Rant

Like most students here at Mount Royal, along with school I also have a part time job. I work at a Boston Pizza near my house as a host. I deal with a lot of people on every shift and most of the time, there are little to no problems with customers. On Thursdays, everything changes.

As anyone who has worked in a restaurant job before knows, any time there is any sort of special event going on, you get a flood of people.  At my job, this is Thursday nights, which are also known as kid’s night. This means that to bring more kids into the restaurant, we advertise a magician who is there from 5 until 8 pm.

Chaos ensues during that time 3-hour period of time.

Every Thursday night that I work, I feel like I never stop; by the end of my shift, my feet are aching, my back is sore and I’m just exhausted. There are endless amounts of families walking through the door and more than a normal amount of phone calls. This is presumably because no one in their right mind (who doesn’t have a child who enjoys magic tricks and balloon animals) would want to endure the level of noise and mess in the restaurant. I know I sure don’t want to.

Children could possibly be the messiest beings to walk the earth. Table after table after table I find crumbs, bits of crayons, paper left strewn everywhere, napkins and disgusting leftover food on the ground, left behind for me to pick up. It doesn’t help that the servers are so busy with their tables and customers; they don’t have time to clean up the gigantic mess left behind. So of course I am the one who is left to deal with it.

Without cleaning these tables, the people arriving would have nowhere to go and would have to wait, resulting in some not-so-happy families.  Even some people when I ask them to wait so I can go clean a table for them give me some sort of unhappy glance as they sigh and take a seat in the small waiting area. All I want to say to these people is, “would you like to sit a dirty table? I don’t think so” or “sorry that we’re incredibly busy right now, which you can clearly see, and there’s only two of us working tonight and we obviously can’t be everywhere doing everything at once”. Those thoughts always flow through my head when I deal with annoyed customers, but I understandably keep my mouth shut, smile sweetly and do what I have to do.

Another thing about work that kills me, especially on Thursdays is when people call and complain about a take out or delivery order being wrong and then want nothing done about it. I’ve had several people call and yell at me, even though I wasn’t the one who messed anything up and when I suggest they come back in so we can make it right for them, simply refuse and hang up the phone angrily. Sorry that we’re not perfect and sometimes, people make mistakes! It happens.

After working with people in this sort of setting, it makes me a lot more conscious of how I act towards the waiter or waitress at a restaurant. I think everyone should have to have at least one experience of dealing with these crazy people so that I don’t have to deal with them anymore.

A Pleasant Stroll ...

It was a fine Sunday afternoon that I chose to stroll through the mall and browse through the many fabulous stores. I brought along a companion, who, to my delight was happy to wander through the stores, make jokes and keep me company. After killing a few hours through our slow paced, window shopping (much to my wallets delight, I made no purchases), we decided it was time to leave. Now, this is where things began to get weird.

As we were walking along, almost to our destination of the car parked in the crowded parkade, we passed a small shop at the end mall that looked as though it was only frequented by those of the geeky or nerdy variety. Maybe I'm wrong, but in the many times I've gone on adventures through this particular part of the shopping centre, there have been a very select few people in this store who fit the stereotypical definition of nerd. The mean side of my companion and myself came out at this point, making jokes and remarks about the few people we saw in the store, labouring over whatever sort of project they may have been tackling at that point in time.

Once we had laughed at what we thought to be hilarious jokes and made our way through the double doors into the parkade, we rounded the corner and were shocked by what we saw. Now, we weren't nearly as shocked as the person we now faced was. We had come face to face with what appeared to be a young man dressed in full viking gear; helmet complete with horns along with fuzzy, what looked to be leg warmers. This was something I don't think that anyone would expect to see on a busy Sunday afternoon at a shopping mall. This "viking" was shocked to see anyone come around the corner and presumably believed he could just sneak unnoticed to his destination, whatever it may have been. He looked at the two of us with a complete "deer in the headlights", as my companion later described it, look and then scurried on past to whatever viking event he was supposed to be attending.

The shock of this unexpected sight caused neither of us to say a word to each other until we arrived at the car. Both of us mirrored each others looks of utter disbelief at what had just happened. Once we were in the safety and quiet of the car, the laughter and many exclamations of "what was that?" and "what did we just witness?" began.

Now, if anyone could explain to me where this supposed viking was going or what he was participating in that required such a ridiculous outfit, it would really solve the mystery of what at first seemed to be like any other Sunday afternoon.

First Post

Hello world,
This blog has been created with the intention for use in my GNED 1401 class at Mount Royal and is meant to be viewed by my professor and peers.
More to come!