Its Been a Considerably Bad Day

2005-07-07 at 6:16 p.m.

However, as anyone who has watched the news today will realise, I can't get to work, because parts of the tube got bombed. And a bus. I especially could not get in because I live near Aldgate, get my connection at Liverpool Street and work near Russell Square. I did manage to contact the hotel and tell them I had no chance of getting in, even walking wouldn't have done it due to the police cordons which meant that the poor sods who had a 6:30am start got stuck working all day, I assume, and the people who live in would have to work as well. Tomorrow though, I will manage to get there, because they will need people in, and I live nearest.

I did try to get the bus in, before they said the bus services were suspended, but I stood in the rain watching "major incident units", ambulances and fire engines go past for ages, while looking at the police helicopter hovering above where I live, and realised I wasn't going to get there. So I came home and watched the news, and then went to the pub to see if everyone I know there was ok. Apparently everyone was fine, and we fielded phone calls from my grandmother etc checking we were ok. Oh and my dad got in a panic because he rang the house when I was trying to get the bus, didn't know where I was, ended up speaking to the receptionist, my supervisor and my manager at the hotel to tell them to ring him when I arrived. So I had to ring them again to tell them I was stuck in the east end.

All in all a very strange day. Though not entirely unexpected, people have expected a bomb in London for a while now and, I must say, it is nowhere near as bad as I thought it would be when the time came. 33+ dead is not so great, not so bad as it might have been.

Anyway, onto one of those long updates I keep meaning to do.

This past week has been hectic. I was working on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday on the bar (I'm on again on Friday as well). Saturday was a pain, I wound up leaving at 3am because of Live8, and all the visitors to that coming back to the hotel and wanting drinks. I was exhausted and not happy about having to go home with all the drunks about but unfortunately they could not give me a room as the hotel was fully-booked and our charming General Manager has banned getting taxis for staff for any reason. (She has also stopped the ordering of dishwasher fluid, and at one point stopped buying milk and bread....which shows you what sort of person she is). Fortunately dad was around to give me a lift home. The next day my supervisor Jacek complained all evening that he felt ill, because he didn't wear his hat the previous night or something like that. So I did the serving and whatnot in the restaurant so he could sit in the other room watching TV for the shift, aside from having to come in every so often to do various things. Fortunately Sunday is a quiet shift.

The next day, I had off. I swapped a shift with the regular barman, David, because I had to go to the doctor. En route to the doctors I got a phone call...supervisor was feeling worse, and could I come in and take his place so he could go home. Cue me running around getting changed and then rushing through my appointment (everything fine, new prescription and then off) and back to the hotel. Only to find I had been given a promotion for the evening and was now supervising. And typically, we got complaints on that night. Not because of me, because of the cooking, but it was still very embarassing. However everyone went away happy and a woman told me I had a nice manner with the customers so I was happy. Plus someone gave me a £5 tip. The next day I came in to find that Jacek had called in sick altogether and I was supervising again, and there was an agency barman to take my place. So I spent the evening getting Ingrida-the-waitress to polish things and do room services, helping the barman figure out the till (what a crap job, being an agency barman!) and serving customers. The beer ran out of gas...the till broke...but all the customers were happy. And I think I passed that little test quite well.

Next day I was on the bar and Jacek was back, so it was just the bar. Plus someone had sneaked in a bottle of dishwasher fluid so the glasses were actually clean for once and did not need polishing. We had a large number of people in the bar for no apparent reason who tipped me because I can remember large drinks orders (woo!). It was ok. And I think the fates are conspiring to keep me from working with Jon, who I'm not so fond of (although he was much better the last time I worked with him) because first Jacek swapped shifts with him in the afternoons and then I couldn't get in to work today at all.

Tomorrow I work on breakfast, so I'm going to have to get up very very early to make sure I do get in, but until then I'm going to the pub.

Adios.

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