closure...but not of the restaurant

When my mom was visiting me in Sevilla we went to the city's Cathedral to visit it and feel intimidated by a structure built with the blood money reaped from the 'New World'. As we were entering there were two yankee tourists behind us. One said to the other, in that bored university dude voice, "Man, my dogs are really barkin". "I kneouuuu, mine teuuuuu", replied dude #2. The point of posting that anecdote here on my P Diddyblog is that i actually felt like using that expression last night after 7 hours of waiting tables and cleaning, because I think it meant that dude #1's feet were really tired and sore. I was exhausted, and in that one day gained an immense new respect for people who do this for extended periods of time, i mean for years of their life, or forever. I already felt like calling in sick today. Not a good sign.

I think what i like about P Diddy's is the finite character of the repetitive routines. Task after task is something completable, you never leave any loose ends not tied up at the end of a shift. Your tables get seated, served, cleared and reset. Closure. You start with a float. You take money, give change, collect tips, do your end of shift reconiciliation of money stuff, put it in an envelope and stick it in the safe. You have your float back at the end of the shift. Closure. I punch in at the beginning of my shift. I punch out at the end and I really, truly can leave work, not just physically leave but bring worries and stress and things to prepare for the next day home with me. Closure. Everything is so efficient. You punch your orders into the computer, they go to the kitchen automatically and when they are ready the printout is there lying on your food on the warming table to prove to you that it's all there. You barely even have to talk to anyone else. It's so clean and fast and easy. I don't think that kind of simplicity has ever been a characteristic in my life before. It's of course at the same time incredibly disturbing, knowing that everything from the secret sauce recipe to the flecks of colour in the carpet are identical to those of the PDiddys all over the place. Like how Subways smells the same in Barcelona and in Sackville. It's ugly. But my head has been swimming with uncertainties and open-ended plans for years now, and this PDiddy routine has been really bizarrely calming.

would you like a side order of colon cancer with that?

Ok so aside from the fact that I am directly contributing to the exaggeratedly premature deaths of people I went to high school with and motorcyclists from Bouctouche by encouraging them to clog their arteries with the greasy goodness splayed out in an all you can eat buffet, and from the fact that in my men's size medium button up collared work shirt i look, well, there's no easier way to say it - hideously unattractive - and aside from the fact that I have a slick layer of grease on my face by the end of even the shortest of shifts, aside from all that, i actually really like this job.

I've made an average of 7.50 an hour just in tips the last two shifts, that's a dollar more than I'm making in normal wages per hour. The people I work for, and with, are so nice, and even the customers are shockingly patient and friendly. I got thrown in off the deep end yesterday, sent onto the 'floor' after an hour and a half of orientation. So far no spills, messed up orders or fingers on the pizza as I carried it out.

The best part is the training manual and the Pizza Delight 10 point system...a sort of timeline of how to get people in and out in under an hour. They give helpful hints such as mini scripts you can use to sneakily 'upsell' someone's order..basically pressure them into ordering appetizers and getting the large garlic fingers instead of the medium, that sort of thing. By the way, and this one goes out to the Ontarians, did you know that Pizza Delight actually invented Garlic Cheese Fingers? We're supposed to work that little fact into our 'script' as often as we can. I like my manager because he seems to recognize that the corportate branding stuff is all bullshit, and says he only mentions it because they send a 'mystery shopper' in every month to check how things are going. I was curious to know if the mystery shopper was the guy in the 1995 Van Halen World Tour tshirt who came in yesterday reeking, and i mean like from across the room reeking, of weed and ate from the buffet without stopping for at least 45 minutes. What a good costume that would be!

I've got to go eat cos I'm back for my first 5 hour shift in an hour's time. We get 50% off of the restaurant food but seriously, after looking at all the disgusting scraps from people's plates and watching the way that people can shovel in multiple platefuls of that food without seemingly taking a breath, like pigs at the trough, I really don't think I'll be taking advantage of it very often.

inauguration

Dear friends,

Turning the page. Turning over a new leaf. Reinvention, discovery, finding myself on the Tantramar Marsh. I thought the new phase of my life I am about to embark upon deserved a new (to me, at least) format of expression. Inspired by levels of technological literacy (an oxymoron?) previously unbeknownst to me that were displayed this past weekend in a small, sunny, fruity-wine-stocked apartment on Regent Street, I am starting a blog.

I’m not even going to pretend that a person who always thought blogs were silly and never had any interest in them before suddenly repenting and discovering it might be a cool way to communicate is interesting. It’s a bit like when people apologize for writing a mass email and think that they're being technophobes by doing it. Shut up. No one believes you that you feel bad about doing this, or that you don't check your email fifteen times an hour.

Tomorrow I start life as an employee of P Diddylight Incorporated. I'll keep you posted. Or, rather, I'll send you the link to the blog.