Working Holiday

BL
With the emphasis on Working. Well a fair amount of emphasis on Holiday as well. But a fair amount of working this week. I finally got bumped up to 24hrs a week at the Elvis pizza place which is very nice. Actually now I am working at Two Fat Chefs which is a pizza place across the street from Elvis pizza that has the same owner. While Elvis pizza is more of a sit down restaurant, Two Fat Chefs has the counter right next to the sidewalk so more people step in and order take away which is nice because I enjoy talking to people in person more than on the phone which is the majority of the orders at Elvis.



Switching locations I had to learn a new system at 2 Fats. It is very similar to the Elvis system just without computers so you have to do everything by hand which can be a pain but I am used to it now. I can’t be expected to go too fast when I have to write everything down with pen and paper. But there is still a lot of learning to be done. For instance, the other night a lady came back with some food she had ordered and told us how the gnocchi was completely inedible. I assured her that many people have eaten our gnocchi without incident. We eventually figured out the problem was that she had expected a gnocchi in tomato sauce while we made one in cream sauce. We offered her a tomato based gnocchi but she refused and asked for a pizza instead. I was unsure how to handle the situation and the other waiter working with me said we should call the owner and ask. The lady was a bit impatient though and did not want to wait (understandably) for me to phone the owner. I made the decision to just give her the pizza which the other waiter said I couldn’t do without the owners approval. I was getting a bit tired of the whole ordeal so I just pulled out my wallet and paid for the pizza myself. Everyone was very frustrated but the customer left with a meal they would actually eat. Everyone else working couldn’t understand why I would risk $12 on some customer. I just felt like it was the right thing to do. And in the end it is only $12 that I could lose which isn’t the worst thing in the world. And the owner did reimburse me later though instructed me not to pull any stunts like that in the future.

Which brings me to my next story. Before we opened tonight the owner came in to have a little chat with me and the other waitress. Apparently he got a few calls the night before complaining about late orders and incorrect orders. He went on to tell us how mistakes are unacceptable and how much business he is losing because of our supposed incompetence. He was especially harsh on the waitress because the customers had reported speaking to a woman on the phone. I did my best to explain to him the circumstances and the difficulty we have getting orders out in a timely fashion when we are limited by the number of drivers he has work every night. Sometimes it gets difficult when he only has one driver work past nine doing deliveries for both restaurants. Anyways getting chewed out by a boss isn’t exactly newsworthy and I really wouldn’t mention all this except for the fact that the owner was also doing a show over at Elvis Pizza tonight. Meaning he was all done up and in his Elvis attire. So while he was doing his best to impart the graveness of the situation and how unhumorous our mistakes are, I was killing myself not to laugh as I got reprimanded by Elvis. I expected and still expect a lot of things of this trip, but getting reprimanded by Elvis was not on my list of expectations.

Another surprise I think we have all experienced is the reactions we have gotten to our accents. The other night I was closing down the restaurant and two girls who looked to be 18ish or so walked in. As I explained to them that we were closing and couldn’t make any more pizzas they began to mock my accent repeating back what I had said. Out of nowhere I had two high school girls laughing at how I sounded. I just laughed along and shrugged it off until tonight when one of the two girls came back to order some food. I decided to call her out about making fun of me. She explained she was just kidding around but I still gave her a hard time. She eventually admitted she liked my accent which was nice to hear. Taylor told us everyday when he goes into work he has to pick up his uniform. His uniform is number 13 so everyday he goes in and asks for number 13. Every time the people repeat back to him “thirtEEn” stressing the hard E sound. The managers offices are right by the uniform station so they always hear this interaction and start echoing “thirtEEn, thirtEEn. We know you're here thirtEEn”. I don’t know. I think its funny. I have gotten to the point where I barely notice the Australian accent anymore except for when they say silly things that don’t make sense. One of their favorites phrases is “how you going?” which roughly translates to “how you doing?” which isn’t all that different but still throws me off. I find myself slipping sometimes and starting to use their silly phrases. I’m not very good with accents and don’t really have a good idea of what I sound like. Without that selfawareness I think I am going to pick up Australian mannerisms without realizing it or being able to control it. If I ever talk to anyone from back home on the phone or on skype and I sound silly, please let me know and give me tips on how to sound pure American again. Ideally I would like to be able to do an Australian accent, but I don’t want to develop an Australian American halfsie way of speaking.

Anyways, another fun encounter from tonight began with a youngish couple wandering into 2 fat chefs. They seemed fairly drunk and the lady came right up to me and leaned over the counter into my face and asked for a Hawaiian pizza. She proceeded to take out her perfume and offer a spritz to her bf and then turned the weapon on me. I politely refused and slowly moved away from the counter to create some space between me and her. I eventually struck up a conversation with the couple and let on that I have been in Sydney for only a couple months. They asked if I had been to Redleaf Park/Pool. I said no. They asked if I had made it down to A Fish Called Coogee. I said no. This went on for a little longer until they were fed up with me and grabbed a pen and pad of paper and began writing furiously. They were so funny. One of them would write while the other one would talk to me both spewing good information about the lesser known hidden secret hot spots in Sydney. They let me know I have been wasting my time here if I am missing out on these places. When they moved on to listing good bars in the area I mentioned that we had received a similar list of bars from someone else and a lot of them seemed awfully fancy. They understood where I was coming from as a lowly traveler with little money but said Sydney is really a town full of “wankers” which was an interesting way of putting it. They said you get judged on your collar and your shoes and if you didn't dress up and go to the nicer places you would miss out on the main scene that Sydney has to offer which is really really awesome despite all the wankers. I said I didn’t even bring a nice pair of shoes. The girl responds “Well I really recommend that you go out and buy a pair…Actually better yet, you can just borrow a pair from Tim here!” I laughed at that and Tim the bf goes “no seriously, you can” and she goes “what size do you wear?” I laughed and laughed. Before the trip everyone said how nice and friendly the aussies are and most of the time it is hard to see that in Sydney since so few of the people are actually from Australia. I’m happy to see more of that ridiculously outgoing and helpful attitude. Plus I now have 2 fat pages of places to visit many of which we could have completely missed out on.

One final piece of news I want to leave you with is the red pen scandal out here in Oz. It’s been all over the news out here. Someone (obsessive parents, emotionally scarred students, color blind teachers…not sure who) is pushing to remove all red pens from schools. The argument is that the harsh nature of the color red is doing serious and irreparable damage to kids. The kids see the score on the top of the test and all the markings all in red where they got questions wrong and they are just devastated. If their tests were marked up in more soothing tones this all would be much less detrimental to their psyche. The news reports had endless interviews of people talking about how absurd this whole notion was. One parent was asking where legislation could lead. Do we just get rid of red altogether? Who is the blue team going to play against? Oddly enough they did not have much any footage of people coming out in favor of the ban. I think it would be hard to show your support without sounding crazy. They had shots of tests that were all marked up in red with a score and a smiley face at the top. Perhaps if that face was in a color less demonic…kinda feels like its always looking at you…Anyways, does anyone out there in blogging land have a problem with red? Should we just switch to pink instead? That’s a nice color.

Have a good weekend everybody!