Rigor Mortis
Today I worked my first day ever at what most people might consider a "real" job. That isn't to say I've never worked, cause I have. I've taught a few piano lessons, done piano accompaniment as well as played a few paid jazz gigs. But I've never been on payroll, never had any kind of work schedule. And now I do. I'm a barback, or bartender's assistant. The role itself is traditionally little more than running around making sure everything the bartender will need is available, booze, glasses, ice, lemon wedges, that sort of deal. My job consists of just slightly more than that. My body aches, but it's a good ache that will hopefully be gone by Thursday when I go back in for a longer shift.
Today I worked my first four and a half hours from 10pm to 2:30am. It was easy (very easy.) It was basically a training day. Tuesdays are never that busy over there anyways. It was a perfect to train someone new on the job (and what a coincidence, I was new on the job.) I missed quite a few cues for answering the counter and grabbing beers, but I spent most of the time trying to tune myself in to the mania that was surrounding me (I was also floating on a hazy caffeine high after failing to sleep adequately last night.) The difficulty of the job comes entirely from the mass amount of things that you have to micromanage and keep track of. It's just a lot to do over and over again, and god knows I love repetitive work (as a side note: I really do love repetitive work. That wasn't sarcasm. I only just recently located and congregated my 140 gigabytes of mp3s. During this process, I retagged and reorganized them all. It took days, but the work has already paid off since I can find almost any album that I own in a matter of seconds (unless it's the Antonio Carlos Jobim Songbook.))
If you take everything in parantheses out of that paragraph, it tells a very dirty story about a very dirty rabbit.
A problem I can foresee in this line of business is I'm a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to things. Like when I was mopping. I wanted the floor to shine. If we shined a flashlight into the room, everyone should've instantly gone blind from the sheer reflective beauty that was the floor. Before I was done scratching what looked like flattened tomatos and peppers out of the cooler floor, Jamie (who was training me) told me I'd done more than enough. That wasn't the only time I was, er, reprimanded for doing too much work. My boss told me a number of times that I was done with tasks well before I was satisfied with their completion. For instance, when I was restocking the coolers, I wanted all the beer to be in perfect rows and all the columns to be full and even. When I was bringing beer out to the cooler, I wouldn't stock it if it had shaken up en route. I'd go get a replacement with the next batch. I now consider the whole evening a demonstration of my uneven tendancies attempting to slowly unspool my self-confidence. All in all, I'm sure I'm going to enjoy this job. Every day is likely to be an exercise in focus and memory and... well, just plain exercise. Not to mention it's a paid job, and being a barback gets the added benefit of having full steady pay and leaving at the end of the night with tips.
Also, I don't get the urge to smoke anymore, but I really miss it.
Today I worked my first four and a half hours from 10pm to 2:30am. It was easy (very easy.) It was basically a training day. Tuesdays are never that busy over there anyways. It was a perfect to train someone new on the job (and what a coincidence, I was new on the job.) I missed quite a few cues for answering the counter and grabbing beers, but I spent most of the time trying to tune myself in to the mania that was surrounding me (I was also floating on a hazy caffeine high after failing to sleep adequately last night.) The difficulty of the job comes entirely from the mass amount of things that you have to micromanage and keep track of. It's just a lot to do over and over again, and god knows I love repetitive work (as a side note: I really do love repetitive work. That wasn't sarcasm. I only just recently located and congregated my 140 gigabytes of mp3s. During this process, I retagged and reorganized them all. It took days, but the work has already paid off since I can find almost any album that I own in a matter of seconds (unless it's the Antonio Carlos Jobim Songbook.))
If you take everything in parantheses out of that paragraph, it tells a very dirty story about a very dirty rabbit.
A problem I can foresee in this line of business is I'm a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to things. Like when I was mopping. I wanted the floor to shine. If we shined a flashlight into the room, everyone should've instantly gone blind from the sheer reflective beauty that was the floor. Before I was done scratching what looked like flattened tomatos and peppers out of the cooler floor, Jamie (who was training me) told me I'd done more than enough. That wasn't the only time I was, er, reprimanded for doing too much work. My boss told me a number of times that I was done with tasks well before I was satisfied with their completion. For instance, when I was restocking the coolers, I wanted all the beer to be in perfect rows and all the columns to be full and even. When I was bringing beer out to the cooler, I wouldn't stock it if it had shaken up en route. I'd go get a replacement with the next batch. I now consider the whole evening a demonstration of my uneven tendancies attempting to slowly unspool my self-confidence. All in all, I'm sure I'm going to enjoy this job. Every day is likely to be an exercise in focus and memory and... well, just plain exercise. Not to mention it's a paid job, and being a barback gets the added benefit of having full steady pay and leaving at the end of the night with tips.
Also, I don't get the urge to smoke anymore, but I really miss it.