Yesterday, I had two shifts. The first one was kind of a practice shift: a waiter named Jason followed me around to all his tables, but let me do the actual work, while he made corrections, gave advice and took the tips. Jason used to be a manager at restaurant in Montreal, but came out here with his girlfriend.
Then, I went back to the apartment for a few hours rest, discovered the apartment was locked up and I was keyless, so went over to Starbucks and hung out with Rokaya for an hour 'til her shift was done.
At six, I was back at work, this time as a hostess. Basically, I got to dress up in a black skirt for a change and hnag out at the front door with Alana and Leah. Alana is 16 years old, and I believe I've mentioned her in previous posts. Leah just moved here last week from Victoria--she's 23 and seems cool. She recently returned from teaching ESL in Tialand.
Hostessing is far more stressful than most people realize --- I certainly never realized! Last night the restaurant was almost entirely booked up, including the lounge area. So our job was to make sure that nothing got double booked, that everyone got to their seats at the correct times, and also to turn drop-ins away in such a way that they wanted to come back and eat at Ric's. The problem was, tables weren't moving. What that means is this: they had paid their bills, but they thought they could just sit there and chat for another hour or so. Meanwhile, there were parties with reservations waiting to be seated, and we couldn't even send them into the lounge to wait because that was full of reservations, too! To complicate matters, you have waiters with empty tables (just not the right size empty tables) coming up to you bugging you to send customers their way. Oy.
As I was seating one table, later in the evening (a walk-in, as it happened) one of the women in the group asked me if I was french. "No, but I'm from New Brunswick," I replied. Turned out they were, too! I sat them in Rick's section: he's from Cape Bretton.
Rokaya and her friend Kelly went to see the Calgary Flames play, while I worked. They came and visited me after the game, which was kind of cool. Especially cool about it was the fact that I was able to catch a ride back to the apartment with them!
Also cool (well, maybe not so cool for Chris) was the fact that Chris pulled a night shift, so I was able to sleep on his half of the bed last night.
Today I've been bumming around the apartment in my pajamas. I've put a few feelers out for places to rent, and I'm reading Bill Bryson's 'A Short History of Nearly Everything'. I don't have to work until six... At which point I will begin my first REAL shift! (I think)
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