I’ve been back in the UK a week already,
and it’s starting to feel like I was never away.
The leaf-less trees, the cold weather
and the relatively rubbish-free streets still feel a little odd, but sleep
patterns are pretty much back to normal (apart from not being able to stay
awake past 9pm.)
I started job hunting this week, and had
an idea that I would maybe get a bar job for a few days a week, just to get a
bit of money back in the bank until I’ve decided what I’m actually going to do
with my life.
There’s a new pub / café type place that’s
opened in the Town Up The Hill advertising for staff, so I popped in there on
Monday.
I was greeted by a smiley girl, who said
I needed to speak to the manager.
The manager was sitting behind the bar,
tip-tapping away at a lap top, his back to me.
For ten minutes I stood there and looked
at the back of his shiny head and the little sausage-like rolls of fat on the
back of his neck, while he continued to pretend to be very BUSY and IMPORTANT (I nearly typed 'impotent' there) and ignored me. He didn't even turn around for a second to say, 'I'll be with you in a sec,'.
I was thinking about leaving when the bar girl went to remind him that I
was there.
He came out of behind the bar, and looked
around his kingdom, for where was this potential minion, who had come to speak
to him, shuffling her feet and saying, ‘yessum sir, I sure do want a job in
your fancy café bar, with its faux driftwood tables painted with bright
colours,’?
‘Hello!’ I said, because his gaze was floating everywhere except where I was (I have no idea if this was deliberate or not.) ‘I see that you are
advertising for bar staff,’ I added, in case he thought I was there for a muffin and a cup of terrible coffee.
‘Yeah,’ he said ‘Pulling pints, wiping
tables, serving food. Your basic pub job really,’ he gave me the hours, which
unsurprising involved evenings and weekends, but he felt the need to add was because:
‘this is a pub,’ (really? I thought it was a crèche. I mean, you DO look like a
large baby….)
He then said, ‘so, send us your CV. If we
like you, you’ll come to an interview. If we like you in that one, you’ll come
to a second. If you get through that, you’ll do a trial shift and we’ll decide
if you’re suitable from there,’
FUCKIN. HELL.
The last time I worked in a pub (granted,
it was about 15 years ago, but still) I did one shift, and after that, the land
lord said, ‘Well, seems like you can count money and pour drinks, these are the
hours if you want them,’
Just what was I potentially applying for
here? NASA? MI5? Since when did applying for basic jobs become this hard?
There’s another pub in the same town.
Here works The Most Miserable Man In a Pub. He ignores you. He rolls his eyes
when you finally get his attention. He slams your drink down on the bar, slopping
it all over the place. He throws your change at you. He’s been working there
about 5 years, so HIS manager’s expectations of staff must be super low (unless
he is the manager of course, which
explains a lot.)
By comparison, there’s a country pub a
few miles away. (Well, it’s technically not actually there at the moment, there
was a fire involving hot tea towels, or something, and it burnt down.)
OK, so it IS a sort of pretentious place,
where 90% of the clientele are wearing Boden, Hunter wellies and corduroy. And they don’t sell crisps, but they do serve
chili peanuts in a little bowl. BUT the service in that place couldn’t be more
different (apart from the one Sunday afternoon when it seemed like a load of
top-knotted teenage girls in jodhpurs
and over-sized Aran jumpers had been left
in charge, and they just spent the whole
time gazing at somewhere just beyond your left shoulder.)
You ask what dry white wines they do, and
they’ll pour you a little taster selection and tell you about each one. They
acknowledge you when you walk in. They don’t act like it’s a chore to serve
you, even when they are really busy, which is every time I’ve been in there.
I have a feeling if I applied for that
job (which I won’t now, mostly because I’m about to make some sweeping
statements about what I think the management style is probably like), I would
spend a lot of time muttering, ‘dick,’
under my breath.
I think you can tell a lot about a person
from observing the way that they treat the people that work for them.
To sit there and ignore someone for 10 minutes, I suspect that this
man probably doesn’t value his staff. And if he doesn’t value them, he probably doesn’t
value his customers very much, either. And I don’t want to work for someone
like that. Add me to the list of fussy, workshy Brits that claim they’ll do any
job, but won’t really, because, ‘reasons.’
Though it would be fun to quit his tyrannical
employ in this manner:
