We are slowly coming to the end of the university job listings – I did occasional work for the University Community Centre, like handing out student directories (stalker that I am - ask me about that sometime!) and other miscellaneous things, but my the remaining job, research assistant was one of the easiest I ever had. I worked for one of my professors (the one and only Barsky) and he asked me to research information on Trotsky, anarcho-syndicalism and the like (what the devil?! Every time I was in the library, I had older men coming up to me who had noticed Trotsky’s face on the computer screen and asking what I was studying – weird. I had all summer to do this, which of course I did not, so my period of employment was extended into the school year (lucky me!!! I mean that – no sarcasm here). I was just happy to knock on his office door with a disk to hand over to him – upon reflection, I did a crap job of researching for him – I think now of how I could have (and should have) done so much more – ah youth. Anyhoo. Backpedalling a bit here, one summer while I was at uni, I lived in Spain, and I was working as a waitress in a cocktail bar – no, that’s a song, I worked as a waitress in an English restaurant run by a family. That’s the life, let me tell you. I worked as many hours as I could, which didn’t amount to very much, but it was enough to keep me going. It was a large restaurant/house, with a back garden so there were tables inside and out. The clientele were mainly English tourists who wanted their roast supper on a Sunday afternoon. It was easy work although it was very busy at times, and the employers and staff were lovely people – all very friendly and welcoming. No real crazy anecdote from this job, other than one day as I was setting the tables with the cutlery and glassware, a glass exploded. Not just cracked but flew apart, shards everywhere. It was very strange indeed.

Now I am in Toronto. I have finished uni and am looking for work in the big smoke. I decided to get a bar job while I looked for something full time. I was hired at Fiddlers Green, at Church and Wellesly, or Yonge and Wellesley (cant quite remember). What a long two weeks that was! It was run by a husband/wife/son team – English husband, Spanish wife and Canadian son. The old man was ok, even if he smoked cigars constantly, but the wife and son were another story altogether. She would stand, bedecked in jewelry, make-up and perfume, right at the service end of the bar (so for those of you who don’t know what the service end is, it means she is smack in the middle of being in the way) She would just stand there, smoking her cigarettes, sipping a drink she would ask you to make her and comment on everything: that glass over there is dirty, go clean it, that ashtray is too full, go empty it, those tables are too close together, go move them, those people over there are nearly finished, go offer them another drink – ARGH!! I can understand this if you are training a person who has had no bar or serving experience, but since they hired me for my experience, it was a little hard to swallow. Then there was the son. Heavens to mergatroid, he was an ass. He was of the belief that if you shouted at employees, at deliverymen, at anybody within shouting distance, that it was encouraging and made things run smoothly – well I was there for 2 weeks and in that time, we went through 3 cooks. And to top it all off, the kitchen was located 3 flights of stairs higher than the bar/lounge, so whenever someone ordered food, I would have to run up the stairs to drop off the order, run back down and set the table etc, run up when it was ready and bring the food back down – and if there were more plates than I could carry or someone wanted extra tartar sauce after I asked if they wanted any before I went up for the food, I would have to haul myself up and down those stairs again AND we weren’t allowed to wear running shoes – we had to look pretty in our black skirt and dress shoes. For the love of Christ!! When I quit on the Friday, the son was completely taken aback. He said he was just about to tell me what a good job he thought I was doing and was very happy to have me. Ever the diplomat, I told them I had a full time job, as they couldn’t give me guaranteed hours. Byeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

So if I’m talking university time here, I have to include the best job I’ve ever had in terms of fun in the workplace: The Spoke. I started off in the kitchen, in the new building, which although was the shittiest position there in some ways, was also the greatest source of hilarity for me and many of my colleagues. I met some really fantastic people, some of whom I am still close with. While we emptied the frying vats and cleaned them, or diced uncountable amounts of onions and tomatoes we laughed and we laughed and we laughed. I would like to make note here of the perhaps little known (or perhaps not) fact that I was the first person to christen the new Spoke by puking in it – it was my first day of training and I had been out drinking the night before (the Nac, pitchers of beer, no glasses – first class all the way Sio) so my walk from the front gates up to the UCC was slowed by my “I don’t feel well” pace and the need to vomit the sip of ginger ale and 2 gravol I had just taken somewhere behind some trees. Nice. Upon arriving at the Spoke I remained at the back of the group as we toured the kitchen for the first time, as we were shown where the fridges were and what our menu items were made of. I slouched against the wall at one point and slowly slid down it til I was crouching on the floor. It was at this point that I asked where the toilets were and once told, bolted in that direction. The washrooms were unfinished so there were no doors on the stalls and no toilet seats on the bowls – none of this mattered to me. Sweet relief was at hand. But enough about me and my nasty hangovers. I never again was sick at the Spoke (only in the comfort of my home, and sometimes, other peoples homes, and even other bars). I could fill volumes with tales of drunken and lewd behaviour (see hitting on boss during staff parties and having no recollection of it until told by said boss later) but that’s not what these vignettes are all about. They are about work. Back to it – once I finished my tour of duty in the kitchen, I became a server where the joys of customer service were close enough to spit on. Serving wasn’t as much of a laugh as working in the kitchen was (there was no Pia or Fernando next to me all the time) but it was still fun – lots of running around which is easier on the feet than standing in one spot is. Then I bartended. While I enjoyed my work there immensely I found there to be an unbreachable male/female divide (fewer female bar staff, more idiot males stumping around behind the bar thinking they were better than everyone else) but whatev, it was all for the sake of employment, right? Summer work there was grand – a couple of hours in the (mostly) sun, making up yummy refreshing drinks and enjoying a burger afterwards – those were some good times – tho I did hate the whole “setting up the patio” palaver of putting out plastic tables and chairs then packing them away at the end of the shift. My years working at the Spoke also included a stint at The Business Depot (same as The Office Place) where I was a cashier – at this point in my working life I have developed a healthy hatred for all people as “customers”. Plus I also had to wear a uniform, and while at the Spoke we had leeway on what we could wear with our bar shirts, at this place the red shirt, black trousers, black socks, black shoes was militantly enforced which rubbed me the wrong way right from the start. I also became an employee of the on-campus movie theatre some time during all this. I made popcorn (ate popcorn)and sold tickets for shows – while this does not seem like arduous work, for some reason my brain resisted this job causing me to miss shifts or be late for them to a point where I felt I should resign. The guy who had hired me was really nice, came into the Spoke all the time and I felt really bad for being such a crap employee to him so I left the job before he could fire me! And speaking of being fired…my summer job as cook at a golf course came to a premature end. The golf course was located in Byron, which lies just outside of London, ON. As golfers get up at insanely early hours to hit a small ball across large fields, I had to be there at 5 am to open the kitchen, and since the public transit doesn’t get started til about 6 am, I had to make my own way there, on bike. Anyone who knows me knows that I am bad enough about getting up and staying up in the morning, nevermind having to cycle for 40 minutes before the sun rises will appreciate that it took an enormous effort to get to this job on a daily basis. I worked with a bunch of monkeys who didn’t take well to the “new girl” and the old men who came to this club thought it was still ok to pat a girl on the bum as she walked by. So it went like this: I would take every shift going whenever someone would call up last minute and ask me to cover for them. Then one week, I asked for a day off to go home to Brampton to see my sister convocate. I was not granted my day off by the bitch manager who told me to see if someone would take my shift for me, which of course, no one would. I obviously was not going to miss my sisters graduation for a minimum wage job that I hated, so I went home and called work the night before my shift saying I wouldn’t be able to make it. I was told not to come back, which was fine by me.

Enough of this work talk – I am still looking. Feck shit piss etc.