Gate

Last time I threw out a lot of the different jobs that I do on a weekly basis. One of those is what we call “gate.” I thought that I should write about it now since I had a really bad experience of it last night. I can’t imagine a worse night.

Basically, there are three people on the gate who help facilitate the traffic flow through the building during dinner time. To start off, usually two people head outside to the line of people waiting for dinner. We first straighten the line, making sure that now one is trying to save their spot and that everyone is sort of single file. Since it is so hot and we don’t want people to have to get out of line for water, we give everyone in line at the time a cold bottle of water. From here, one of these persons goes back inside to help the third gate person, who has since started cleaning the five bathrooms that we have available to the guests. There is often a mess in the bathrooms, and when I say “mess,” I mean crap on the walls (literal crap), so cleaning is a never ceasing adventure.

The person who stayed outside, known as the front gate person, has begun to hand out numbers for dinner. After numbers are given to everyone in line, the guests file into our parking lot and the benches there. They wait in the benches until 5:30 when we start serving. One of the inside gate people, called middle gate, will call the guests in one bench at a time (about 30-35 people). The middle gate person collects the numbers, making sure that no one has cut the line. The last person stands at the exit to the dining room to greet the guests as they leave and to ensure they don’t take out the Styrofoam cups we give them. This is to help control litter on the street.

Last night I was on front gate, and like I said it was terrible. To start off, there was one guy who thought he deserved a bottle of water more than anyone else in the line. He went in our volunteer entrance (which is off limits to guests) and started giving his pity story to some of the volunteers. So I had to go inside and argue with him about why he wasn’t going to get a bottle of water. It might seem like something insignificant, but as soon as we let one guy elbow his way into the building when it is closed to the guests and get a bottle of water, we will have many more people doing the same. It's almost a game with the guests, and I won that round.

The next incident was a woman dealing crack right outside our front gate. She is someone who is around quite a bit and I didn’t think she would be selling drugs. So I called the police and they took her away. She was back today, so I’m not sure what happened to her. While I was dealing with that, a car load of people (not kitchen volunteers) drove into our parking lot. The driver just happened to be drinking a cup of beer. We don’t allow alcohol on our property, so I had to chase them off. There is also one guest who has been giving us a lot of trouble lately, and he got really pissed at us last night. He threw a hissy fit to try and get his way, and we had to compromise with him. He was most likely high out of his mind at the time too, so we were worried he was going to hurt someone. Once I had walked away from that one, I had to convince another guy who was reeking of alcohol that he wasn’t welcome for dinner. I guess that it’s best to get one of these nights in early, because I don’t think they can get much worse than that.