Women, equality and Kit Kats.
Tuesday, 10 April 2007
Well, only four did show up tonight (possibly thankfully, thrillseekers), but it was so bloody quiet I'm pretty sure we could have coped with less. Did that mean we closed up nice and early? Did it fuck.
Two of our doorstaff have gone AWOL; one is Bilbo, who hasn't returned since his episode on Saturday. The other is our second female doorstaffer which is far more of a problem. Before we had it set so there was at least one lady on the doors each night of the week. Now, only five nights are going to be covered, and as it's far more important to have a woman in the main complex than the lower bar this means the rest of us will have to rotate the solo shift on the latter, which quite frankly sucks all kinds of tedious arse.
The lady we have left - The Lodge - is actually the most qualified of all of us. This also means she takes the most piss. Before the recent events she did the lower bar every day she was in; this was fine with the rest of us because, as said, the lower bar is more than a bit dull. She loved it, however, as she's friendly with the manageress and basically spends most of her time sitting around, sipping coffees and having a good-old chinwag. To be honest, that's fine. As said, we were happy for her to have this seemingly cushty shift, as the rest of us find it utterly boring. Worse, given that we're all greedy bastards who like to squeeze in several extra meals a day, being stuck down there means we can't exercise our fifty per cent off at Burger King at 10pm.
Tonight, however, because the other lady appears to have done a runner, The Todge had to come up to the main complex. To be honest, she's a nice enough person but because she's the most experienced of all of us, and the only woman, she knows damn well the chances of her getting fired are slim-to-none. What this means is that she takes every opportunity to do the things mentioned above - most of which revolve around sitting down - and tonight was no exception. Even Captain Jack called attention to it - she disappeared for a while until he found her sipping on a Coke in the main restaurant and chatting to a few punters. She must have been there for half an hour. Now, we're all entitled to a break - allegedly - but did she announce it? Did she fuck.
Ah, the break. I haven't mentioned this. Legally, we have to have a half-hour break per each eight-hour shift. We're told we have to take it. In fact, we're automatically docked half-an-hour's pay each shift to ensure we do take it. This is all well and good. The hard and fast reality is that my average daily break since I've been here has been somewhere between seven and ten minutes and the most I've ever had is about fifteen. Does this matter? Does it fuck. A few of us have pointed this out and the answer is always, "Oh, you must take your break." So we've wised up. If we finished at 2am, well shit... we actually finished at 2.30 am. Have some of that, mother-heifers. The best part about all that is that we're positively encouraged to act this way by the middle-management.
You want to hear something funny? Our missing female doorstaffer did two of the 9am-6pm day-shifts per week too, on Wednesday and Thursday, and now they're basically unattended. They need to be covered, however, and Captain Jack actually had the nerve to ask if any of us lads would fancy doing those too. On top of our current schedule. "It sounds bad," he said, "But if you think about it, over two days that's 32 hours. A lot of money." Yeah, 9am-2am on back-to-back days, not forgetting for all of us we'd also be working 6pm-2am on the Tuesday beforehand, too. Forty hours over 2.5 days. Fuck off, in other words.
I shouldn't complain though; there are some perks. Why, just tonight the complex was over-delivered eight boxes of bags of Mini Kit Kats and we were told to take as much as we wanted. I grabbed four bags, and will get some more later in the week. What? Free is free.
Earlier tonight I had the pleasure of working the DJ booth. What this means is ensuring that those nasty punters don't try and smoke and drink on the dance floor or - heavens, no - dare to step within about ten yards of any of the female ENTS team doing the old wheels of steel.
What this means for me is being an eternal filter for fuck-awful song requests ("Have you got that one by that bloke? Oh, you know...") and having at least one late-forties, enormously-breasted female divorcee coming over to you each and every hour and asking you to smile/dance/listen to her talk bollocks. That's not really fair, as most of them are sweet enough people, but fucking hell they don't half talk some shit. And it's boring shit, too. If this job wakes you up to anything it's how unbelievably uninteresting a drunk person can be. This, however, and of course, is inversely proportional to how unbelievably fascinating they feel they are. And we all do it. I'm a firm believer that alcohol brings out the 'real' person, but if that's actually true then human beings really are the most insufferable pseuds.
posted by Sheamus @ 3:15 am
