A good morning's work

With a quick drop of the last heavy box of cooking implements, Aeolia had officially claimed this new cafeteria workplace as her own. Granted, there was not much to claim, seeing as how some of the places around the cooking area were collecting some dust when she came in, and there could have been no workers for all the time before working here because there wasn't any real sign of wear on the stuff left behind- maybe they were just really clean workers- but by george she had her spot to work with now.

It wasn't anything like the small hotel and pizzaria she was used to owning, the cafeteria seemed like a much bigger workplace for her, which she liked. Her friends, the dead ones at least, didn't seem too keen on the space though. Aeolia knew it wouldn't take too long for them to get comfortable with it, spirits always had a problem with settling into new places anyway.

Aeolia began unpacking all of the boxes she brought in, having her old companion spirits organize most of her things in the areas she pointed at. When they got to a uniform pace with picking up and placing her cooking items everywhere, Aeolia decided to walk out into one of the lunchroom seats and sat down, taking in the room everyone would be sitting in. She was glad it was kept clean enough for her to avoid a good bit of work with the outside area, and looked over at the clock on one of the walls.

It was already 3 hours since Aeolia got situated, time really flew setting everything up. Realizing classes may have started while she was distracted or students coming in at least, she stood up and tried to listen for any stray teachers or students, carefully looking around and prepared to give a excuse or two if she had to while setting up.

Constance Christianson walked down the hallways of the school with a dignified posture. Her red spiral curls bounced lightly with her steps. She’d heard that her husband had hired a new head chef for the cafeteria who supposedly had an entire cooking staff that could poses appliances. This she had to see for herself. In addition to that she was eager to meet a new face, and make a new friend. The only true friend she felt she had besides her husband was Miss Cooneybeer. She’d hoped she’d get along with the new woman in the staff.

She walked into the cafeteria and saw a blond woman sitting alone. She figured this must be her as she hadn’t ever seen this person before. But not rude enough to make verbal assumptions she approached the woman with professionalism and decided to introduce herself.

“Hello, hi.” She said, clasping her hands in front of herself. “Can I help you with anything?” She asked with a smile, not sure if this woman was a parent or relative to any of the students.

Sure enough, Aeolia turned to a woman who looked like a teacher politely asking her who she was and if she could help with anything. If there was one thing Aeolia liked hearing, it was offered help, so she decided to cut any excuses she planned and be truthful about her partners still setting up.

"Oh, hello there. Thanks for asking, could you show me how some of the machinery in the backroom works? Because I might just be a bit outdated with all of this new technology and some of the controls are just plain confusing for us-"

Aeolia quickly stopped speaking, realizing this woman might not have even known she was the lunchlady and may be even more offended that explaining all of that would take more than 10 minutes. Some angels she knew were just hasty like that and up on their posh nature. Aeolia looked off a little to the side and scratched the back of her ear, trying to take back her earlier demand.

"Er- Actually, you wouldn't really have to do that, you probably have classes or something I bet." She laughs it off "so wait, what's your name anyway? I'm Aeolia, I just got assigned in with some familiars of mine to be the new lunchlady if that..wasn't kind of.....obvious." Aeolia laughs nervously, what a way to start off her work here, botching her first impression.

Constance smiled, actually liking the boldness of this new woman in taking up her offer. She let out a soft laugh and extended her hand.

"I'm Constance Christinson. I'm the nurse here and the Principal is my husband." She said, her tone friendly. "I'd be happy to help show you some of the equipment. I myself passed away in the late 1800's, so I know how it can be a tad bit confusing keeping up to date with all the new inventions and so on. Why, my sisters and I didn't even have a proper stove. Just a pot over a fire place. We couldn't even make our own bread. Oh forgive me, I'm rambling aren't I?" She spoke as she walked with Aeolia to the cooking area.

"All right so is there anything you have a question on in particular?" She asked once they stood in the middle of the room.

'1800s? Ouch.' Aeolia thought, shuddering at the thought of being even farther back in human technology and having to adapt to it. It was hard enough to get her grandmother in a car when they were affordable enough for her family. Though her mention of being the principal's husband did a good job of making her feel even more defeated on her impression, at least Constance didn't seem to mind.

In reality there wasn't too much alien equipment for Aeolia, some of the devices like that one industrial sized mixer wasn't hard to figure out, the commands being pretty easily labled on there for her to understand. She smelt a life saver in that microwave thing, it seemed to work much faster than the oven, made things taste worse though. The dishwasher required poking around until it went down and sounded like it was incinerating all of the dishes, scared the heck out of her for sure. Aeolia was sure she could figure out most of the equipment with little backlash, but there were 2 outlandish things she was not too sure she wanted to tamper with.

"No, not really. It's good to see I'm not really the only one confused about all of the new cooking inventions though" she stated, walking along with Constance going on over her lifestyle. When they came through the entrance to the workspace, there were a lot of confused spirits over the new arrival that Aeolia had to wave off from her so they wouldn't crowd in front of Constance on the way in.

Once they stopped at Constance's question, Aeolia spoke up "Okay so..that device over there. It has a blade on it and everything but I have no idea how it's meant to cut anything" she points at the meat slicer to the east of the room "since it seems like the blade's attached to the..flat surface or something." Aeolia trailed off before speaking up again "..and that pool of yellow stuff and wire baskets. I don't really even know what to say about that" she then points to the deep fryers "I think it's meant to boil something. Maybe."

She waited for the older angel to give a demonstration before something came to mind "Woah wait one second-" Aeolia said before suddenly whistling. A good 7 spirits suddenly hovered in the room who were instructed by her to watch this to understand how to use the tool from then on. She then counted there were 7, and became annoyed they didn't all fly in at once like the calvary to show off.

Aeolia yelled for the rest of the team to pop up "Hey, drop what you are doing up there before you miss something important and mess something up when there's a line of people!"

6 more spirits fly in. It wasn't apparently all of them because she began to call out the names of the stragglers.

"HEY! WALTER, PHIL, GERTRUDE, WHOEVER COMES LAST GETS TO WORK THAT NEW DISHWASHER." With that the last 3 hurried into the room, Aeolia turning around and quickly fixing her hair up to look back at Constance "alright you can continue, sorry but if they aren't really around they don't really get how to work it-" she watched the angel carefully, making sure all 16 of the spirits she brought today were paying attention to her.

Constance let out a friendly soft laugh as Aeolia led her to the cooking area. This one definitely had her own whimsy.

She was just about to start showing the new employee how to work when the blond angel stopped her. With fascination Constance watched as the spirits came into the room. It was amazing really, how they were all eager and ready to learn and helped. Putting on her best smile the petite woman made her way over to the meat cutter.

"This one won't be too hard to familiarize yourself with. It's used for slicing, in particular meat. Just be sure that the blade cover is tightly affixed and the hand guard should be attached. A slicer should never be operated without the hand guard." The red head said as she ran her hand over the metal of the machine.

"Next make sure that the blades run smoothly together or if they need to be oiled. If everything is fine then place the food on the cutting tray. It must be small enough that the holding guard can be placed on the backside of the food. A long piece of meat, like a salami, should be cut down to a size small enough for the guard to be set in place." She explained.

"Then you turn the blade on. While the blade is turning, be careful with your hands. Do not place your hands near the rotating blade or let a sleeve dangle near where the blade could catch, for obvious safety reasons. Grasp the handle of the hand guard and push gently against the food. With a steady hand, glide the sliding mechanism across the blade, cutting the food."

She then moved over to the deep fryers, tucking a strand of hair behind her head.

"Now if you're not the type to get hot too easily or mind a few little stings on your arms here or there, you're really going to love this one." She explained with a grin. "This is called a deep fryer. Like the name would suggest, it fries up your dishes in oils and the like, but it's much safer then the old fashioned way he used to do it in pots and pans. Just make sure that you don't get the oils up past the safety lines here" she pointed to a marker "or set a temperature hotter then this" she pointed to a little red notch stuck to the heating dial. "Once you get the hang of it, it's really easy, and it smells wonderful when the food comes fresh out of it. Well, at least I think so." She said kindly.

"I hope all of that made sense. I know that it can be a lot to take in and that practice is the best way to learn. If you'd like, I can work beside you for the first few days until you get the hang of everything." She offered. It'd be nice to get out of the nurse's office anyway. It was all so sterile in there. Something she didn't mind, but she wanted to change things up a bit and cooking with the new lunch lady seemed like a good opportunity to do so.