2004-07-04

How the mighty have fallen! In my desperation for cash money to tide me over until I start office work in a few weeks, I�ve accepted a job at a downtown bar (this one). Four years of being Miss Fancy Pants with the Canadian government, and now I find myself shilling lager for greasy club monkeys in track suits. Oh well � you do what you have to, right? How bad can it be? thought I. I hadn�t pulled a pint in years, but I figured it must be like riding a bike.

And so it was, except it was less like riding a bicycle, per se, and more like riding the ship of the fucking damned. �How bad can it be?� Here�s how fucking bad. My first shift was last night, on a Saturday, and on a full moon, if I�m not mistaken. I was given a perfunctory two-minute rundown of the cash system and a quick tour of the bar, and off I went. And in poured the crowds. I found myself frantically juggling eight drink orders at a time, standing over the till in desperation going �Where the fuck is Smirnoff Ice on this goddamn thing?�, receiving no help at all from my coworkers, who were all nearly as new as I was, and who were shorthanded to the tune of five employees. There was a lineup at the bar ten people deep for five hours straight. I had to try to understand orders for drinks I�d never heard of, screamed in my ear by slurring drunken mongoloids, over deafening music, in a thick Lancashire accent. It was like that dream of showing up for work in your underwear, except with a soundtrack of execrable house music pumped in at three billion decibels. One guy shouted something that sounded like �marga shin-deh� at me five times before finally getting frustrated and ordering something else. (Wherever you are, sir, I hope you have been successful in your quest for marga shin-deh.) And at the end of it all, as a fitting cap to the evening, whilst clearing off tables, I had to pick up a glass filled with vomit. Holy. Fucking. Jesus.

That said, I did surprisingly well, and my coworkers are all very nice, and I got a free drink after my shift; and that always makes everything seem better, doesn�t it? I do wish I was working in a cool student pub and not a horrible dance bar where the DJ hollers inspired quips like, �SATURDAY NIGHT! ARE YOU READY TO GET CRAZY?� over an extended dance mix of �Livin� La Vida Loca�, but beggars can�t be choosers, I suppose. This might even be fun for a few weeks, as long as I resign myself to having my ass grabbed now and then. Oh, argh.