Career Opportunities (Part 6)

One afternoon we are called over to Terminal One where a hundred or so would-be passengers who are supposed to be on a plane to LA, are stuck around a dining table in a huge sparse but thickly carpeted room, a floor to ceiling window facing the runway so they can watch other passengers take off towards their destination. Their flight has been delayed for 6 hours and so they’re being treated to a three course meal to try and dispel their ill feelings towards Gatwick Airport and its staff. Six of us have been sent from the Village Inn to pretend to be silver service waiters for the afternoon.

The men who run the kitchen are a camp bunch who swear a lot. We are given silver trays full of food and pushed out the kitchen doors towards the unhappy looking passengers. The trouble is, whereas everyone else has been given a professional silver tray, I’ve been given a tray made of tin foil, like the trays you get when you buy a quiche from the supermarket, only larger. So when I go out with a tray full of peas it flops about. There’s no way you can carry it in the professional one hand aloft manner without it sagging. A trail of peas mark my path from the kitchen to the dining table.

“Would you like peas?” I ask, as they tip off of the tray and run around the whiter than white table cloth.

“No,” shouts one woman, “I want a knife, why haven’t I got a knife?” She asks malevolently, as if I’ve somehow stolen it.

“I’ll get one when I go back to the kitchen.”

“My flight is 6 hours late and now you can’t even provide me with a knife.”

Oh I get it, the delayed flight is my fault too.

I dish out the remains of the peas and hurry back to the kitchen.

In the kitchen there aren’t any knives. There’s no time for discussing knives, there’s only time to fill my floppy tray with more peas and rush me through the kitchen doors again. I follow the previous trail of peas towards the table of angry passengers, holding on to the tray with both hands while the other staff, confident with their more sturdy trays, perfect the silver service pose.

“Do you want peas sir?” I ask as they drop from my toy platter.

“Do I have a choice?” he asks, his plate already full of them.

“Where’s my knife?”

If I don’t look at her maybe someone else will deal with this. I move to another part of the table, giving out extremely generous portions of peas.

“You with the blond hair, where’s my knife?”

I head back to the kitchen but there’s no refuge there.

“What are you using this for?” a white hatted chef asks angrily about my tray. “Call yourself a silver service waiter?”

“When did I call myself that?” is all I can blurt out as I realise the floppy tray is also being added to the list of things that are my fault.

They want me working in the kitchen, which saves me from Mrs No-knife. However they don’t tell me what to do so I begin by standing in a corner trying to look invisible but when this is interpreted as standing in the way I make out my shift has finished and go back to the Village Inn.

It’s quiet over here, the bar is closed, staff ‘look busy’ with serene tasks; polishing glasses, collecting trays and stray glasses. The washer-upper is out the back, whistling away, happy in the knowledge he doesn’t have to deal with customers or pests that frequent this airport like holiday makers and employers. I’m beginning to see why he likes his job.

I’m not liking mine though. As the days continue they keep me away from the bar. Infact they seem to be running out of jobs to keep me away from. I decide to make it easier for them. A few days later I hand in my notice. Nobody objects.

Career Opportunities (Part 5)

My friend James thinks we should apply for bar jobs at Gatwick Airport. He’s so keen to work there he thinks I should phone up to enquire while he shouts abuse at me to put me off. It’s summer 1988, Southern England, jobs are easy to come by and despite background abuse and laughing while I’m asking about the job, we’re asked to come for an interview. To get the job you have to show up for the interview and you’re in.

James is working in the departure lounge and I’m in the south terminal, at the Village Inn bar. At the supplies store they’re handing out the uniforms. It doesn’t get off to a good start.

“Got a young man here, needs a uniform,” shouts the woman at the counter to the woman hidden in the store room.

“Is he tall dark and handsome?”

“No, he’s the opposite.”

Well I’m not short, I am blond and if I’m the opposite of handsome I must be hideous. Thanks for rattling my already shaky confidence 50 year old supply woman.

The first day I’m working the bar. The pubs are open 11 – 3 and we get off to a quiet start; polishing glasses, wiping trays clean, serving the odd coffee, but come mid-day the place is packed, a sea of faces and fists clenching tenners eager to be served alcohol. Good under pressure? Oh dear. I get the orders wrong, I can’t find the exotic spirits they’re ordering, I spill drink on the bar, I input the wrong things in the till.

Not to worry, I need guidance, motivational talks, someone who leads by example, a kindly…

“This’ll be a laugh, seeing how many hundreds of pounds your till roll is out by,” snorts the bar manager.

He struts to the till, nonchalantly opens it and calculates my till roll.

“I don’t bloody believe it.”

My first day’s till roll is out by 1 pence.

The following day they’re not so keen for me to be behind the bar. I spend a lot of time taking glasses out to the washer-upper. He works fast loading up the huge industrial dishwashers, whistling and singing in the steam filled kitchen. He actually seems to enjoy his work.

They put me on the tills for the busy last hour. I repeat yesterday’s mistakes but I work the till right. The second bell is rung for last orders. A man sitting down leaps up from his chair and rushes to the bar.

“4 pints”.

“I’m sorry, last orders has been called.”

“I’ve been waiting half an hour.”

“You were sitting over there a minute ago.”

“Alright, 2 pints.”

“Sorry, we’re closed.”

“How dare you, I want to speak to the manager.”

“I’d prefer you spoke to him too.”

My shift is 8 till 4. There’s a train that gets me to the airport twenty minutes early, or one that gets in five minutes late. I opt for the latter. The first weekend is not part of my shift but the second weekend is. Don’t they understand I only live for the weekend? At the weekend I need to be on the other side of the bar. I decide to ring in sick, phoning the only number available which goes to some random answer machine in an empty office, leaving a message for someone to ignore on Monday. I also get Monday and Tuesday off as part of my shift to reward me for the weekend I’ve failed to work.

“Where were you yesterday?” asks the bar manager.

“I was off, it wasn’t my shift.”

“You were supposed to be in at the weekend.”

“I was ill. Did you not get my message?”

Myself and an impish looking lad are sent to see the boss in his office for a bollocking. We have to stand waiting while he talks to Mrs Bell, someone even further up the chain of command if her suit is anything to go by. Mrs Bell eventually leaves.

“That was Mrs Bell, we were a bit behind.” The boss says.

“She has a very nice behind,” the impish lad says, clearly having failed to pick up on any of society’s ways during his lifetime.

“I beg your pardon?”

I move slightly away from my fellow skiver, just in case the boss thinks we are in some way connected.

“I said she was a very nice woman,” the lad tries to correct himself, but fails due to the mischievous look on his face.

“How dare you speak about your employer like that. Mrs Bell eats young whippersnappers like you for breakfast. Do you understand”

“I do,”. Unfortunately his “I do” does not contain the amount of sincerity needed to get him off the hook and the boss lays into him a while longer. Long enough for him to forget why I’ve been called into the room and my two days bunk is left unpunished.

As he hands out the wages for the week, the bar manager is all set to have his revenge for my unallocated time off.

“I can’t wait to see how little you’ve made this week,” he scorns as he passes me my wage packet in its brown envelope. His face changes as he looks at my paycheck. “I don’t bloody believe it.”

Due to my non-work in the early part of the summer my tax has been readjusted and I’ve just been awarded an £80 tax rebate, putting my wages above everybody elses for the week. Serendipity rules this summer.

Like a float in the Macy Street Parade

It's Bank Holiday Monday. Bank holidays are brilliant, especially when you don't even leave the house all day. I've had a good day pottering about, generally making things up as I go along and refusing to stress about a thing. And still it's been more productive than a day at work. If I never went to work again it wouldn't bother me one jot. Well, as long as they kept paying me. I see no reason why that should stop. Infact they should give me a pay rise as I'm not using any of their office space anymore. I'll write to the CEO or whatever the head person's called these days and see if he'll agree to these reasonable requests.

It was Reading weekend. Did any of you go? I didn't, I watched Pulp on TV and for a minute I wanted to be there, I wanted to be in the crowd, lost in the music and the performance and the night air, drunk on summer cider. It's a great feeling that, the real world does feel very far away and boy is that a good feeling. You feel that you're having this great epiphany and the world will have changed by the time you return. But then the real world comes and smothers you, you're back at work and you have to be all sensible. You certainly aren't encouraged to rant on like this. But maybe to get these thoughts you have to be 19, but I'm not, I'm 41 so I watched it on TV.

We saw Pulp in Hyde Park a few months back. Should we feel guilty about such nostalgia? No way, it was fantastic, and it was in a weekend that we managed three great nostalgia gigs, Pulp, Dinosaur Jr performing 'Bug',and the Flaming Lips performing 'The Soft Bulletin'. The Flaming Lips, now there's a performance.

I may leave the house soon in my slippers and see if the car will start. Bu then again,Tracy connected her PC to the TV so we can watch i-player and on-demand, so maybe I'll do that instead. It's Bank Holiday, we can do what we like.

Waving at Trains

Hello, long time no speak. How are you? We went to Scotland recently, I was going to blog about it on my week off but it didn't happen like so many other plans I had for my week off, like riding bikes for miles, running through fields in slow motion and waving at trains. Unfortunately real life interfered to taint things a little, phone calls had to be made to customer service teams. Is there a more inept, uncaring bunch of excuse ridden morons than these people? People so callous they probably cheer for Apollo Creed to win during not only Rocky but Rocky 2 as well. I had to call and shout at them on a Friday as well so they were probably dressed up and admiring each others 70's fancy dress.

Two weeks on and Scotland is a haze of windy roads taking us through mountains, their peaks hidden by thick cloud, pine forests and beautiful lochs. Memories of a proud father of the bride (we took in a Scottish wedding), a sunny boat trip to Mull looking out at calm waters to moss covered castles, a gigantic plate filled with fish and chips in Oban and sighting Eugene from the Vaselines at Hillhead station (see picture above).

We returned to London to hear reports about it being burnt to the ground. There was some pretty scary stuff going on but some of the coverage was ridiculous. My favourite report was from Russian TV where they were claiming that London zoo had been attacked, the Lions and Tigers were released and were now roaming the streets of London. There were no such sightings when I went to central London to visit my friend Paul who was in London on a course. Paul hates the tube and does anything to avoid it. This time he was heading to the Southbank for his tea and returning to his hotel by boat. Brilliant.

It's now Sunday and I smell cooking apples on the hob. It's time for tea.