with the BYU Employee authority I have on the job.

Remember high school, when a football jock could strut straight through the halls as the lesser peons parted to either side? No one wanted to get in his way. The brave few who held their path - even when it crossed his - were reminded by bruised shoulders to bail out the next time a collision course was eminent.

Now, that image in mind, did you ever wonder what it must feel like to be that big man on campus like Joe Schmoe the linebacker? If you answered Yes, consider this your invitation to come along on my next delivery. As I navigate the walkways of BYU, students part before me. When I'm at work, I'm the big man on campus.

But if you're thinking to yourself "I was that big shot Joe Schmoe on campus...nay, I am him still!", you better step aside now because I guarantee you're not bigger than my van.

The Village People

GOOOOOOOAL!!!

The ref whistled the start of the game and after only four seconds had expired, we were up 1-nil.

What an exciting start to the season, and what a way for our outsider recruit Michael Richardson to prove his worth and solidify his spot on the team. The beautiful shot from 20 yards out gave me the feeling that this would be a great game to start off the season of my intramural coed soccer team. It was indeed great in many ways: great fun, great friendships with teammates, great workout, great times, but by no means did it end in a great victory.

In fact, I walked home Thursday evening in the bitter cold after possible the greatest defeat of my life. We notched up a second goal when Carlos converted on an early PK, but the 2 on our side of the scoreboard was put to shame by the 14 posted by the opposing squad.

I didn't even know it was possible to score 14 points in a soccer game. We only play for 40 minutes!

Leading up to the season, I was way stoked to put together a team. I don't consider myself a great soccer player, but I think playing soccer is great. So I started recruiting people in my University Villa ward who felt the same way. And thus, The Village People united and formed an awesome team of futbol-ers. Most of us have played on teams at some point in our lives - a few may have played high school varsity, while a few others may have been the stars of their 4th grade community team (but haven't played since). Our goalie actually isn't a soccer player at all - but he played goalie for his high school water polo team, which I felt was close enough. Maybe that explains the 14 goals...

I wasn't sure what to think after that game. Are we really that bad? Or did we just get unlucky and face a really tough team in our opening game of the season? Maybe we just need a couple games to mesh as a team. After all, most of us hadn't touched a soccer ball for months (or years) until the ref blew that whistle to start the game. We were tracking down shin guards the day of the game (a few guys made an emergency trip to Wal-mart so they'd be eligible to play that night), and a couple people on the team didn't even have cleats. Our goalie was using his snowboarding gloves and wearing my tennis shoes (because he figured they'd at least be a little better than his Vans). It's a good thing my little brother gave me a soccer ball for Christmas, or we wouldn't have even been able to contribute a game ball.

So after our humbling pummeling, I began to realize how unprepared our little make-shift soccer team was. I was forced to admit that we may just not be championship-winning material. Yet.

But now there's nowhere to go but up after our season opener. And we're going up fast. We know what the competition's like now, and we know what we have to do. All you Disney lovers just think "The Big Green" and you'll know how the rest of our season will play out. We're going to be locked and loaded and we'll hit the turf running next Friday for game two. Look out Team 71, because The Village People are ready to show what they're made of!