Bloody Meat

The blood blister oozed some more after my shower this morning but looks like it's finally stopped. Just in time for another disgusting story of bloody injury and cannibalism.

On Sunday, one of the girls in the deli had to cut "three-quarter inch thick pieces of salami" (it's now in vogue to get thick pieces of turkey, ham, and other meat at the deli to "dice up for a salad." The older trend of "paper thin...for wraps!" is now a culinary "out").

The slicers are not designed for such thick slabs of meat (they're also not designed for salami, bologna, pepperoni, or any other long thin lunchmeat) and she wound up cutting a three-quarter inch thick piece off the length of her thumb.

After she ran in the back for the first aid kit, our manager's first words were: "Which one was your customer? What were you getting him?"

As she was led off for the hospital, I took apart the slicer to wash the blood and bits of human flesh off it. (This is required by the Board of Health; otherwise I doubt if they'd let me.)

Customers behind me became surly--"What is he doing? I've been waiting for 15 minutes."

When informed that we were short-handed and that I was cleaning off strips of bloody human flesh, they responded with "Well, why doesn't he do it after he waits on me?"

One woman demanded that another worker wash the slicer next to me. When told that it was free of human flesh, she didn't care. She insisted that the area underneath the slicer be washed as well. (I have no explanation for this--it just added to the wait and got others angrier.)

The girl with half the thumb hasn't been working long enough to have health insurance. I can only hope that someone in management will pick up the hospital bill but it's possible that she could have been crippled for life for a job that doesn't pay significantly above minimum wage.

I could figure why people wait in lines at the deli when they could just pick up the packaged lunchmeat at their convenience. Now it's clear--it's that tangy human thumb goodness.