Thursday, February 9, 2012

One Student’s Struggle: is working in hospitality a rite of passage or just a soul eroding monotony?



On the good days, I find commonalities with someone from an opposite life. I banter and joke, there is a spring in my step, I turn my face to the early morning sky without a thought of the hour of the day and I smile at the sallow-faced commuters one-by-one. On the bad days, I scorn every inane request, every ‘excuse me’, I have no tolerance for the noise, the rush, the things that go wrong. On these days the hours trickle by and I grit my teeth as every minute passes, unsure as to whether I will finish my shift with my sanity and will to live intact.



Jobs within the hospitality and retail sectors are far from uncommon for students, particularly those still in secondary education or the early years of an undergraduate degree. These types of unemployment took on a new role of emphasis for me when I moved out of home and my income was no longer purely disposable. Start and finish times suddenly mattered more, since rent and bills had to be paid and milk and bread bought and when I put ladders in all my stockings there was no parent figure around who might kindly pick me up some at the supermarket.



All of these lessons provided me with sound and valuable learning curves, and I can hardly say my everyday quality of life has diminished since I flew the nest. With that said, years on I am still trudging my way through what feels like the world’s longest university degree (please stop asking me how many years I have to go, it makes me despondent) and still slaving over tables with coffee permanently ingrained into my skin for what feels like a small cut above the minimum wage.



‘Oh it could be worse!’ I singsong, but as I approach my fortieth hour in the week of meeting other people’s needs before my own in shoes that give me no back support, I very much doubt it can.



A summer of sweating in a cafĂ© in a suburb where the closest thing to a seaside breeze is when a rubbish truck drives past has given me plenty of time to ponder the pros and cons of working one of the bottom rungs of the hospitality ladder. I don’t feel like I’ve grasped onto any final conclusions but I have come up with the following.






1. Thank God for Centrelink




As many profanities have been muttered regarding the government department that begrudgingly provides us with a fortnightly allowance, existing without it would prove near impossible. Despite the bitter employees and handfuls of bureaucratic red tape, we are lucky to live in a place that supports students, and pretty generously at that. Sure, by the time I graduate I’ll have accumulated tens of thousands of dollars in HECS debt but since that will be slowly whittled away from my tax when I have a ‘real job’, I’m happy to place that at the back of my mind. My only gripe is Centrelink’s makes-little-sense eligibility criteria – surely if I live out of home and study full time and you live out of home and study full time we should be receiving the same benefits? With that said, Centrelink – thank you. I hate your automatic voice recognition feature (which doesn’t work, by the way) and I can never remember the answers to my secret questions in order to use your online services, but I know I am lucky to have you.



2. Summer Motivation Hits its Peak



I have never been filled with more ambition to fulfil my career dreams than after a shift where I have washed 30 salt shakers, accidentally shattered a latte glass into a pram ( fortunately without a baby in it) and served a table of beefcake Collingwood supporters with face tattoos ‘bundy and coke thanks luv’ at 10am. With every fork I polish, I think about what I want to do for the years to come, and I know it’s not this. Whilst this industry is made for some, and I admire those with a passion for it and wonder how on earth they summon the tolerance – it’s definitely not for me. I feel another line appear on my forehead every time someone orders a ‘quarter strength decaf soy latte with Equal and no lid on the cup thanks’. But all the hours I spend raging over how shit the human race can be remind me of why I’m studying – so I can end up in a job I care about, doing things I find interesting and engaging. My passion for my studies usually reaches its peak in the middle of summer, though I wish I could bottle and preserve some of that enthusiasm and ingest it during SWOTVAC when I’ve been hitting refresh on Facebook for three hours while twelve weeks of lecture notes on statistics remain untouched in front of me.



But in the mean time, I think of this as a means to an end, where the end will be that much more rewarding since I’ve placed 8764 cappucinos in front of people who don’t say thank you. But that’s okay, because I can see the end.




3. I Am a Good Customer



I am nice to people who serve me in restaurants, I make few alterations to the menu, I don’t get cross if I’m given a flat white instead of a latte, I’ll happily sit on a communal table and when I put my knife and fork together, yes I have finished my meal and you can take my plate, thank you very much. Working customer service jobs make you a kinder, more understanding and empathetic person. Even if your train comes in two minutes and you’re pissed off because you forgot your lunch and your umbrella and you were woken up by a leaf blower at 7am, you smile at the person who takes your coffee order because you understand and know what it’s like to be them.






4. The Value of the Dollar and the Meaning of Hard Work



I understand them. In theory. Even though I can approximate how many tables I served to obtain the paycheck clutched in my hot little hand, it doesn’t stop me blowing it in the first three days, then making 20 bucks last for the next two, before having to use my debit card to make a six-dollar purchase at Coles because I no longer have enough in my account to withdraw cash. Despite my lack of money management skills, I’d still like to think I understand what it means to earn it.




5. It’s Probably the Most Productive Thing I’d be Doing Anyway



This applies to the days where I wake up feeling like I’ve slept face-down in the Sahara desert in the middle of the day; where I can taste every minute of the last 12 hours and I regret it all.



‘Well I may as well be working when I’m that hungover,’ I said to a friend recently. ‘I wouldn’t be doing anything else anyway.’



‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘But it’s hell.’



It is hell, from the moment you walk in and the room is still spinning, to the moment you walk out feeling like you’ve just run a marathon and your muscles are starting to be eaten away by septic acid. But, I argue, at least I can rock up five minutes before my shift starts smelling like a pub floor, eat two hash browns and drink five litres of apple juice, and still manage to perform my duties to a reasonably satisfactory level. As long as I don’t vomit when I’m clearing a table or drop anyone’s breakfast, though everyone notices my bloodshot eyes and shallow breathing as I will away the nausea, they mostly ignore it.



So even though I spent most of my rent money and have once again disproven the highly contested theory of If You Go to Bed Before Midnight You’ll Be Fine, at least I’m at work earning it back and trying to regain status as a functional member of society.



Plus there’s usually someone worse off than me.





6. So At Least



Days of assessing the alleged silver linings of the hospitality industry have left me feeling lightened. Even if everything I’ve outlined above is blatantly untrue, the knots in my back are starting to unclench as the realisations dawn upon me. Crap hours, crap pay and the broadcasting of humanity’s really ugly qualities – ticking all the boxes. But you have to crawl before you can walk, so I guess that means I have to have surgery on my arm for a burn obtained from carrying a chicken parmigiana plate, before I can get paid for doing what I love.