irish squirrel wrote:

---

I'd say a hot grill.

---

 You can never have too many hot grills

Burgermeister wrote:

---

fdarn wrote:

---

What about the third thing?

---

 wooden cutting blocks?

---

 They come in handy for the 3rd thing

fdarn wrote:

---

What about the third thing?

---

 Back in the 60s and 70s, it could have been a bottle of Jack Daniels under the block, or some real friendly meat wrappers in the cooler on Saturday afternoons after clean up!  

Ha! You're killing me Jim!

machine wrote:

---

Jimmy, you should see the p.o.s. they give me to use at Sprouts. It's about 9 inches long and has almost no grooves. WTF! At least ,I have a 3 sided oilstone, but everybody wants me to sharpen their blades.

---

 Before I was a market manager, just a cutter, I've been in stores a couple times where they did not have a set of knives and steel for every cutter. In those cases, only the cutters who were provided tools worked, and any others did not, until the store manager figured it out and scrambled  to get knives and steels from another store or the sharpening company. We were all on the clock so it was okay with us if we didn't cut, since we were getting paid. Naturally this was a union shop.

Once I became a market manager I never let stupid **** like that happen and always rented plenty of quality tools for my crew.

I never worked in a store (union or non-union) that did NOT provide knives and steels for the cutters.  This was from 1968 to 1995.  Even so, we tended to prefer our own knives and use the rentals also.

Burgermeister wrote

---

when I worked wholesale (1981), we were given a $2.00 "tool allowance" each week. Knives were cheaper back then.

I've been in maybe 100 different stores (not 100 different companies). Maybe 10 companies? Anyway, I've never seen a meat dept where knives are provided for the cutters. Cleavers, slicers, band saws, bone dusters, stones, safety gloves, yes. Knives, never. Fish dept is a different story. They're a different breed, to put it nicely. Fish dept has lots of company knives. Must cutters I know insist on having their own private knives. We buy exactly what we like, we sharpen it, or see to it that someone sharpens it, and don't really let others use our knives except if the other person forgets them, or they're lost or stolen. Once in a while, one odd cutter will have a bad habit of picking up the wrong knife and will use it all day while the rightful owner will wonder "where did I misplace my knife?".

If you itemize deductions on income tax, our knives, boots, steels, etc., are deductible.

---