Sometimes people baffle me

I would like to tell you the story of my Sunday at work.

I work at a museum. We do grounds rentals for weddings and events, as well as tours and programming and my tea service. I serve Victorian Afternoon Tea on the lawn of the Estate and Sundays are always the busiest day.

Last Sunday we had a rental for a wedding and I had a reservation for 30 people, a local community group who wanted to do their AGM there. Usually we charge a rental fee for that kind of meeting, but they got away with just paying a set (heavily discounted) price for the tea service itself.

Anyway. They start to arrive and I put things together. They’re supposed to have a tour first, so I was standing at the front desk talking to my colleagues, waiting for the group to start their tour before I serve them tea. The leader of the group comes up to me.

“We would like to have tea now,” she says.
“Oh, I thought you were having a tour first,” I reply.
“No. We’re on a very tight deadline, we’d like to eat as soon as possible.” She’s using that condescending tone, drawing out her words as if I won’t understand her.
“Okay, but just so you know it does take a while to serve 30 people,” I say, weary of her tone.
“I know that. That’s why I would like you to start now,” and she turns and leaves. I blink, and then go back to my kitchen to prepare. Slowly. I sure as hell don’t move fast for people who insist on condescending to me.

The entire time the group was there, almost three hours, they were very rude to both me and D, my volunteer. When they needed something it was always, “Milk.” “More napkins!” Never please or thank you.

I worked in retail for several years, and I thought I knew the worst of people. But I didn’t know anything until I started working in food service. When I go out there as a waitress, people will talk down to me. If they happen to find out either that I’m actually the Tea Coordinator (as in, I do all of the baking, planning, preparing of the food I don’t just serve it) or that I’m a student, just finished my Bachelor and going on to my Master’s, their tone automatically changes. It’s like if I’m “just a waitress” I’m not worth their respect. I’m sorry, but “just a waitress” or not, I’m still a human being and you don’t treat people like that.

Anyway. So the kicker came about halfway into their reservation. They were sitting under the tent with the other two reservations, and I was talking to one of the other tables about something. One of the women raises her hand and motions at me. I go over.

“I need more milk,” she says.
“Okay,” I take her milk cup to refill.
“I can hardly hear the speaker over the other people talking,” she says. Speaking, of course, while the speaker is still talking.
“Well, everyone else here has a reservation too,” I reply, as politely as possible.
“When are they going to leave?” she demands.
“Whenever they want to. Just like you.” I say.
“Well I can’t hear anything.”
“I’m very sorry for that.”

Of course, this lovely day wouldn’t be complete without some interference from the rental.

Let me ask you, pets, do you ever walk into the kitchen of a restaurant, for any reason, other than that you’re working there?

We have a commercial kitchen, certified and all that jazz, that I use for the tea. People have a really bad habit of just strolling in and doing what they want, health codes be damned. But this one really takes the cake.

I was out serving a table, but apparently a man from the wedding came back with two jugs and asked D if he could fill them up. She said yes, and he walked over to the big sink to do so. To preface this, if you’re not familiar with kitchens, most commercial kitchens have at least two sinks - one for washing your hands and one for dishes, etc. The two aren’t supposed to be mixed. The dishes one is the one you can serve water from, it’s cleaner, etc.

Anyway, this guy fills up his water jugs. He places them on the counter beside him. He then bends over and sticks his head under the faucet, rinsing his entire head and hair in the dishes sink. He stands up and then shakes his head like a dog, water splashing everywhere.

By this point, shocked and appalled, the normally quiet and polite D is livid and yelling at him.

Who does that? Why would you ever wash your head in a kitchen sink anywhere, let alone in a place that serves food to the public? Needless to say, we had to throw out all the nearby food covered with water/sweat droplets. And if D could have, I bet she would have thrown him out, physically, too.

Formulating an appropriate action plan

The responses to my e-mail:

Re: Corporate Retreat

Have you ever worked for the government? If you have, you know that about 95% of the time it’s ridiculously boring.

This summer, my friend Laura Mc is working for the federal government. She rightly calls this experience soul-sucking. While the money is very good, she sits around all day doing very little, dying from boredom and refreshing her email.

Jes has been working for the feds for over a year, and while she arguably has more to do, she often experiences similar boredom.

I, not quite federal material, work for the municipal government. And I keep finding that I have absolutely nothing to do when I’m not serving tea. (Yes, that’s right, serving tea for the municipal government… it’s because the museum is City owned and operated.)

While our bank accounts, very slim by the end of the school year, certainly appreciate the four months of good pay, the four months of mindnumbing boredom can really get to you.

This is all compounded by the fact that the internet on government computers is heavily blocked and they tend to monitor you for “suspicious activities.” The only life line between us and the outside world is a very official looking email address at “gc.ca” or in my case “ottawa.ca.” But the question is, are you going to risk sending personal emails to your friends while you’re supposed to be working?

Discussing this over coffee one night, we came up with an ingenius scheme. The Corporate Retreat.

We’re in the process of planning an Ottawa Valley bar hop for late June, the Epic Adventure of our summer. Let me explain. While Ottawa is the thriving capital of Canada, it’s not quite the metropolis that Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver boast. Until recently (the last 150 years or so) Ottawa was mostly just farm land. The result is that outside of our capital, there’s an area we call the Ottawa Valley, a series of small farming towns that stretch from here to Kingston in one direction, Montreal in the other. Our plan is to use Kaitlyn’s gas card (she’s coming too, her boredom stems from being currently unemployed) to do a country bar hop. On a Friday night in June we plan to hit a series of small Ottawa valley communities. We’re going to go to the one local bar, take a shot, scope out the locals and move on to the next “city.” Destinations in discussion include the lovely Kemptville, Manotick, Carleton Place, Richmond and many more fabulous places.

To make the most of this, we  decided that we will use our wonderful skills in corporate jargon to send each other emails about this, which we have titled the “Corporate Retreat,” essentially making fun of everyone at various levels of government and the hilarious way that emails are written. And masking our “suspicious activities” from our employers. And of course amusing ourselves at work.

And so I’ve decided to blog about the process leading up to this, using our emails. Which are hilarious. Today I’ll start with the email I sent out on Thursday morning. (Tea Party is our code for our plans on Friday night…) Obviously I have removed our actual email address plus anything else that might incriminate us.

Stay tuned for the progression. It promises to be legen… (wait for it… I hope you’re not lactose intolerant because the second part is….) DARY!

Come September

Do you ever want something so badly that you’re sure the world is going to try to take it away from you?

I am not a “lucky” person. This is not to say that I’m not incredibly fortunate to have a wonderful family, great friends and all of the opportunities that go along with a middle class upbringing and my health.

But if we’re talking a roll of the dice, win the lottery, pull your name out of a hat kind of lucky - I’m not it. I envy people who have those charmed lives. We all know them, just when everything seems to be taking a turn for the worse, something comes along and saves them. They seem to somehow be given chances the rest of us don’t have.

I learned a long time ago that I have to fight for everything I want in life. I learned a long time ago not to place my happiness in other people hands.

Which is why, last month, when I was making a pro/con list for grad schools and looking up cars to buy for another summer working at Pinhey’s, I couldn’t imagine a time where things fit together so perfectly before. I couldn’t remember being that thrilled about my future.

And this is where the post gets depressing…

I try to be an optimistic person. After years of emotional pessimism in high school, I surrendered to the fact that at heart I’m a daydream believer. So over the last four years I’ve embraced that side of myself as much as possible.

But I knew, somewhere in the back of my mind, that something was going to go wrong.

First, I had a meeting with my boss and found out that I wasn’t going to be able to go back to Pinhey’s this summer. I’m conflicted about this, because the job I did get is still with the museums, but it’s the Tea Coordinator job at Billings. And to truly understand why it upsets me, you have to understand how much I love Pinhey’s. From the first day of my job last summer, I felt like a part of me belonged there. I loved every second of my job last summer. I couldn’t imagine a better way to spend a summer, on the water in a house that was built in the early 19th century. In costume. So it’s not that I’m unhappy with the job at Billings, so much as I know I’m really going to miss Pinhey’s.

Secondly, I failed. Which I’ve written about already.

And now, the financial implications of moving to England and paying overseas tuition are catching up to me. I think I live in a little bit of a bubble, and don’t fully understand what money means sometimes. I do now. The bank rejected my first application for a student line of credit this week, and now I have to look into other options.

I am a strong person. I have all the ability in the world to do things for myself. But this… I can’t deal with. It’s just too big. When I think about it my heart hurts and it’s hard to breath.

I have gone through four years of arguably the most demanding journalism program in the country. I have hated nearly every minute of it. I have worked myself raw to get where I am and it was all leading up to this. To grad school. I may not have known it all along, but as soon as I made the decision I had that awed feeling of the pieces fitting together. This is what I wanted to do. More than anything. It was my future. I didn’t need to know what came after, I just needed to know that that’s where I was going to be in September.

But now, with all of these obstacles in my way, is it? Am I going to lose this?