I can't work in restaurants anymore.
My first job was cleaning up the property for a restaurant that was a 10 minute walk from my house when I was about 14 or 15. It was all going nice for me, decent pay (off the books), plenty of hours, and anything I wanted off the menu for lunch totally free. All I had to do was lay down mulch, do some weeding, shovel snow in the winter and otherwise keep the property looking nice. I'd worked there for about a year when I moved house towards the end of the school year. I'd moved about 8.5 miles away from the restaurant, and didn't really fancy riding 8.5 miles to ask if he had work for me only to have to turn right back around.

So, every day, I ring the boss, "Hey, have you got anything you need me to come over and do for you?" He'd say,"Nope, nothing. Call back tomorrow and I'll see." Repeat Monday through Friday for about two weeks, until I call and ask on the third Monday if he has any work for me. His response? "Where the fuck have you been you stupid shit? I've had work piling up and you never showed up, so I got someone else to do it."

I was unemployed until the end of summer when I found temporary work at the Renaissance Faire. Not a bad job I thought. I just had to sell people useless crap whilst wearing an old timey costume and throwing any accent I could pull that sounds like it might be from the UK or Europe. I think any Brits that come to the States and see a Renn Faire might die of laughter, as my fellow Americans seemed to think everyone in 1600s England spoke with a heavy Cockney accent and made extensive use of rhyming slang, including the nobility. Anyway, my first year working there I broke three of my fingers on my left hand prior to the interview some months before the job began. I was much dismayed to see that they'd decided pushing a cart with wooden wheels full of ice around a muddy fairground was the best job for me.

Still, it was fun enough, and I got to see many drunk people do hilarious drunken things, so I signed on the next year as well when the time came round. I was put on my cart again and thought all was well again. I came in one day, and it was typically the busiest day of the season, with this year being no exception. As I'm getting ready with my cart expecting to make some nice tips, my boss comes over. Apparently four of the six or so people working in one of their food booths have called out today, including all three of the kitchen crew. She informed me this meant I got to be manager for a day. Even my power-hungry 16 year-old mind thought something was amiss, but I went over and started working nonetheless. Long story short, trying to have me do four peoples jobs at once with no training or history in any of them ended in me putting a knife through my thumb. Not totally through, it was a deep cut and the it started on one side of my thumb and damn near went all the way around. The cheap bitch also wouldn't let me leave to get stitches, since she didn't want her insurance rates going up. I wish I'd known then how illegal that was.

The one sentence summary: I've had a shit time working in the food industry.
( Ithyphallophobia, Thu 10 Jun 2010, 12:32, Reply)