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 café 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.

It's infinitely true

Why do you steal the covers, sleep diagonally, jump, twitch, thrash about? You stretch your arms out to hold all four pillows, wrap yourself in a cocoon of doona, selfish little bug! Your limbs are spread like a starfish, you kick, turn, mumble, breathe like a freight train? I had strange dreams, I say, I had funny dreams, I say, I had stressed dreams, I say. Sometimes I wake up bemused, confused, amused, other times my eyelids fling open and I am paralysed with fear, wanting to turn the clock back 15 years so I could smell Oil of Olay moisturiser and feel cool hands smooth back my hair.

I scoffed at the overpriced 3am notebook, for the recording of thoughts and dreams had in the dead of the night. But now I rake my memory for dreams from past nights and I can't, they are leaves that have felt the brunt of the evening rain and are now sodden, mulched into the grass, unidentifiable from one another. We should have raked the lawn.

The buses used to line up at the curb, next to the gymnasium that had such a dusty floor. They were really lined up in some kind of pecking order based on location. With that said, the pack of sweaty and wild-eyed individuals bound for the city centre waited in the scorching sun, no relief. The last bus had a sad stringy gum tree and fence posts that offered leaning opporunities, so maybe it was worthwhile, living where I did. Arguable, though, given the number of times we watched Wizz Fizz being snorted up nasal cavities, arse cheeks being pressed against the back window, fruit and stale sandwiches being thrown back and forth, grubby fingers pressing the bell with no intentions of getting off the bus, and the driver hitching up his shorts as he strode down the aisle to where the culprits sat, threatening to throw us all off on the side of the freeway.


For three months a year, when the cold and grey winter persisted, the slick of green grass that ran parallel to the bus stop became perilous. When the rain bucketed down, the grass became a stage, a slippery slope of doom that saw many scurry too fast and fall to social injury in efforts not to miss the bus. In the navy jumpers that reeked of wet dog when it rained, we piled aboard. One headphone for each, we would share Discmans, in efforts to block out the surrounds.


You were in my dream, I was playing in a band. I know you’re horrified, because my complete lack of rhythm, tone deafness and lack of social etiquette used to make you cringe on a regular basis. Why were we so compelled to sit on the concrete, the cold dirty ground? We were drawn to the curbs, stairs, patches of grass, benches, fences, window ledges. Then we grew up, and now we stand and wait in uncomfortable shoes.

3 days

The man named Thomas who reads his newspaper after a day of saving lives had explained the notions of normal, which you repeated back to me, making overexaggerated gestures to try and mimic his diagrams drawn in puddles of beer.



I imagine a comparitive line graph, red and blue squiggles dancing around each other. Normal is at a lower level for addicts but easier to reattain when the sought-after substance is clutched between two fingers.



My main questions are these: What do you do when you're waiting for the train, and there are exactly 7 minutes until it is due to pull into the station? Do you admire what's in the vending machine? Do you watch the other commuters examine their Metcards, read their newspapers, pace back and forth in their polyester suits? Do you count the number of butts stamped into the bitumen? Doesn't time past so slowly, wind lashing against your face? What do you do, with 3 minutes to go, except draw in your breaths harder and faster, smiling if the timing is perfect?



What do you do when you get home from work? Do you take off your coat, hang it up, take off your shoes, line them up, turn the kettle on - and then what? Sit quietly on your lounge setting and drink your tea, watching the 6pm news? Feel the warmth ebb back through your limbs as you prepare for your evening to be spent indoors, without five minutes of freezing interjected at intervals you determine?



What do you do when you finish your dinner, full to bursting? You recline, digest, then what do you do? What comes between dinner and dessert, that you can't have anymore? That course is missing, and it's the one you're craving the most, regardless as to whether the pit of hunger in your belly is filled to the brim.



What do you do, whilst you talk on the phone, except play with the fire inbetween your fingers, over and over and over? What do you do? Do you pace back and forth, wearing marks into the cream carpet? Do you fold the basket of laundry that's been at the end of your bed for a week, is that what you're supposed to do? Do you sit idly, cross-legged, as numbness sets into your feet?


What am I supposed to do, as I scrape the coffee foam back from the sides my glass, as I stir the ice in my drink with my straw, as I bite my nails as the ball of anxiety in my stomach grows, as I ingest chapter after chapter, as I sit in a crowded room with too many other minds humming, as I sit outside in the sun, as I sit outside in the cold, as I sit outside in the rain? What am I supposed to do?

Synthetic

1. Baby

Tiny little rosebud

With sweet smelling hair

A whole world exists for you

2. Sundays

White tiles and cream carpets

Dark haired girls

Soul food on mismatched plates

3. Swot-Vac

Split ends and chewed nails

Frayed flannelette with buttons missing

Endless winter days

Is that a HB pencil?

Don’t know quite where I am, have an idea of what I’m supposed to be doing but all of the four options seem like they could be correct (unconditioned stimulus). I eat the perfectly ripe yellow banana, even though the smell of banana this early in the morning makes my stomach heave. But it’s brain food, and it’s sad you dropped yours on the floor (Bobo doll experiment). I had stressed dreams, thrashing around like a malfunctioning egg beater and waking up with my mind racing. We’d gone underwear shopping and she’d told me I ought to lose some weight (fixation at the anal stage).

The sun was trying to beat away the clouds, freezing wind whipping at the tops of uncovered feet. He’d scowled in disgust at the nicotine clouds blown in a perfect stream from your lips, but really, why on earth was he compelled to ask you if you wanted to join a gym? (fovea) The days blend together and the battle with the umbrella takes precedence (Mrs. Boles) when superstition dominates (Stanley). The man with the kind face gave you two marshmallows (Cesario); the sour-lipped woman in the op shop begrudgingly docked $3.50 from the final price (assimilation) and the passerby with an expression full of pity and horror clicked their tongue at the figures huddled in front of the window, howling and shrieking over the wind (le subjonctif).

Listen to the sound of hundreds of anxious voices bouncing off the concrete, finding their way into the cobwebbed corners that are neglected in the absence of the Spring Racing Carnival (is Sebastian really dead?). I walked through a puddle and now my socks are wet, this takes priority over my concern of not understanding Orsino’s motives in marrying Olivia. It was like an airport lounge, and as the distressed buzz dimmed (les pronouns relatif) I was horrified to realise the horseshoes printed on the carpet were facing the wrong way. How were they going to catch any luck? How were they going to catch my answers as they spiraled out of the ends of my frizzy hair, wet with the drizzle? (Cattell’s 16 Factor Personality Test). I closed my eyes and imagined Space Invaders, ricocheting past and exploding where the carpet met the tiles. We were numbers. At least English is our first language, I remember saying (reliability). At least we’re not left-handed, so everything we write doesn’t become smudged as our hands race across the page (validity). At least it’s only two hours, not three (cross-sectional). Why were there so many clocks? It would be so silent, surely the ticking would drive us all mad? (longitudinal) As if to support my theory that the desks should be facing the other way, we can see out onto the racecourse. I can hear the crack of a starting gun (factor analysis), the snap of gates being pulled back (Darwin’s theory of evolution) and the thunder of dozens of hooves churning up the soil (separation anxiety). I hear the nasal commentary of the race, which fascinated me at a young age (the id). How do they speak so fast, Mum? (positive reinforcement).

I remember where I am, and what I should be doing. Those who are absent are declared to be so via invasive red sheets of paper, with cruel letters stamped across the front (rationalism). The person sitting next to me is feeling as though a 25% chance isn’t enough to see him through (Descartes). He oozes dismay as the 10 minutes of reading time tick past on the labelled clocks (negative punishment). It’s contagious! (extinction).

I spot his identical twin on the other side of me. I read a question about noses (I think it’s functionalism) and become fixated trying to spot the differences in their appearances. Are thy really related? What are the chances of identical twins doing the same subject, in the same course, at the same university? Wouldn’t they be tired of sharing space, sharing attention, sharing faces? (synapses). I can’t turn my head fast enough to spot them. One is potentially more red-headed than the other, they have slightly different haircuts, perhaps in an attempt to seize individualism by the horns and defy their shared DNA (projective tests). I feel sick from moving my eyes so quickly, I taste the banana that was supposed to help me (taste aversion therapy). And then it begins. And while I’m choosing A, B, C or D, I can see feather-adorned hats, and see the light at the end of the tunnel, even if it is flickering slightly (You did not just compare a tunnel to a birth canal).

Don’t the voices sound different, without the anxiety laced through them, though they still bounce off the concrete and encourage us to make a hasty exit?

I wrote it in June 2008

Sometimes I wake up and forget everyone else speaks French. My dreams are a confused garble of Romanian, French and English. I'm somewhat of an awe-inducing artefact in my French classes. The woman in charge at Assofac, the organisation who runs the programmes, is a heinous bitch with cankles and was adamant that because I spoke no French (surely I spoke some French) I wasn't enthused about learning the language. So she lumped me in a class with 10 other people who already spoke fluent French and were specialising their vocabulary in the direction of environmental science. I learnt little in the three or four lessons I was made to endure except that my teacher's name was Delphine, she had a pustule on her toe and provided me with living proof as to why no one should smoke at 40. So after it finally clicked that she really doesn't speak French, she wasn't lying, I was put in a class slightly more to my level. However once again they don't believe that I speak no French, and I am subject to a mandatory presentation about oneself within 30 seconds of being ushered in the door - initially they thought I was 28 and had two children but after we got that straightened out, everybody reaffirmed their opinion about my lack of French speaking abilities. I'm made to read aloud, write on the board, write sentences and conjugate imperative verbs - I decided that after the three hours of urine-soaked fear that was the first class, it would be a really clever idea to purchase a dictionary. Outside the classroom, the language barrier is easy to navigate - though I've learnt that I need to stop laughing when I sense the opening for it in conversation, as it gives people the illusion that I understand and prompts them to start nattering at me in French and then waiting for my response. I've become slightly expert at interpreting what people are saying to me given the situation I'm in, and change my answers according to pure whim, swapping between 'oui, merci' or 'non, merci' (creative, no?). This is a mixed luck draw - I never know what I'm going to get. Last week it got me my purchase gift wrapped, definitely a positive, whereas when I responded 'non, merci' when the salesman at Galleries Lafayette asked me for my postcode, the reaction was less favourable. Needless to say, it keeps life interesting.

Incapable of thinking

1. The first thing to go is the ability to think creatively or logically. If I am engaged in a task and there is a possible way of completing in a faster, more simple or better way, I will manage to ignore the flashing warning signals and keep trudging along the beaten track. Spontaneous questions that involve memory recall are destined to fail. Vocabulary shrivels down to the basics, the ability to pronounce things clearly or articulate properly disappears. Conversation other than the necessities becomes too difficult. Along with the ability to think outside the square, being exposed to stimulating material is overwhelming and daunting.

2. Next to vanish is the attention span. Even if I believe I am concentrating, staring at words on a page, my mind has exited the room and is dancing in the puddles outside, thinking about something irrelevant, busy twisting itself into overanalysis or concocting ideas for dinner. I should take this as a cue for what I so desperately need but I never do. I fidget in my seat, flicker back and forth between what I should be doing and what I shouldn't be doing. I read pages and can't remember the subject matter, much less any type of evaluation of material. Basic things become very difficult. I revert back to a page several times just to copy out a sentence accurately. I find myself using wrong tenses, bad grammar, stubby fingers struggling with hitting the right key on the keyboard (and before I wrote 'right' I wrote 'write'). Life is becoming too hard but because I can't think beyond what I am doing at that exact moment, it is destined to remain unchanged for the moment. It's getting worse.

3. The slippery slope of deterioration is steepest when this phase dawns upon me. As I struggle with my brain thumping against the inside of my skull, my hands shaking as I pick up a pen, having to think long and hard about how to construct the sentence 'I am in the room in the library with the green reading lights', I am angry. My whole body is tensed with rage. My eyes are black darts, shooting looks of disdain and contempt at anyone who makes a noise. Why am I so angry? Because the girl sitting opposite me is wearing bangles which are hitting the desk as she types. And I will probably kill her, because I am an irrational fiery ball of crankiness, who hates everything in her direct vicinity. Including the way the lecturer is pronouncing 'transport' and the crackle that it is producing in the left ear of my headphones. I am bubbling and spitting, a cauldron of discontent, of unpleasantness, of stewing distress and fury.

4. Stop. What is that? Through the blindfold that has been plastered over my eyes, enabling me to only see red spots of anger, I recognise something. An innate reaction. And whilst I am angry about it, there is rationale starting to peak through, struggling against the dark shutters but nonetheless letting in a persistant stream of light that is enabling me to focus clearly for half a second. The person sitting beside me is eating. The smells emitted from the spicy hot bowl of nourishing goodness they have in front of them stir something within me which I had obviously tried to repress for too long. My stomach growls. Not just growls, but rumbles and roars like a caged animal who has been injected with a shot of adrenalin. It dawns on me very suddenly, very clearly. I am hungry. Not just hungry, but starved, possibly going to go blind with famine and desperately need something to eat, right now, this very second.

I breathe in food, inhale it in one gulp. And then happiness and tranquillity reign supreme (unless someone tries to pry it from my grasp) and I can live again. The demons have settled, until dinner time. Or until we pool our change and charge towards the vending machine, needs satisfied by king-sized chocolate. But, it's like you told me, the advice I will treasure and ignore its untruth. Nothing is bad for you when you are doing something good.