tell me about it

Almost everything that could go wrong today, did.

I overslept on the train and got off at Bugis. Took a train one stop back, got off, happily walked up the escalator and stared dumbstruck at City Hall MRT for about two seconds before turning back around to take the train another stop forward.

Got off at Raffles Place MRT and found to my horror that the place was inundated with overly-buff men and butch girls celebrating dragonboat-worship. Had to squeeze through the crowd and suffered the indignity of a grossly hairy and sweaty man wiping his arm against mine. Stifled my helpless squeaks of horror and tramped grimly onto McDonald’s. Had five minutes left to make it in time for work and as luck would have it the lady in front of me had some sort of brain impediment that caused her to be extra picky over her order and waste my precious time.

I finally made it to work with an inch to spare. I noticed with surprise that half the walkway has been set up already. “How nice,” I thought, and greeted Zet with a smile I felt was quite cheery despite the tragic morning. He promptly removed my smile with the phrase, “Eh, you’re the only one doing opening today.”

Me: Huh?
Zet: Yah, Jonathan not coming. Oh but I helped you do half the walkway already *beams proudly*

I mentally called Jonathan several choice names in my head as I dragged my feet up the stairs. Later while setting up, I found people crowding our quayside to watch the boat races. If you ask me the drummer has it bloody easy. Anyway I was delighted at my chance to take my bitch mood out on the people trespassing on our space so I started dragging tables willy nilly all over the place to block their way while sweetly saying “EXCUSE ME!” and “PLEASE MOVE THANK YOU!”

This one idiot decided that moving meant shifting his weight from one foot to the other while ignoring the poor sweaty waitress setting up the entire quayside alone, so I calmly dragged the table across his foot. “Oops, did I hurt you? My, I’m sorry,” I told him with wide innocent eyes as he sheepishly moved away.

Zet finally came to pitch in with the quayside and he tried to use his manager voice to move people away. Let’s just say his manager voice isn’t too effective because he’s this small-sized guy with a little boy face. So I kept being a bitch waitress and used my no-nonsense if-you-don’t-get-out-of-my-way-I-will-bean-you-with-this-table voice which worked a lot better combined with my I-hate-all-you-stupid-people expression. If you couldn’t already tell, I was not in a pretty mood.

Finally got everything set up after being sarcastically polite to a group of people whose bags were in my way. Luckily for them they moved quite readily. It must have been the look on my face. Powerful.

Something finally went right when I got posted inside and the other two got posted outside because it started to rain pretty early on. The poor girls were running in and out of the rain while I got to concentrate on the customers inside the pub. It got really bad during lunch when the kitchen got slammed and the other two were quite drenched in the rain.

I can only blame people who choose to sit on the quayside just to watch a couple of people row boats around the disgustingly murky Singapore River while eating lunch. It stands to reason that because there is no cover between the quayside and the pub that it will take awhile for your food to get to you. The poor waitresses have to balance trays of food and drink and umbrellas. We can only carry so many plates at one go. And when you make friends with other tables and order 14 dishes at one go? Service is going to take awhile.

After having to replace about six dishes on a table who felt their food was too cold for comfort, this other customer came in and complained that the fan was spluttering grease on his shirt and said we should reimburse him for his greasy shirt.

I restrained my urge to grease his face with the English breakfast grill I was carrying, then stopped myself from going out and breaking the fan into tiny bits for daring to malfunction today.

Half the walkway was rendered completely useless because of the damn rain. We pulled down the plastic curtains to shelter the quayside and our wide-screen TV from the rain, but some customers complained that they couldn’t see the boat races. So we rolled up the curtains again.

Then some other customers complained that they were getting wet.

I contemplated rolling over and dying quietly.

Things were so slammed that even our HR person came to help out with things. She smiled wryly at me and encapsulated everything when she shook her head and said, “It’s just one of those days.”

Then Ray came up to me when work was almost over and asked in a hopeful voice, “Beth, you free to work to eight today? We don’t have enough people.”

I gave him the most incredulous look I could muster.

“No. Way.”

At least I had enough sympathy to actually feel a bit guilty for not working extra.