Monday, October 30, 2006

Putain de merde....

Well, having just reread my last blog entry, it turns out that, in my assessment of my new state of living, I was sadly wrong about one key fact which is going to end up making a huge difference to my new-found "existence."

The extremely attentive amongst you will have spotted an incongruity (discrete but significant) between my assertions of last time and reality. Those of you who are really watching what's going on in France will have noticed that there were some riots in the Paris banlieux a while ago about the revokation of a certain right given to young people when they start a new job. The law previously stated that somebody gained all the rights to continuing employment, and hence an immunity to being sacked for being rubbish, as soon as they started a new job. This means that if you hire'em and they turn out to be cretins, it's your lookout for not having interviewed more thoroughly. Nickolas Sarkozy, if I followed the story correctly, spotted that this meant that basically no-one was able to get any jobs because employers were terrified of being lumbered with a dolt and he promply changed the law provoking demonstrations and riots throughout the country.

How do I know all of this fascinating polical info? And why am I writing about it here? Because, my good friends, my trusted and loved ones, I've just borne the brunt of this new law with a shocking and ruthless immediacy.

Yes, twenty minutes or so ago I was told that I could finish half an hour early, wash my uniform, and give, in cash, the 20 euro I owe from an apparently underfunded till the other day, and never expect to return bar to pick up the cheque for the work I'd managed to squeeze in in between getting and losing my first ever foreign job.

It followed a genuine day from hell in the pizzeria. It's a jour ferié here (bank holiday) and to make matters worse (or better depending on your point of view) it was sunny and at least 25 degrees in the shade. Hot hot hot. And the restaurant was an absolute zoo. I started the day serving outside on the terrace while there were no customers and was then, as usual, banished inside where the harm I would do was expected to be minimal.

Sadly we were so busy that both the terrace (25 tables, two experienced serveurs) and the main room (23 tables, me) were jam packed. It was way more than I could handle. I didn't stress and I generally believe that I either got most stuff right or was sufficiently charming and english to those tables I forgot about or muffed up the order of that it ended up not matter too much from the clients' point of view. My colleagues however were fuming as I ordered lamb instead of salad, spent fifteen minutes looking for a bottle of champagne that I'd never had anyone order before and, to top it all off, fall up the stairs (my shoes are impossibly slippery and entirely inappropriate but I haven't had any time off in which to buy new ones) while loaded with plates filled with greasy garlic mayonnaise and congealed lamb fat which, when flung far and wide across the restaurant by my flailing limbs covered everything in a fine, but lethal, covering of the industrial equivalent of a thousand banana skins.

I then spent the next twenty minutes looking for the brush, then looking for the mop, then mopping and brushing whilst trying to stem the flow of blood which leaked from the pesto-infested wound I'd inflicted upon myself during the incident.

After the end of his dabacle, I settled in to some post-lunch drinks serving on the terrace in an efficient, if extremely irritable and unfriendly manner. It was during this that I made what was to be my final mistake. I served beers to a group of danish businessmen who weren't eating. This contravened our licencing laws and my dragon/bitch/boss took her typical hands on hips, lips pursed approach to giving me the ensuing reproach:

(the following is roughly translated from the french)
Her:
Rob! What did you serve to table 301?

Me:
Err.. I don't know any more. Who is it...? Oh them. Er.... oh yeah, a cappucino, a cafe latte, a pschittt (the hilariously unfortunately named lemonade) and three large beers.

Her:
And do you find anything shocking in that list (I think that's what she said)?

Me:
Err... No. I served a lemonade because we have run out of Iced Tea.

Her:
The biers. You served alcohol to them and they're not eating?

Me:
Oh yeah. I forgot. Sorry. (The bluntness of this response indicates how many times I'd apologised to this dragon only to receive either a dismissive tut or a sorry's-not-good-enough type tirade)

Her:
Do you know that that act could cause this cafe to close?

Me: (tiring of her questioning but also partially thinking that I was getting into the french way of arguing)
I do now. Exit stage left to go and take another order.

This order was the last thing I ever did for Pizza Marzano, Place Du Capitole, Toulouse. I was fired straight afterwards.

The only mitigating factor in this tale of woe is that I was genuinely going to resign at the end of the shift anyway. It was as clear to me as it was to everybody else that I was incompentent and an easy whipping target for the others to boss about and do the shifts no-one else wanted to do (I was scheduled to do 10 straight closes in a row, 6 of them split shifts 12-3pm 6pm-1am. I was 6 days into this punishing regime) and it wasn't a long way from the life I'd wanted to lead when I made the decision to leave england.

The only difference between her solution to the problem and mine was that I was going to, out of good old english courtesy, offer to finish this marathon to give them time to replace me. She insisted I finish right away. Fine by me.

So where does this leave me? Square one? Square zero? I don't know. It's too early to say. What I do know is that it's back to the job market for me and back to wondering whether it's worth the pain to join a society that is collectively battling a mounting unemployment problem.

I'll write again when I get some ideas together.

Rob

Friday, October 27, 2006

Lost in the mists of mundanity

It's been a while huh? Several of you have been kind enough to point it out and it's unbelievably nice to hear that there are people out there who actively want to know what's going on in France.
Things here are very different to what they were a week ago. My life is basically unrecognisable in one serious way: I have a job!

After what seems like an infinity of begging, hoping, waiting, cursing and planning to move to Paris, I started at the end of last week as a waiter in a Pizza Express right in the main square (Le Capitol for those in the know). It's tough as it's all in French and the fact that I lied about the amount of waitering experience I had is now blantanly obvious for all to see. Happily the french employment laws dictate that they have no choice but to stick with me until I'm good.

As I've heard (but never really believed) from everyone who's ever done it, it's complicated, tiring and confusing. At least, that which I understand (I work entirely in French of course) is complicated, tiring and confusing. All the rest I have no choice but to ignore and hope it will go away.

In all seriousness though, I'm over the moon to have finally established myself in France and I'm currently living purely off my tips for everything bar the rent and the occasional wild lunch-expenditure so life is pretty good. I'm once again, as I was at Caffe Nero, in a situation where my spectacularly low pay is not too much of an issue as I don't have 5 seconds spare in the week to spend any of it. It's marvellous.

There is even a french girl who started on the same day as me who's 26, attractive and an egyptologist when not a work. She's awesome and I'm going to make good efforts to befriend her.

It's not all sweetness and light however. My responsable is Italian and is not the sort to put up with any shit. And I am shit! I received the dressing-down of my life the day-before-yesterday after a busy shift where one fuck-up only lead to the next for me, and increased my level of general flusteredness and confusion. I did it all: Broke stuff, forgot to tell the kitchen that people had ordered their dinner, told the kitchen but got it wrong, forgot to charge people before they left, charged people but lost the resulting Visa slip and I even managed to lose the keys to the cellar meaning that we went without any stock for half a day until it was found in my locker. Oh dear. As occured when I first started at Caffe Nero, I've started having dreams where I'm at work and things are going badly then I will wake up and have to go to work all over again.

Still, yesterday was much better and I started being able to manage myself a little and work out what it was I was supposed to be doing. The volatile french staff seemed a lot happier with me by the end of the evening. It's always a bit difficult to tell though...

So, life goes on. I've traded exhausting but fun work with no time for socialising in one country, for the same in another. Except that every day that passes here I get a little better at the french language. Let's see... In the last few days I've learned useful phrases such as "clear table 21", "now sweep the main room", "fill the oil and vinegar containers" and "think carefully about what I've said to you and do better tomorrow". All marvellously self-improving.

I've had to quit school which is a shame. Life in the Alliance Francais is easy, comfortable and fun, but it was entirely incompatible with having a job. I got my money back for the last week though so it's all good.

Oh and last thing: This monday I passed an audition to be a member of Le Choeur Du Capitole De Toulouse which is a super-posh choir who sing in the main builing of town. I'm very excited and am currently plucking up the courage to ask work for the time off I need to rehearse. We'll see.

I'm currently feeling like the more I settle myself in to Toulouse and real life, the less I'll be using this blog as an outlet for those bottled up experiences and feeling I just had to tell someone, so if nothing appears to follow this entry for some time it doesn't mean I no longer care about my friends and family (mum, I'll call you soon!) it just means that I've reached the kind of equilibrium which is no longer interesting to read about, but represents a real kind of existence for me in a foreign country.

Love
Rob

Thursday, October 05, 2006

Sanity and what I paid for it

Due to a gross technical problem at my exciting new flat, I write this blog entry from an internet cafe.

Still, I am, without further ado, moved in and life has taken on a whole new domesticity. Yesterday I had a hot shower and climbed into my grey jogging bottoms, having just pulled them out of the very bottom of my suitcase. It felt good. It felt like being at home.

Jonny, my housemate, is rarely at home so I have set myself up a little bachelors lifestyle of meagre evening meals, regular siestas and lots of reading. It's good and bad simultaneously. Those that know me well know that I thrive off interpersonal contact and that living alone is not my forté. Still, it's a far cry from the nowhere-to-live-nothing-to-do states of mid september.

I've started my new class at school and it's going swimmingly. The level is challenging without being demoralising which is just perfect.

Still no word on the job front though. It's incredible either way. Either McDonald's here take an unbelievably long time to process their job applications or they have some kind of shocking anti-foreigner employment policy. I have heard tell such facts as the latter of french enterprises before now so it wouldn't surprise me greatly.

To make things worse, I heard from the current girl of my dreams (I have to be careful what I say on this public forum as you never know who's reading, so I'll keep all references oblique and all phrases deliberately obtuse and slangy for the incomprehension of the gauls!) that a new joint has sprung up in the town she lives in which hankers after brits like me to serve the jars.

Sorry if you don't understand the following. It's written all in slang.

Who is this mysterious bird? She hangs out close to the briney (the place the posh plonk comes from) and is a real diamond. Wiley, Witty, and generally Way Out she's currently rocking my Top 40 and I suspect I hers (but I'm not 100%). The happy gospel is she's keen to come over for a jaunt soon. Needless to say my ticker leaped when I found out.

Ok, oblique stuff over. If you want an explanation, email me and I'll reveal all.

Those elsewhere wanting a good laugh should try and picture a tall ungainly youth, with limb co-ordination issues attempting to walk in a pair of shoes with well-oiled wheels on the underside. The people of Toulouse however have no need to imagine. They have the spectacle before their very eyes.

Yes it's true. I've taken my bike back to the hire-place and bought a pair of roller blades. I sort of thought it would be easy I think. It looks so damn easy after all. I put them on as soon as I was out of the shop and managed the slowest 200m of my life, overtaken by irate old hunchbacks with crippled legs and jaundice who cursed the slow-moving and unsightly obstacle.

It was amusing. For a bit. I changed back into my shoes after not very long. But, damn you, I'm determined to get it going even though I've no idea of the mode d'emploi.

I'll let you all know how I get on.

Rob