Sunday, August 13, 2006

The bar work, the phone work, and the final lull in work

Day 54 of Super-Mega-Travel-Adventure-2006.


Interesting week. So when last I blogged I was putting myself up for charity work, yes? Well the next morning I got a call from a bar very local to me named Hanlons, asking if I could come in for an interview the next evening (Saturday). Turned up, chatted with one of the managers, Marie, and 5 minutes later she told me to come in for a trial shift the following Friday.


Excellent stuff, even if the further six day wait was frustrating. Now, remember that interview for the telephony job I had, that I thought I'd ballsed up the interview for? Skip forward three days to Tuesday, and my interviewer calls me and offers me that job too. After giving it some thought, I accepted it, and told myself that it'd be good to have two jobs for a spell. Hedge my bets or something. I'm going in on Tuesday to start training for it. After that the hours are Monday - Thursday, 9.30 - 7.30. The main (some would argue only) plus of the job is the earning potential. It's minimum wage, but with generous bonuses for those who are good at it. We'll see.


Friday night and the first shift at Hanlons then. It's basically a very well known pub/bar/club in the centre of it's community. They're just coming to the end of a huge renovation (hence the taking on staff) which will see it reopen as a really quite flash young-upwardly-mobile-attracting type joint, comprising of a main bar, a nightclub upstairs, an old man bar, function rooms and smoking terraces. I'm reliably informed that it will be constantly rammed full once it all opens up, but in the meantime it's quiet as sin with 30 customers at the busiest point on a Saturday night


For other aspects of the job, here are some scores out of 10:


Female manager, Marie - 6.5 (usually nice but introduced herself to me my explaining that she's "really anal, swears a lot and everybody thinks she's a bitch". This so far appears not to be hugely inaccurate.)

Male manager, Bernard - 7.0 (Seems a lot like my boss in Tenerife. Harsh but fair type)

Male colleague, Carlo - 6.1 (half irish, half italian, and quite reminiscent of Boycie from Only Fools And Horses. Quite scares me.)

Female colleague, Janice - 8.0 (lovely 25 year old single mum who started on my 2nd shift last night. It's her first job in ages, and she's v v sweet)

The bar - 8.0 (will look very nice once it's finished)

The pay - 7.0 (It's Ã??10 an hour, (equals about Ã?7) which is the going rate for bar work in Dublin apparently)

Overall - 7.2 (It's better than the Tenerife job. If this is all I'm doing until I come home I'll settle for it.)


And they've agreed to have me only work Friday and Saturday nights for the meantime. They do think I'm staying in Dublin for 6 months though. I'm not going to let the cat out the bag on that one just yet.


Not literally. Please be assured that if there was any furry feline creatures being held captive in some sort of satchel or backpack or something, I would be there fighting to get it freed from it's awful prison. I'm not some sort of crazed, kitten hoarding mentalist or anything.


Anyway, that's enough job talk. Bar a couple of good but un-noteworthy drinking sessions this week there's not much else to report. Worked out that in preparation for these interviews and jobs I've spent Ã??115 altogether on clothes. That hurt. Discovered the Ipod alarm feature that allows me to wake up to any song I want to, instead of my mobile's ultra-annoying standard alarm. Found out that Keane are playing a secret gig in Dublin on August 31st for the Vodaphone TBA series of gigs. Them being one of my favourite bands, playing in this city, for that TV show is a particularly saucy coincidence, so I'm doing what I can to try and get to go to it. Which probably won't be easy. Seeing Faithless on Thursday night which has got me very excited.


I feel like these are my last couple of relaxed days, then come Tuesday it's all hell-for-leather until I come back home.


Lord knows, I've had enough relaxed days up till now though. Probably shouldn't be ungrateful.

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