their luggage to be taken to their room, finding my way around a 503 room, 25 floor hotel, learning the names of all the other staff at the bell desk, knowing the procedure for taking cars to the car park, how to tag bags,
group labelling, recognising a good tip potential and a empty walletted guest, and how to deal with getting up at 530am for work.
By the second week I was bored. The only redeeming feature of the job is the interesting people who work in the hotel. For instance, one of my compadres was a trapeez artist who is looking to settle down, another is a surfer from Byron Bay, there is a web designer who works at the hotel for the extra money, then there are the boys from the hotel school. Some are in it for the love of the job, while I expect many to make a career change at some point. There is also a big gay community within the hotel, whose numbers include a retired prominent Sydney drag queen, a hispanic out and out gaylord, and various others, which all adds to create an atmosphere that is much more exciting and interesting behind the reception desk than in front of it.
While it is a pleasant and luxurious hotel in the guest area, the service area is chaotic and messy. Lifts and vestibules smell of old food, past room service deliveries lie discarded on the floor, along with 3 day old newspapers, rotten fruit, coathangers, broken a-frame signs, dustbins and housekeeping trollies. Compared to the organised and disciplined practises withing the IT industry, the hotel industry is a debacle. Inefficient, bad working practises, gratuitous wastes of manpower and resources, petty bureaucracy, overly complex hierachy with small minded and megalomaniac idiots put in a position of management without any management training. Departmental animosity is so severe that cooperation only occurs on a rare and individual basis. I have the handicap that I want to fix all these easily remedied faults within the system, but it
would be a pointless exercise and of course Im in no position to do so.
Life otherwise is generally similar to treading water. Im waiting for Cathy to arrive and we are looking to run off and leave town when she gets here. The job is good as at least I am not spending more than I possess, and the tips top it off nicely. It took longer than I thought to get paid, but again thats down to the disorganised payroll office, who is run by a hermit, on certain days of the week, and who locks the door and answers to no-one.
If I finish work at 1500 then I can be in the water at 1600, while if I start work at 1400 then I am in the water by 0930 for a good couple of hours. The surfing is good and I seem to have some ok days and some great days. It all depends on the measured amount of seawater I consume while out on/under the waves.
The tediousness of the work was relieved for a couple of days when Ged and Norm popped in from Singapore. I joined them, along with Blake and Lisa, for a raucous night on Oxford Street. I was refused entry to the Q Bar as the badly dressed girl didnt agree with my dress sense, meaning the others left an already quiet bar to join me at a loud busy sweaty bar a few doors down. It was meant to be a quiet night, which meant Blake and Lisa left around midnight and I walked back with Ged and Norm at about 3am. Tequila shots, Jack and coke and beers does give you that 'quiet night' feeling. After staring at the topless girl who had run past us in the street, I felt inspired and left Ged and Norm at their hotel while I sniffed out a strip club. Im not sure what the point was, as I had difficulty seeing, but it seemed the right thing to do. I can only assume I had a thoroughly
entertaining evening as the strength of the hangover would indicate I had spent some fair amount of time in the sordid playhouse.
Another more gently evening was had when we went to Phillip's Foote, a bar and barbeque restaurant situated in The Rocks. You purchase the meat you want to cook and incinerate it to your specification in the provided grilled crematoriums around the place. My steak was so well done that I had turned it from meat back via vegetable through to pure carbon compounds. It tasted delicious, especially with the range of fresh bread and salads that helped removed the charcoal filter taste from my steak biscuit.
After being reminded by Ged of the lifestyle that is possible from an IT career, I returned with new found vigour in my hatred for my job, when I had to get up at 0530 from my bed to make the ferry in the morning. Never mind, I might win the lotto or Cathy might find a job which can allow me to fully dedicate my time to wave-ology.
If I finish work at 1500 then I can be in the water at 1600, while if I start work at 1400 then I am in the water by 0930 for a good couple of hours. The surfing is good and I seem to have some ok days and some great days. It all depends on the measured amount of seawater I consume while out on/under the waves.
The tediousness of the work was relieved for a couple of days when Ged and Norm popped in from Singapore. I joined them, along with Blake and Lisa, for a raucous night on Oxford Street. I was refused entry to the Q Bar as the badly dressed girl didnt agree with my dress sense, meaning the others left an already quiet bar to join me at a loud busy sweaty bar a few doors down. It was meant to be a quiet night, which meant Blake and Lisa left around midnight and I walked back with Ged and Norm at about 3am. Tequila shots, Jack and coke and beers does give you that 'quiet night' feeling. After staring at the topless girl who had run past us in the street, I felt inspired and left Ged and Norm at their hotel while I sniffed out a strip club. Im not sure what the point was, as I had difficulty seeing, but it seemed the right thing to do. I can only assume I had a thoroughly
entertaining evening as the strength of the hangover would indicate I had spent some fair amount of time in the sordid playhouse.
Another more gently evening was had when we went to Phillip's Foote, a bar and barbeque restaurant situated in The Rocks. You purchase the meat you want to cook and incinerate it to your specification in the provided grilled crematoriums around the place. My steak was so well done that I had turned it from meat back via vegetable through to pure carbon compounds. It tasted delicious, especially with the range of fresh bread and salads that helped removed the charcoal filter taste from my steak biscuit.
After being reminded by Ged of the lifestyle that is possible from an IT career, I returned with new found vigour in my hatred for my job, when I had to get up at 0530 from my bed to make the ferry in the morning. Never mind, I might win the lotto or Cathy might find a job which can allow me to fully dedicate my time to wave-ology.
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