Tuesday 30th June - Friday 17th July (a wee update)

Tuesday 30th June Our last day off before starting work tomorrow. Were booked on two more Cave tours. After The Imperial Cave tour following a hoard of tourists around an underground river, and being stuck behind a very large, over weight man slowly ascending the stairs we went for lunch in the Bistro. This was were we learned the lesson we would find for the working days ahead. Namely, hide during your times off, as in going in into the Bistro or Kitchen for food you will be grabbed at short notice to work somewhere busy or short staffed. Tall and Small were both shoved to work in the kitchen upstairs as one of the chefs had broken their collar bone. Only three apprentice chefs were working the kitchen, each only seventeen or nineteen years old with either bad acne or a bad bum fluff moustache. Tall one was put slicing up cherry tomatoes, on his very first slice he managed to cut his thumb. It bled for the rest of the day and he was given a shiny blue plaster. Unfortunately Tall one is allergic to plasters and so had an itchy thumb for a couple of days. Meanwhile Small one was put with the spottiest of the chefs and was helping to stock up a yute van with food for the Bistro cafe. The somewhat slow chef had an amazing system of going down the lsit in order, and so would go to the dry store and get a tin of beetroot, then down the stairs to the cool store to get some lettuce, then back up to the dry store to get some tins of pineapple, and the back down to the cool store to get some milk. Small one suggested to the chef that perhaps they should read down the list and get everything in the dry store at once before returning to the cool store. Apparently that was a good idea. In the evening, Tall one was put on pot wash and was given just as unhelpful tips from spotty. Small one waitered in the restaurant. A pissed off father with his apologetic wife and two children were being served by him. The man asked Small one for some ketchup and a shotgun for these two (indicating his two children). Small one asked, 'some ketchup and a ...?'. The man repeated without any humour, “get me some ketchup and a shotgun for these two”. Small one laughed politely, the father did not and the wife looked embarrassed. Wednesday 1st July to Tuesday 7th July 2009 Over the next few days Small one and Tall one worked an awful lot. Totally around fifty five hours each week, with very little spare time between the shifts to do much else but sleep and eat. The breakfast shift was interesting, as each got to work with an old lady called (very Australian) 'Shelia'. It was like working with your Grandma as she shuffled about with her grey curly hair, big glasses and small hump muttering to herself and calling back 'not to worry dear, I'm only talking to myself'. The chef at Breakfast was a middle aged lady who usually phoned in sick, when she was working she would be the most joyless bitch you'd ever meet. Working with the glumest expression in silence as she cooked bacon and sausages in bulk. In the day there were more occasional kitchen hand shifts with the young chefs who spoke about how each of them had crashed their cars in the last few weeks from running over kangeroos, and also kept inviting Small and Tall over to theirs at the end of each night for beers. Small and Tall made an excuse every time and would retire to their own flat to watch a DVD. The Bistro cafe in the day was another fun shift. Run by either a seventy year old woman or seventeen year old girls. Also, because of the coach tours thirty people would be queuing on the one sandwhich counter or hot food counter. The two old ladies running the Bistro, Norma and Jude would be phoning up either Dennis or James the managers asking for extra staff to help cover, and so lunch time was a good time to hide if you were off. Then there were the usual evening dinner shifts in the restaurant which Tall and Small were always roistered for. These would vary with how busy they would get, with either Tall or Small covering the bar while the other was in the Restaurant. Some guests even commented how they had been served by Tall or Small for breakfast, lunch and now dinner throughout the day. Because the Hotel layout is so old, there is no proper central heating in the Restaurant and so there are red blankets draped on some of the chairs where it gets a bit cold or drafty. The idea is that the guests can wrap up in the blanket, the Manager, James called this a 'cosy' factor, when infact its because they have shit heating. After a week and a half of these same rotation and shifts, Small and Tall were both extremely tired of polishing cutlery, glasses and re-laying and re-laying tables after each sitting. Small and Tall have also been asking their two managers all week how much their hourly pay is as it has been pretty vague until now. Both of them kept giving the same reply of 'I'll have to look into it'. How neither manager can commit to telling them a wage is a little bit disconcerting, and so Tall and Small await the pay slips. Small and Tall had been told that on the Friday 3rd July their own two bed flat in the external staff block would be ready for them, as it had maintenance work to be done first. Tall and Small had visited the flat on the Monday before to have a look. Mostly wooden inside, there was a lot of work to be done, with the boiler stripped out and bathroom tiles and rubble on the floor, as well as graffiti over the ceiling. On the Thursday 2nd July they returned to see that the place looked exactly the same, and all the builders had done was to come in and eat a packet of crisps. They were told by Dennis that they would have to move out of their present temporary flat and move into a twin room inside the hotel until their apartment was finished, as there current temp accommodation was needed for a bus of school children next week. On Saturday the 4th Small and Tall moved up into a very small twin room with no room to swing a cat in, to await the slow builders to fix the flat up. One evening Tall and Small were joined by a new member of staff who was living on site in his own hotel room. His name was Liam from Sydney, he was as camp as Christmas but would always go on about the 'hot' girls in the Hotel. Liam was as useless as a Sack of Dung. He spent his first night complaining how cold he was, how he would not be washing any dishes, that he was tired, that it smelt, that he could not understand their supervisors French accent. He would keep asking for breaks and disappearing to waste time speaking to customers, usually male ones. His dress sense for work was also terrible, wearing a blue or yellow t-shirt with large lettering under his white shirt. His white shirt being taken straight out of a packet with the neat packet folds visible and the stains from working in it the day before. Small and Tall made it clear they did not like the guy, and within four days he had been fired. One morning when Tall was off breakfast and Small was working, he walked down through the Grand Arch cave to the Blue Lake as one of the cave guides had said there were Platypus there. He walked around quietly for about an hour and saw one bobbing up and down in the lake. Photos were taken, but they came out looking like a floating turd. That evening Small and Tall took a quick walk up the hillside and saw a Wallaby running away from them in the bush. A few days later Small would see the same Wallaby but claim it was an eight foot Kangeroo which was running after him. On the 1st of July not only was it School holidays so buses of school kids were swarming the Hotel, but it was also the Hotel's 'Yule Festival'. Which was basically a Christmas Themed month due to it being the middle of winter. A couple of days it had lightly snowed at the hotel, but not enough to settle. So, for the next few weeks Tall and Small get to enjoy the joys of Christmas 6 months early. With busy Christmas dinners in the restaurant at $100 a head, as well as big Christmas Trees littered throughout the Hotel.... Humbug. Tall one's cold had been coming back, and he now had snot coming out like honey. Small one had also been struggling to sleep as Tall one had been ranting deliriously in his sleep that he should be at work, when it was 2am. Tall and Small are now both very tried and could do with some time off, but also want the hours. The roster has been put up for the coming week and they are the only two staff without a day off. Tall one was so tired that when him and Small were getting stock for the bar from the dry store at 11pm, it was so dark that Tall walked straight out of the store carrying a box of Coke Bottles, and off the edge of a 4ft drop the wrong side of the stairs and bannister. Nothing was broke, except for six Coke bottles. A few days later, they installed a light so no more idiots would walk blindly out of the door and straight over the edge. Within days the incident had made Tall one a celebrity within the hotel, and 5-6 people he had never met kept coming up to him and saying ;I here you took a tumble over by the dry store'. Tall just told them he was over worked. Wednesday 8th July to Saturday 11th July An exhausting week with Small and Tall still working seven days a week and two shifts to three shifts a day. Their new apartment was finally said to be ready on Thursday and Small one moved everything in himself during the day. Unfortunately the flat has no heating or heaters and is still covered with Possum crap and graffiti. Although, despite this the other tenants in the block have said that our flat is the best as it is the only one that locks and is now Possum proof,as they have woken up to find a Possum sat on their bed. Small and Tall got the spotty chef to buy them some electric fan heaters in town, although after having worked with him a few evenings and seeing how little sense he had, they feared he would return from town having spent their money on a jar of magic beans. Another big Yule Fest evening on the Wednesday which ended in disaster with burnt soup and cold food. People complaining of high prices for processed food from a tin and the 'Yule Log' being nothing more than a swiss roll from the Supermarket. The second Yule Fest of the week on the Saturday went better, with good food and a new chef, but the customers still complained that they felt they were being processed to eat as quick as possible. Although everbody complimented Small one's Irish coffees. One table even took a photo of Tall one and Small one standign next to each other as she thought they looked funny together. One evening, two customers, Mr and Mrs Marsh came in and announced that Mrs Marsh was a psychic and could see the ghost of a little hunched old lady standing looking over everything in the corner. If she was on at Breakfast that would have just been Sheila the waitress. The Manager, James seemed convinced of her story having told us about the Haunted photo of an old lady on the wall of the restaurant, which the couple happened to be sat by. Tall one also had a bizarre experience of a Blonde Lesbian calling him by his first name, despite never having met her. She then turned up for Breakfast, lunch and dinner the next day still using Tall one's first name. Upon seeing Small one she also used his name. She also commented, like most other customers, how she had been served by the same waiter for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Sunday 12th July After their big fifteen hour day on Saturday, Small and Tall returned to their flat to go to bed at 11pm. Only to be woken up by the seventeen year old waitresses, cleaners and chefs who share the block who started banging on their flat door at 1.30am. Tall one told them to 'go away', using a slightly different expression. The next morning Small and Tall were up early to work breakfast, where the old lady Sheila described their fellow house mates as 'Animals'. After breakfast Small and Tall were roistered to have the rest of the day off for the first time in two weeks. The Manager, Dennis had been trying to rope them into working, but luckily the slightly aggressive French speaking Waitress fought their corner and they kept their day off. Using their day of rest to go on a three hour bush walk along the 'Mckeowns Valley Track'. Along the obscure path which eventually turned into an old river bed with no sign posts, they found four AA Durcell batteries left neatley on a rock... After an hour and a half of walking through the base of the valley they had seen no wildlife or valley view, and so decided to climb up the side of the valley wall to a rocky hill. They were not in good shape but got to the top where there was a good view out across the valley, where Cockatoos where squawking and flying across the tree tops below. Back down into the valley again they found along the river path that the AA batteries had now been taken, wondering who had taken them a little round the corner Tall one told Small one to stop and be quiet very quickly. Ahead of them was a family of five kangeroos eating some grass right next to the path.Small and Tall walk to within twenty foot of the kangeroos who seemed none to bothered. We forgot to ask if they had taken the batteries. Back to the Apartment Small one was very tired and so Tall one said he would go down to the staff kitchen to see when food would be ready. The next morning, Small one was due in to work breakfast at 8am, whilst Tall one had the day off until the evening shift. Small one had wanted the extra hours anyway. However, when Tall one got to the Hotel kitchen, Dennis asked if he could work stocking the store rooms tomorrow at 8am, and at the same time Small one was told he was no longer needed for breakfast. The staff dinner of Beef Pasta was then cooked by the spotty chef, which was disgusting and half eaten. Tuesday 14th July On the Tuesday Small and Tall had a new roster. They were both only down for around 40 hours this week, opposed to the 65 of last week. With more time in the day they booked to go on another complimentary cave tour at 3.00pm. Because of the school holidays all the good tours were full and all the other ones were packed. The Lucas cave tour was chosen, which some people say is the most photographed and most beautiful of the caves as people can even get married there. At 3pm, Small and Tall waited in the Grand Arch Cave entrance where the tour began, to find that there was infact sixty other people going on the tour. The majority of the sixty people being Asian or Muslim. The start of the tour was a slow ascent up 250 steps, which took everybody around twenty minutes to get to the top. The guide was a large girl in a big red fleece, who spoke and acted a lot like Barney the Dinosaur with her poor condescending humour and education. The tour was very slow and the sixty people kept farting. At one stage waiting in a open area for the rest of the line of people to catch up (for another 15 minutes) one of the Muslim old men pushed past Small and Tall to lean over a barrier and let a ball of spit out of his mouth onto the cave floor

this was just after she had said not to touch or litter anything in the cave. An American couple then approached the Small one and handed them their camera, they asked 'Can you take a picture for us?'. Small one took the camera off them and started to point it up at some of the Cave features, 'yeah, sure a picture of just anything?'. They responded without humour, 'no of us' and later called him a moron. The tour progressed slowly, and was not overly impressive. There was a big broken column feature and some colourful lights at the end which she did not mention in any context. We were glad to leave. That evening small and tall were back in the restaurant for another 'Yule' fest dinner. This one went badly. Although the food went well due to a new (Adult aged) chef, the service was confused as there were changes made to the service and payments which were not told to tall and small as they don't seem to like having briefings before hand. Afterwards the Manager, Dennis told them he appreciated all that Tall and Small had done the last couple of weeks and said he had arranged for them to have Thursday off, the whole day....

Wednesday 15th July

Finally maintenance came around to the flat and fixed the big broken window, but only replaced it with perplex. They also took all day as they kept having to be called away to help with a car accident up in the mountains, were three students had gone 200 metres down the mountain side, and one of their arms wouldn't stop bleeding. Despite maintenance fixing the window, the hot water was still broke and so showers were colder than luke warm. Also they had finally found a key for the front door lock, however returning from work in the evening Small and Tall found that the key no longer worked, and they got the hillbilly chef to climb down into their flat from the balcony floor above. They found that the lock did work if you turned the key very very slowly to the right only. Finishing up at work tonight Jude, one of the old ladies from the Bistro (that Small and Tall had blown out when she offered to cook them a roast dinner at her place last week) entered the bar and informed them that she was now dying of cancer, and had no money or anyone to take her little girl. Because of the accent in this country Tall one did not realize what she was telling him at first and so stood still with a polite smile across his face until she finished and he clicked what she was saying.

Thursday 16th July The supposed day off as promised was interrupted when Jude knocked on the flat door at 8.30am and told Small one they both had to work in the Bistro today due to a snow storm nobody could get into work. Small one said 'For Fuck's Sake' and closed the door on Jude as her lip trembled and she said 'don't shoot the messenger'. Small one asked James, the manager if there was any else to go in, as this would be their seventeenth day in a row working without a day off. James text back that it was sorted, and had gone down and argued with the Bistro about how disorganized they were. Small and Tall had planned to borrow the spotty chefs car and drive 2 hours to get to the nearest town of Bathurst, via the hick town of Oberon. The car was lent to them but was filled with empty beer bottles and takeaway boxes in the back. On route the hills and trees were covered with snow, but not enough to stop bistro staff going to work, as traffic was moving both ways. After a nervous journey from Small not having driven a strangers car or a manual for a while on just a provisional license, they got to Bathurst. A trip to the cinema to see the comedy movie Bruno, a strange audience including a seventy year old man sat in the middle on his own in silence as such images of a big floppy penis shaking up on the screen were seen. Apple Crumble was brought by Tall one after and shopping was done for water filters, table lamps, wall clocks, food, work shirts and waist coats. Small finally found some children's school shirts to buy for the restaurant that actually fit. By the time they left Bathurst it was getting dark. Driving in the cold wind the electric windows in the front of the car had been wound down to see out, but then neither would go back up. Either the electrics were screwed or they had come off the runners. For over half an hour they drove in the extreme cold with their fingers re trying the button and pulling the windows up by hand. Finally pulling over by a nice sunset to get the windows working, which took ten minutes of swearing as a family of kangeroos watched standing in the dark by the side of the road. Small and Tall eventually got home with the windows up. Only to find that there apartment door would not opened yet again. As everyone was at work it was up to Tall one to go into the people's flat above and drop down into the balcony and possum shit below and climb in through the kitchen window. It was a fun day. But not a day of rest. The day ended with Small one trying to cook a pizza brought in Bathurst. It was the first time they had tried to light their gas oven and grill. It took a lot of messing about but they finally got the grill lit, unfortunately it was a flame that shot out 3 foot from the grill and could have burnt small one's face off. They decided to not use the oven ever again and cooked the pizza in one of their friendly neighbours microwaves. Friday 17th July – Tuesday 21st July

Back to work Friday when Tall and Small were to then work three shift days for the next four days. After the four days, even the customers were telling them how knackered they looked. Of course the tiredness was not helped by Tall one's delusional rants in his sleep that there were customers to be served but they were both dressed for bed. They had also been working so hard that Tall one's hands now resembled those of a farmers. On the Sunday night the restaurant was filled with strange customers, including an old man who could not produce saliva and so asked for extra gravy, a middle aged wife who said she was allergic to beans and peas and wanted them taken off the salmon fillet. A man with jet white hair who told his son how to eat his dinner throughout the night and complained loudly about the mix up with his prepaid package while his wife sat with her head in her hands. Small one served a woman who had previously lived and worked in his home town, Atlone and managed to get a $50 tip from them. A group of Scots from Glasgow came up to the bar Tuesday night and one of the rough women asked to taste a bit of the Chardonnay. After swilling it for a while she explained in her Glaswegian accent 'that's fucking muck that is'. One of the many posh guests who stay at the hotel piped up behind her 'excuse me madam?'. The Glaswegian turned to her and said 'don't drink that, that's fucking muck that is'. On another night a young lady at the bar had asked what desserts she could order to eat just in the bar lounge. She was told there was a choice of two, either the bar menu choice of one slice of 'the cake of the day' (Chocolate Mud Cake) for $12 or she could pay $12 for the all you can eat Dessert buffet which included the Chocolate Mud Cake.... she went for the buffet. Working in the Bistro for the four days, Small one noticed how he had been asked to move stock of frozen burgers, chips, chicken and meat pies out of the freezer and into the cold store fridge. After a week and a half of defrosting he was then instructed by Jude to make more space in the cold store and put them back in the freezer. The next day they were back in the cold store until they were brought into the Bistro cafe and put next to the hot plate.... back into another freezer. Tall one and Small one stopped eating any of the hot food for lunch in the Bistro. The maintenance man Gary with a busy beard had gradually been getting their flat fixed up, he was the only maintenance man who had promised to fix their hot water and stop their cold showers. He was unfortunately taken ill and all of the staff said how he looked like he was going to keel over. Small and Tall hoped he would at least come back and fix the hot water first. He did come back to work alive this week, and promised to do the water. He also had a big rant about how the nice old ladies in the Bistro are 'fucking slutty bitches' who all back stab the other members of staff. Small and Tall thought they seemed all right. Small and Talls' over worked and very tired looking Manager, James had been mentioning his fantastic online food ordering and delivery service, and had been suggesting they tried it. He suggested they could buy washing powder and toilet roll from there. But Tall and Small had been stealing both from the cleaners office. They found out that he had some kind of share in the company and so made money for every referral and order placed. They finally agreed to place a small order with him and looking through the catalogue found it a very limited selection and bulk orders only. They ordered two packets of biscuits, cereal bars and a box of cereal using James' own account. Two weeks after the order was placed, two packets of biscuits turned up, he said the rest may come the week after. He then told them how there was a $12 delivery charge (which would probably be charged twice for the order being split and late) and also how when he got them set up on their own account there was a $90 joiners fee. But if they were not happy with the service they would get their $90 back after a month. Small and Tall were not happy with the service already and so decided to keep their $90 now by never giving it to him.