The Inevitable RANT of Work

I've been working for about two weeks now. It is indeed boring to listen to another person gripe about their job, so I will try to sort this into the "good" and the "bad" aspects. More obvious is that the "bad" aspect will be much, much, MUCH longer.

Good:

• Free food. From people who know how to cook. And as much as you'd ever want. (It's a buffet, after all.) Probably makes it balance out the 15-minute break to eat during a shift.


• Kinda brainless tasks with some variety. Normally, I would jump at brainless paying tasks like that "primo" thing from a few months ago, but who wants to work at a place full time where all you do is stand and greet?


• Tips! The minimum wage job is enhanced when we get gratuities that make it seem like you get more per hour. Last weekend, it was enough to pay for almost a whole gas tank... (at these prices anyway)


• Work is nearby... in a way. A ten minute drive. Unfortunately there is no bus that goes there directly, nor often enough, so I still get lifts from my mum or brother.


• Decent learning experience. Everyone knows I have never worked a day in my life before at a real job with regular hours and regular pay. I am grateful for a chance to get some work experience, especially to be written into my CV, to indicate that I ain't no longer no freaking stupid student no more.

Bad:

• More stupid injuries than you could bump your head against. I have so far cut myself a few times on the most innocent of implements, like a pair of tongs. I hit my head constantly on the lamps and window of the buffet tables from cleaning them. I burn my fingers every day from lifting pans and vats out of the steaming tables. I have mysterious bruises from mysterious sources. And just recently, I seem to have sprained my right hand, and I have a blister on my blister on my pinky toe. I never even heard of a blister on a blister until today. Hurts like hell though.


• People are cheapskates. Around St-Jean, we had a boatload of people coming in and gorging themselves like mad, and I made less gratuities than if you would have went out on the street and knocked over a parade of small children and senior citizens.


• People are pigs. Buffets are designed so that you want to keep eating and eating, since there's so much food sitting around that you get hungry looking at it. (They make money from drinks, like most restaurants.) It's got to the point where I don't even notice the fat people anymore, just the odd skinny ones.


• Coworkers are crazy. Now, I don't want to generalize about people who work in restaurants. Considering that my parents worked in them for their entire lives, my friends' parents and my friends work/ed in them, and I've known countless of students who work in restaurants to put themselves through school, I can't generalize. So I'm just going to say that people who don't get past high school will end up working at these places. ***


• Stupid shifts. The scheduling boss is nuts. Today, I worked starting from 8:30 am. Now listen through here; I don't complain about working in the morning. No, I don't. Unless I usually work in the evening shifts until midnight. Which is what I did last night. I probably looked like a zombie because Mrs. Lim (Kathy's mum) looked at limpy me and decided I shouldn't be working until whenever she finished, which is usually late, and I was relieved of my shift early. (Yay?)


• Haven't been paid yet... According to the payroll boss, I missed the last pay day by giving my voided cheque to the bosses by one freaking day. I am supposed to be paid this week, but we'll see.


• No one understands a damn thing I say! Despite being almost functionally trilingual, at this workplace anyway, no one will ever be able to understand what I say. The waiters/waitresses, busboys, dishwashers, and buffeteers are all french speaking, the kitchen staff are all either chinese and speak english, or francophone, and the bosses are also english speaking. So why the crap do I have to repeat something thirteen times before I get my freaking vat of soup?

I think the only thing I look forward to task-wise is cleaning the buffet tables at the evening shifts. It keeps me from going into the kitchen to deal with crazy staff there, and also, I know that I can go home afterwards with a pocket full of tips.

*** I was thinking about papa yesterday night while I was limping from kitchen to buffet. I guess this is what he meant when he said to study well in school. Yes, people: if you don't study well in school you will end up working as a dishwasher, buffet girl, busboy, cleaner, or a crazy chef.

Work SuXX0rs

My mysterious sudden disappearance is caused by my first, new, summer job at a chinese buffet / restaurant in Quebec City (Ste-Foy). I'm a buffet girl.

Now, as you, the reader who knows me or not, may or may not know, knowing me or not will drive you nuts since this sentence doesn't make sense very much, or not. HA! ... Stupid joke.

Anyway, I have always adamantly veered away from going to work in the food service businesses because of the nature of the work my parents have always done. But since the passing of my dad, I have been through (and am still going through) much deliberation of my life. There are many things I regret not doing in the past, and I am catching up with each of these regrets.

Although buffet girl isn't exactly one of those, it's something to do this summer at least.

It makes me sad, indeed to be away from Montreal and all my friends there, and away prematurely in my plans, but it lets me be with my mother at the least, and I get to work at the same place as her. *And* I get tips. :)

School's out in the high schools, so I don't get to substitute anymore anyway. :( I haven't heard any replies from schools for a full time job in the fall or winter so I guess I'll have to keep looking. Double :(

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In the meanwhile, I'll just describe the job at the basic level. There are buffet tables and each dish needs to be changed or maintained by refilling. Cleaning and putting more plates and bowls is also our jobs at the tables. So far, I haven't had luck at the hot buffet because I don't speak loud or clear enough for the chefs to know what the heck I'm asking for. So I was usually assigned to the soup bar, salad bar, and dessert tables where I don't have to talk much to them. These tables are still pains in the wazoo to maintain.

The bosses and workers are reasonably nice. They don't understand half the things I say, mostly because I try speaking either French or Cantonese to everyone and no one understands either of these languages when I speak. *grumbles*

Now, people are total pigs. Buffets are meant for the gluttons and the huge groups who can't be served properly at normal restaurants. If there were any doubt for anyone to find the biggest, most unscrupulous eaters, McDonalds would not even come close to rank to buffets. I have seen people of all shapes and sizes. Some are fit, but most are spherical, conical, pear-shaped... I've seen a cylindrical little girl. CYLINDRICAL.

I have witnessed things that would probably send more chills all over your body than a snow storm in the arctic. And probably would make you lose your appetite in a flash. I won't spoil it for you though. (Although it's probably too late for Lil' V.)

Obviously, when we get breaks I can't eat at the buffet.

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Next time you visit a buffet, make sure you don't whine to the managers too much about stupid things like how little food there is at closing time. It's freaking closing time, just go home dammit!

Ode to the Graduated

"Better late than never," they told;
"Prepare your future past now!
Treasure this paper you were sold -
The proletariat to wow!

"Bless us, the patron of our school,
We roam the earth in quest!
Our bookish training in western ways!
Thirsty knowledge sans rest!"

Blessed be the grim-faced student,
The sorrowed and the toiled;
You worked and failed and worked again,
your heart and knees you soiled.

A median world as a moderate man
Whose eyes may never wander -
Same sun and moon and earth and stars,
Your life may be more fonder.

The Graduation Caper!

... toned down...

My mother is coming this evening to stay for the week to see my two convocations. Initially, I didn't want to go, but since my sister didn't want to go to hers and my parents forced her to go, I have the same deal. :p

I just got my robe this morning, and it looks real funny... I never realized how revealing the robe becomes in the front. I'd better go wash my nice pants.

The idea of The Graduation Caper (c) is to make a documentary of myself with the stupid robe. Wearing it while doing the most inconceivable things, like buying groceries or shopping for shoes, I was to document the entire week in film format.

Except... no one wanted to film me.

So I revised the plan, to have pictures instead. It seems too artificial that way - posed and even less believable, but I would then compile it into my album.

Except... no one wanted to shoot me.

In fact, I went to SUMS and took pictures of myself, all the way home. And it doesn't have the same effect at all. :( Anyway, once I get things uploaded from the camera, I'll have the album ready.

No thanks to anyone out there, by the way.

In the meantime, I just have to make sure my mum doesn't catch me doing too much. (I had though to go to chinatown with it, but my mum would have caught a fit.)

Foot-long #3

I was told by the school on Thursday, from what I heard, to substitute on Friday for the second period. Well, I heard wrong, and I arrived about 20 minutes *late* (9 am), and after getting called by the secretary, to my chagrin. :(

Anyway, just as I arrive, they informed me that "the bus is just about to leave." Wha-? What bus?

Well, as soon as I hopped onto the bus, it took off with three other ones. All these buses were filled with secondary 1 and 2 students, heading to some religious community center, a building in Sillery, not far from the church and cemetery. Funny enough, I was the only other adult on the bus other than the bus driver... *PANIC!*

"HEY MISS C!!!"
"So... uh..." I stammered. "Do you know where we're going?"

The kids laughed, and I was told we were heading to a sort of leadership conference, organized by a number of different English organizations in the community. There were both QHS and St-Patrick's HS in attendance, at the same grade levels.

But imagine that, 300 squealing and squeamish high octane kids running around and screaming and fighting... with 1 adult per 30 kids... Fortunately, the secretary told me that everything would be potentially taken care of at the conference, with more adults and volunteers in attendance to watch over the kids and participate with them in the activities planned.

At first, the teachers didn't have much to do because we weren't really told anything other than get the kids there and back. Then they realized that the kids didn't listen to anybody (depending on the activity) because they were discouraged by the activities being offered, so they asked the teachers to follow the students to keep some peace.

I was assaulted with a barrage of "HI MISS!" to "MISS! HI!!!" to a lot of crazy kids trying to pilfer the teachers' coffee/tea/juice. Some even got it in their heads that they were there to cause as much misery to their rival schools that they booed each other in presentations of awards.

Fun, for a leadership conference, eh?

I got home in one piece, which is good enough for me... *GASP*

Grief

The greatest sorrow one has to endure is not anything that happens to oneself, at least not directly. One article I once read was that in a survey, most respondents said their greatest sorrow was to lose a parent.

Why, amonst the fears of disease, poverty, disaster, violence, and balloons, would the deepest grief come from the death of a parent? It is because your parents were your guardians, from the very moment you were conceived, and they were your only world.

Even with a father like mine who was not home so often, especially in the later years when he was working out in Sept-Iles and Trois-Rivières for months at a time, it still gave comfort and paternal admiration that he was still working for the betterment of all our lives because he loved us.

In the hospital, we watched this gentle caring man getting pulled away from us, and there was nothing to be done about it. When he died, it felt like part of myself was no longer whole. And it hasn't since then.

That's why on Sunday after church, I crossed the street to the cemetary and I walked almost aimlessly about looking for my father's relatively new monument, took a "shortcut" and lost my way, then finally found it and collapsed in front of it, weeping miserably as I usually do.

I spoke to Sarah on Friday night, about the appropriateness of taking pictures of a tombstone. There was no simple ye or nay, but Sarah had this funny story about Adam Sandler's visit to his father's grave.
His family was planning to go visit his father, and in the Jewish tradition they were to place a stone on top of the grave. Adam had no stone to put, and he voiced his concern with his brother. His brother reassured Adam that he would take care of things. Thus, when the day came, Adam was at the graveside, having his moment, when he saw his brother coming towards him... The brother grabbed a stone off of another grave and gave it to Adam. His justification was, "That guy has so many people who cared enough to put rocks, and he has so many rocks, he won't miss one."

Well, it's funny in a kinda weird way.

Anyway, I took the picture. It's always a nice day when I visit my dad.

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If I can ever get the stupid f#@$ing program to download off HP's website, I'll be able to upload the photo to my album. Otherwise it'll have to wait until probably next week, before convocation.

Complaint #571601 - DSL and Bittorrent

So now that I started watching Naruto, I am compelled to use the Bittorrent client to download more episodes. But this ultra high speed DSL from Bell Sympatico likes to download at the blazing high speeds of 1 kb/s and upload at the completely fair and "tit-for-tat" speeds of 10 kb/s. Just to give you an idea of what this means, the maximum download speed by this basic DSL provider is 10 Mb/s. Big pu sent me over to cnet.com's test for bandwidth speed, and it clocked an average 100 kb/s.

So what the crap is wrong with this stupid connection?