September 25, 2006 - Monday 16:19
Job luck
She waited until no one was around, walked up the stairs, smuggled a note in my right hand, behind the menus. "Go and work at some place else, please. This is NOT a nice place to work. Don't tell others, please don't. And find another job. Good luck."
I thanked her, told her that I was sorry about what happened. She said it wasn't my fault then turned around and left. I put the note into my apron, took out the code strip pretending it was the strip that I was reaching my pocket for. As I was reading the codes on this 3 by 10 plastic board, it wasn't the numbers I registered to my brain.
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It has been raining for 2 days now, kind of rare in this part of the world. Even though it was the weekend, there were very few people sitting on the terrace, which was 60% of the restaurant capacity. An old couple came in, they asked me to sit them on the side of the avenue, I did. There were two tables connected together, so I tore them apart, sat them down, handed them the menus. Boss A. came to me and said:" What are you doing?"
"What?"
"You just sat 2 people down in a 4 people table. What would happen if a group of 4 come in?"
"You join the tables together."
"No, you don't." Yes we do, Boss. M and other waitresses had been telling me that it would be OK to do so. Fine, I said that I wouldn't do it again. I was in no position to argue with my new boss. He wasn't in the good mood that night, like most of nights.
People either don't come in at all, or all of them come at the same time. Nature's law: it is hard to find the balance. When I was receiving a group of 4, they wanted to sit around the door. There were only 2 tables left in that area but none of them was cleaned. So I sat them down and cleaned the tables quickly.
Boss. A. "What are you doing? You NEVER NEVER sat people at the not cleaned table."
"OK." How was I supposed to know that? Do I listen to the boss or the customers? This is my first restaurant waitressing job in this country!
Similar sort of mid-sized friction kept building up through out the night. The minutes went by like days...twaty A. needed to do what the women behind the bars in the University Cafeteria, just find something and be happy.
A German family walked by; they asked me if it would be OK if they just ordered some drinks. Sure, of course. This is a chain store, reminds me of "IHOP", where you can sit down just for a cup of coffee. I sat them down, but I wasn't taking any orders because the machine Pokky wasn't working...anyway, that is another story. The waitress came to take the orders after 10 minutes or so.
"No, you have to order food."
"But she told me that it is OK just to get drinks." The woman said. I went over to the table after I saw the finger pointing at me.
"Tell them that it is not OK to be here if they don't order food."
"Sorry, I think you have to order some food here in order to get the drinks."
"Tell her to get us the drinks and we will leave right away. You told us that it was OK to only drink here."
"Yes I did. This is my second night, my mistake."
Boss A. came over and told them to leave if they were not getting any food. "The bar is next door, we refuse to serve you any drinks while you don't order any food."
"But you can't keep a family waiting and then at the end not giving us anything ..." The argument went on for another 3 minutes, they left in anger. Boss A. yelled at me in front of them. Exactly like I had expected. I said that I wouldn't do it again, turned around, walked back to the hall to return the menus. When I was placing the menus, the German woman came back, she waited until no one was around, walked up the stairs...
10 minutes later, Boss A. decided not to see my face for the rest of the evening: "Punched out, you are going home for the night. Come 10 minutes earlier tomorrow, we need to talk."
"Is everything alright?"
"No. But we will talk about it tomorrow."
If you want to fire me, fire me NOW! How come they didn't have the guts to fire people on the spot? That would be the second time this happening to me during my 3 jobs in this dream town. There was nothing to do in the restaurant, why couldn't we talk about it then? But NOOOOO, they had to keep me guessing all day and all night, they had to keep me hanging in doubts and anger.
So, I went to work tonight, arrived 15 minutes earlier. The boss and I had the talk.
"It has been a week since you work here, it is not normal that you can't do these simple things."
"Yes, I was officially hired on the 17, but I had only 2 shifts, none of them was complete because they sent me home early. I only worked for 5 hours in total."
"I know."
No he didn't.
"I never had any training, and there are some culture differences too..."
"No, it wasn't about the culture differences. (Yes, it was. ) I give you one more chance tonight, if I don't see any improvement. We stop here. Any questions? (yes, why couldn't we speak of this last night?)"
"Yes. I don't know how the Pokky works. Well, I know, but I never got to practice it. The first night Marie was using it and only showed me how it was suppose to work, and last night mine was broken, so I never actually got to touch it."
"You have one chance. ( I don't need your pity chance)"
"OK."
It was such a stupid idea to use a little machine called Pokky to take orders, especially I am the one who usually deals with foreign customers, most of them use English menus and the writings on the machine is in French. We are not allowed to take notes for taking orders. Only machine. Vive the technology. So, eventually, I touched this holy machine tonight and took some orders. But they sent me home after 2 hours because we didn't have enough people coming in. 10 hours a week, I really need another job.
NO, you can't complain that I wasn't walking fast enough. My shoes are super slippery when wet, I fell twice already and it hurt. I don't have the money right now to pay for another pair of black-enough shoes, I just got those for this 10 hours/ week job. The word "training" is not in their dictionary, or the word "management". How would you expect me to know everything the moment you handed me this clown-like uniform?
Is it me? my luck? bosses? location? or any other elements that I haven't realized that had been influencing my jobs? Where do I draw a line between me and money? Where do I draw a line between interesting management and my errors? Where do I draw line to finally decide taking one day off, just one day, no worries on jobs, school, legal paper, money and annoying people? Oh yeah, speaking of which, where are my ear muffs, my roommate ALWAYS had loud conversations at 2AM (now) and swears like a sailor. (I should be the one complaining, not him. I have class in 5 hours!)
September 22, 2006 - Friday 13:28
Men Attack
Two night ago, one of my very dear was going back to UK, we three of us went out for a nice dinner. For the first time in so many months, I dressed up nicely. We finished dinning around midnight and as I was walking back to my apt, two Arabic Italians attacked me in the middle of the street near the park and tried to take my clothes off!!! I pulled out my knief and put it close to one's throat while threathened to cut them open, in different languges, make sure they understand that I KNOW how to cut people open with my swiss army knief.... they backed off, I told them to take a walk and get a life.
Then, when I got to my apt, I was in kind of after shock, you know sometimes when you are in a situation you just react with animal instinct and feel the fear half of hour after the incident. This is typical me.
The same day, I was in cafeteria (OK, a good story starts, a real one), I was standing behind a girl who was talking to the woman behind the prison-like window pane. I was wanting to buy a ticket to eat in the university. After the girl before me left, I stepped in and asked if I can buy a ticket, the women behind the jail glass started yelling at me: "You are not listening to me, I am NOT HAPPY. I just told her that you can't buy just one ticket, you have to buy at least 10 of them.......... blah blah blah...."
Of course that I wasn't listening to her!!!! She was talking to me!!!!! And why, really why on earth wouls I ever talk a slightest interest on the fact that she is not happy? Well, quit your job; take a vacation: have some ince cream, smoke some weed, get laid; go to a movie; ....... just be happy and start doing your job!!! Some people are unbelievable.
There was a man standing behind me as the woman going off about her unhappiness, he then moved forward, maybe he understood that he was going to asking the same question. So, we lunched together, his name is J, from Spain. I rememeber him the first day I was in school, he was in the office next to me and I saw his last name but didn't see his first. It is funny how some people pay much attention about the sourrounding envrionment whilst others don't. Anyway, we spoke of beaches, cinema etc... then,; i went back to my classes and he went home.
Yesterday, I was shopping for black shoes for work, and when I walked out a store he was there!!! He took the wrong bus and ended up at the other side of the town..... think about coincidence!!! We suddenly thought of the same movie (Run Lola Run), what would happen,; what would have been different within seconds of differences. He then took me to a cheap store where I finally found my work shoes and I was invited to dine with his housemates for the evening. We were 10-11 of us!!!! It was so much fun! I spent the last day of summer with a group of cool people. Too bad that I can't go back there tonight although they invited me, I have to work.
Tomorrow, I may go to the guy's house as a surprise to see if I can get my money back, but I would prefer to go with someone. What do you say?
My housemate is driving me nuts though.
"Why the bathroom isn't clean enough?"
"Why the air conditioning wasn't working?"
"Clean the kitchen"
"Try to find someone to buy my laptop."
"Try to find someone to fix my program"
"BLAH BLAH BLAH"
He is like a machine that wouldn't shut up and open the door early in the morning when I was sleeping to ask me stupid questions!!!! And what the hell he was doing in my room all the time? He took all the space in the bathroom and uses way toooo much cologne that the smell escape from bathroom to the living room, to my room with doors closed!!! He kept eating my stuff..... BUT ABOVE ALL; stop asking me to do stuff for you! I don't have any time!!! And I don't owe you this! I alrzeady did him so much favore on money transfering and giving ther rent to the' landloard and talked to them, fix this fix that...... just please LEAVE ME ALONE!!!!
Anyway, this is my bithching for the day, thanks for listening.
I may take a salsa class at school! And I just found out that J. was thinking about taking one too!!!! and Cath!!! Sweet. My schdeule is going to be so full that I won't have any time to listen to my housemate's bullshit. ha!
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